Monday, January 11. Sixteen? Phoenicia. Sixteen degrees when I rose at seven, which I suppose is better than the forecast twelve. Still, that's the coldest temperature to chill the Cool Water Ranch since we moved here nineteen years ago. The pipes stood up to it with no damage, but my car had a little trouble starting. The cat Twinnery insists on going out in this gelid clime. He wouldn't come back inside even for an offer of food. Like human hunters, he brushes off even extraordinarily uncomfortable weather. Twinnery is an accomplished mouser whose toll of rodents in 2009 was something like twenty. I don't know where he finds them; we've never seen evidence of them inside or outside. But he always brings them home, bragging in cat talk, treating the corpses like trophies.
For the fourth consecutive Monday (which is some kind of record) I traveled into town for the radio show. Monty Sander had a winemaker in town he wanted me to interview on the air. He's a public relations guy from the California wine country who used to get me into the Napa Wine Auction every year before the event downsized. I owe him a few, but what really convinced me to come in was the winemaker's name: Aline Baly. Aline was my mother's name, shared with only one other person I ever met. Aline is a common French name, and Aline Baly is quite French--although you'd never know it to hear her English. (She spent her college years in this country.) Her family owns Chateau Coutet, a grand cru classe Sauternes.
Aline could not have been over thirty. She said she was having a great time partying around New Orleans. But she is well versed in her family's wine, and we talked at length about that wonderful sweet wine. And how in that part of France they drink it with almost everything. She had with her a half-bottle of the 1998 vintage, but we hit a snag. I could not locate a corkscrew. I almost always have one in my briefcase, but I must have removed it to get through security at the airport back in October. We never did get the bottle open. But I will enjoy it when I do. Late-harvest, botrytis wines are what got me excited about wines to begin with, thirty-five years ago.
Dinner at Phoenicia, a restaurant I always liked in past eatings. Hadn't been there lately. I picked a bad night. Not for the food, which was if anything even better than I remember. But because of a widespread scourge of restaurant diners during the colder months of winter: drafts. Because of our mild winters, few restaurants have double sets of doors. Every incoming customer accompanies a blast of chilly air that ranges from mildly annoying to stinging.
It was very cold tonight. Lucky for me (but not for Phoenicia), the parking lot full of the non-discriminating diners who fill Houston's and Chili's every night are too shy to try this exotic, much better food. So the door didn't open often. On the other hand, the heating system was no match for the chilly air flowing down the walls and windows. I'm glad I wore a blazer.
I began with a bowl of lentil soup, the idea of which had great appeal. But it came out tepid, and I couldn't bring myself to ask the very hospitable waitress to take it back and fix it. (An empty dining room is enough of a problem.) I put up with it, and may have been rewarded by karma in the entree course. Here was the finest combination plate of shish kebabs I've ever enjoyed outside of Turkey. Chicken, lamb, and kofta. All were nicely season, moist inside, but charred at the edges the way a good kebab should be. The kafta--a mixture of ground lamb and beef with onions and parsley--was especially good. (So was the koufta, and the kifta. No two restaurants spell this the same.) The hummus was thicker and heavier than I'd make it (but I wasn't making it), and tasted great with the kebabs. Delicious!
Phoenicia has a distinctive version of the Lebanese dessert ashta. It doesn't involve phyllo pastry. It comes like a custard, in an oval dish, with a little cup of orange flower water syrup and pitachios. It had the look and texture of panna cotta, and was delicious. I missed a bet by not having some Turkish coffee with it. It would have made it easier for to get up five times in the middle of this night to keep my watch over my pipes as we went back into the teens for the third night in a row.
Phoenicia. Metairie: 4201 Veterans Blvd. 504-889-9950. Lebanese.
