Monday, January 28, 2013.
Hot. Goodell Ban. Superior Seafood.
For the fifth day of this month that keeps claiming to be January, the temperature passed 80 degrees. So why did our electric bill go up by half?
There's a movement afoot to prohibit NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell from dining in New Orleans restaurants while he's here for the Super Bowl. Goodell put the hurt on the Saints for their alleged secret bounty program of trying to injure opposing players. Numerous emails ask me which restaurants are partaking in this ban. Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell. What a dumb idea!
One correspondent sent a list of eleven restaurants that were supposed to have Goodell's photo posted, with orders to the staff not to serve him. Of the eleven, only two were restaurants I'd bother to try. Most were neighborhood bars I never heard of. It's unlikely that Goodell will wind up in any of them to begin with.
I was in town because CBS asked me to appear on their evening news broadcast. I asked whether they would mind doing the interview during the radio show. They thought that was a kicky idea. CBS reporter Jim Axelrod started with my best statistic: that we had 809 restaurants before Katrina, and now we have 1332. Axelrod lived in New Orleans some years ago, working as a teacher and then doing local news for awhile. He interviewed me for a half hour, I on his show and he on mine. He says the piece will air on Wednesday. I'm hoping for a slow news day.
To dinner at the Superior Seafood, now a year old on St. Charles Avenue at Napoleon. The Marys have been there and loved the place. Most of the reports have been reasonably good, but those have been peppered with less favorable reports from readers.
I was pulling for it to be good. This is a very well-designed restaurant, with that great French-Creole look epitomized by Arnaud's, but common in older restaurants here. You know—tiled floors, mirrors, and like that.
Superior has an oyster bar. I began this meal with a 2-2-2 oyster assortment: Rockefeller, Bienville, and angels on horseback. (The latter is another name for oysters en brochette, the familiar bacon-wrapped-then-fried oyster appetizer.) All these were good and hot with big oysters on the shells. But except for the angels (how far off the tracks could that go?), they didn't taste even remotely of what their names implied. I think they cook them on the grill, not in the oven, which would explain everything.
Next, a bowl of crab, crawfish and corn bisque. Buttery, creamy, thick--and sweet. Sweet? An old trick, known equally by chefs and winemakers. If you add a little sweetener of some kind--so little that you can't really taste it--most people register the flavor as being better than the same item without the sugar. This was well above the threshold of perception, and I found it a distraction. Adding more than the usual amount of hot sauce helped.
Then the complimentary house Sensation salad. The Sensation is universal around Baton Rouge and places influenced by the capital's cuisine. This one was more like an Italian salad. (Come to think of it, no two Sensation salads I've had were much alike.)
Sometime around now, my presence was discovered, and the chef sent out an amuse-bouche. First amuse-bouche I've ever been served after three courses, but never mind. I think it was shrimp remoulade on top of fried tomatoes.
The entree was a very large fillet of cornmeal-coated, fried speckled trout, with a brown sauce that I thought would be a meuniere but which actually reminiscent of a Marsala sauce--including the sweet aspect. Hmm. Under the fish was smashed potatoes, a little in the direction of potatoes au gratin. Fish on top of potatoes (or grits) is popular now, but I can't wait until it isn't anymore.
The waiter--a friendly guy who works by day in a French Quarter restaurant, and with whom I carried on an intermittent conversation all night--told me that the only desserts worthy of my attention were the bread pudding and the creme brulee. I was thinking about the pudding anyway. Whoever made this recipe lacks a clear idea of what bread pudding is. The bready part had the texture and sweetness of cake. The sauce was sweeter still, pushing the total flavor profile up so high that it rolled over my palate on the way down.
None of this was what I expected at all. How could any restaurant management with the smarts to build such a cool place put so little into getting the food right? But that's the chain restaurant business for you. It spends fortunes on buildings, then nickel-and-dimes the food.
Superior Seafood. Uptown: 4338 St. Charles Ave. 504-293-3474.
