Monday, February 11, 2013.
Windsor Court Grill Room: A Return To The Scene On Lundi Gras.
Mary Ann and I have been married for twenty-four years today. It's imaginable that we could double that number by the time it's all over, but to do that we will have to reinvent our marriage. We were merely married, without children, for such a short time that we don't have a meaningful pattern to return to, now that the kiddos are gone. On the other hand, the idea of splitting up is anathema to both of us.
Fortunately, MA makes certain that life is never boring.
We spent our first two married nights at the Windsor Court Hotel before heading to Belgium for a honeymoon. We have never returned to Belgium, although we'd like to. It was a charming week, even with the chilly rain. (It was a lot like what the past two weeks have been in New Orleans.)
But we always return to the Windsor Court on February 11. Sometimes we spend the night. This year, with our date falling on Lundi Gras, we suspected that wasn't an option. We learned that the hotel in fact had space available).
But we always have lunch or dinner. The latter, in this case, with Orpheus passing right in front of the hotel. The servers--who didn't have a lot of diners to wait on--encouraged us to pop out to watch the parade in mid-meal, and said that they'd hold up our own eight-course tasting menu parade while we were watching the one outside.
This was our first seated dinner during the chefhood of Kristin Butterworth, who took over the kitchen a few months ago. She offered three menu options: a la carte, a tasting menu, and the ultimate tasting menu. The latter is priced at $225, taking first place in the New Orleans menu price derby. That's for the eleven courses of food; the wine pairings add another $110.
Although I'm sure they move this plan often enough, it clearly is a posturing program, not a realistic dinner for all but the one percenters. We actually did think about ordering it, but, really, the dishes on it were a roll call of all the expensive food items currently in vogue: foie gras, pork belly, truffles--you know. A different vogue--for homestyle food--was also engaged. Mary Ann's eye was caught by the white bean and ham soup, and the shrimp and grits. If I'm going to spend this kind of money on dinner, I want a full night of food I never thought about before.
We did the standard ninety-five-dollar tasting menu instead. It had the white bean soup, after all. The ham was described as "candied," and indeed it gave a sweet taste to the soup. "Here we go again with the sweet tastes where they don't belong," said MA. We have been running into that a lot lately. She was also put off by the tepid temperature of the soup. We would have less than hot food all night long--and not because they had to pull us back to the dining room from the parade, either. This is one of the problems of serving a dinner of tasting portions: they get cold faster, and our table was about as far away from the kitchen as it could be.
Mary Ann was intrigued by the mac-and-cheese variant she saw on the $225 menu. Could we have a taste? I asked. How much could that cost? The pasta part was Lebanese couscous--little beebees, in a rich, creamy sauce. Ninety-eight percent of the value of the dish was in the flakes of black truffles on top.
They let us have that for our anniversary. And they also sent foie gras, with flavors of apple and pecans beneath. I got a good taste of it: MA doesn't do foie gras. The wine was nice with that: we each had a glass of Billecart-Saumon Rose of Champagne, a lovely anniversary wine.
The best dish of the night (and the hottest) was a mini-fillet of red snapper with a creamy potato chowder and horseradish foam so delicate that when I picked it up to take a photo of it, all the bubbles popped and it went away.
And here was the pork belly. Mary Ann likes it, but she also liked the fatty parts of barbecue ribs. And a puff of smoke coming from somewhere, making the pork smell and taste like barbecue. Completing the effect was The twist on this was a barbecue sauce reduced down to a gel. Hmm.
Now a piece of sirloin strip loin. MA asked whether she could have filet mignon instead; the kitchen obliged. For the third consecutive course, potatoes turned up. In a different form, of course. Whether this was a leitmotif or an oversight I couldn't tell.
That's when we stopped eating to see Harry Connick Jr. and his Orpheus parade pass by. It was a great parade, wonderful floats, terrific bands--including the vaunted St. Augustine Marching One Hundred.
We ran into Alex Patout on the street. He is cheffing these days at Landry's in New Iberia--no connection to the chain of the same name, but a long-running, family-owned Cajun restaurant. He was his usual laughing, smiling self.
Back at the table, we were brought a microscopic, much-worked-over cheese course with chevre at its center. Sweet, again. Then something delicious for dessert, carrying a name I have never seen on a menu: posset. I had to look it up. It's a sort of pot de creme, with milk curdled by adding hot wine or juice--blood orange juice, in this case. It had a little ball of granita on top, and was juice-a-luscious.
The fine points were not much in evidence here. But it would be wrong to judge the Grill Room by a dinner the day before Mardi Gras. Everybody was dressed down and getting loose, of course. I liked this dinner better than Mary Ann did. But I like our marriage better than she does, too.
Not much spoken of tonight was the tale of what happened last time we were here on Lundi Gras. That was the night of my one tee many martoonis, which brought on a broken ankle. Mea maxima culpa.
Windsor Court Grill Room. CBD: 300 Gravier. 504-522-1994.
To browse through all of the Dining Diaries since 2008, go here.
