Monday, July 16, 2011.
Twenty-Three. Sesame Inn. Underdogs. Armand Jonte Is Back.
Today is Jude's twenty-third birthday. When I called him in the evening to wish him a happy day, he and his current, recently-met girlfriend were on their way to dinner. She was surprising him with a restaurant good enough that Barack Obama had a big to-do there recently.
I am under orders not to relate much about Jude's girlfriend in this medium. But I think I can get away with this: she is a singer who was about to hit it big when another member of her musical organization went supernova. She got lost in the glare, and decided she didn't like the pop music biz after all. She told me on the phone that she's not a singer at all anymore, but I insisted that nobody ever really stops being a singer, and that we will have to do a duet when and if we meet.
Mary Ann is in high gear as she pulls all her neglected projects back to life after two weeks away. A lot of that results in a growing task list for me, but I knew that was coming.
We took a break from all that (but not from talking about it) with lunch at the Sesame Inn. I have not been there since the restaurant was sold by its founder, Steve. He needed to take an extended leave from the business for eye surgery and to accompany his aging father to China for what he says will be his last visit to his homeland.
The new people are younger, but no less adept. They haven't made any glaring changes in the menu. What we had today was as good as comparable dishes were since the place opened. I had the double-sauteed pork with crisp squares of cabbage, carrots, and a hot garlic sauce. Mary Ann went for the General's famous chicken, that great American dish. Oh, well. At least she's been able to move beyond boneless chicken and Mandarin chicken.
During the ride home, thinking about the Sesame Inn gave me an idea for an article. When the restaurant first opened, people expressed their favorable impressions by saying "It's better than Trey Yuen!" The most likely motivation for making that comparison is a desire to root for the underdog. Sesame Inn is unarguably very good. But Trey Yuen--a much bigger, more ambitious, older, and more famous restaurant--is clearly the dominant Chinese restaurant in St. Tammany Parish. It's an "overdog," to create a word.
I used this as a theme for the radio show. For the first time in memory, the listeners actually warmed to the question and called in with more favorite-versus-underdog pairs. Here are some of them:
Underdog/Overdog
Bosco's/Sal & Judy's
Green Goddess/Pelican Club
Arnaud's/Galatoire's
Dante's Kitchen/Brigtsen's
Katie's/Liuzza's (or Mandina's)
Felix's/Acme
Acropolis Cuisine/Metairie Chain Restaurants In General
The classic example of an underdog is gone, but not forgotten:
Crescent City Steak House/Ruth's Chris on Broad Street
I think I'll work up a list of these for the newsletter.
Last week the news broke that Johnny V's has parted with its original chef. Co-owner Johnny Vidanovich opened Johnny V's about five months ago, next door to his Monkey Hill Bar on Magazine at Webster. Vidanovich became famous during his long tenure at Clancy's, three blocks away, in case you didn't notice.
I tried Johnny V's for the first time about a month ago, and was taken aback by the uninteresting menu and cooking. Everything about it suggested a work in progress, with a lot more work needed. This was supposed to have been one of the major openings of 2012. Apparently I wasn't the only underwhelmed customer, and the restaurant put the chef on waivers.
I think the movements of chefs from restaurant to restaurant are of much less moment than they are usually supposed to be. But this one caught my attention. The new chef is Armand Jonte, who I have not heard from in many years. Armand worked at Commander's Palace during the blossoming of the Nouvelle Haute Creole cuisine that restaurant incited in the late 1970s.
He left to become the original chef at Gautreau's--one of the best of the new gourmet Creole bistros that changed dining styles in the 1980s. (Clancy's was another.) He was there a long time, even opening a second Uptown restaurant. He left town to build his own place in Waveland, Mississippi, where he stayed for a long time. But well before the hurricane Armand and his restaurant disappeared, and I lost track of him.
But now here he is again. Eggplant Eloise--his signature dish--is already on the menu at Johnny V's, and I expect we'll see more of his memorable old dishes and new ones there soon. This is a very good development. I look forward to being thrilled by Armand Jonte's food once again.
Sesame Inn. Mandeville: 408 N Causeway Blvd. 985-951-8888.
Johnny V's Bistro. Uptown: 6106 Magazine St. 504-899-4880.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
