Monday, July 23, 2012.
Stopping Problems. Clancy's Keeps On Rolling Along.
My car is up to about 160,000 miles in its eight years, but has never had a brake job. It will have to get one now, said the mechanic this morning. All four wheels. Everything needs to be replaced. Eight hundred plus. Oh, well. I want to keep this car permanently, even after I get a new one. PT Cruisers will become classic. It will also be the penultimate machine to drive on the fiftieth anniversary of Prom Night in 2017. (Unless I can come up with an old Beetle.)
Mary Ann and I had a date with Scott Craig, the co-owner of Katie's, and his new bride Stephanie. Having dinner with restaurateurs outside their own restaurants is something I almost never do, but maybe I should. These meetings are always very stimulating. People in the biz know all kinds of gossip--most of it true--that I don't get from other sources.
Scott asked me to pick the place, and although he's the one who initiated the evening, that made me responsible for the check. I thought Clancy's would be perfect. It's a restaurant I don't go to nearly often enough, because it's so consistent that I rarely learn anything new. I just enjoy myself.
I learned the fate of Steve Manning, Clancy's chef off and on for many years. He now fronts the new Annunciation restaurant at the other end of Annunciation Street. That Clancy's is also on Annunciation and its corporate name is Annunciation Foods made me wonder if there were some connection. There isn't.
Clancy's wasn't very busy, as all restaurants aren't on a Monday in summer. But at Clancy's, "not very busy" means that there's one or two tables open. As always, I knew almost everybody in the place. Phil Gagliano from Ristorante Filippo was right next to us, with a bunch of friends. One of them had called me on the air earlier and asked what to order. I told him he shouldn't miss the crabmeat Remick. Trouble was, it wasn't on the menu. I asked the waitress whether they could whip it out anyway. She doubted it, but checked with Chef Brian Larsen anyway. He agreed, and so the two tables at the far end of the dining room this night had several orders of the great old zingy casserole.
Following the crabmeat Remick, we had a few more appetizers. Eggplant sticks with aioli. Shrimp and grits. Sweetbreads. Scott is hot on the veal glands, and so, apparently, is his lady, who got an entree of the things later. They both gave me tastes, which affirmed something I have been saying for rather a long time now: nobody does sweetbreads better than Clancy's.
Mary Ann could not let the crabmeat and artichoke au gratin (right) get past her, but after the shrimp and grits (left) this appetizer would work as an entree, and was able to live with herself. Scott put his main fork into a piece of black drum with crabmeat.
I had the best entree. Clancy's was the first serious restaurant to smoke foods in house, doing so from opening day in 1983. Tonight, they smoked some beautiful double pork chops, and wet it down with a demi-glace that carried a touch of heat. This was as good as any such thing in my memory. Scott's entree (below) was black drum with crabmeat, which I'm sure Mary Ann was looking at with lust.
Bread pudding with blueberries and a caramel mousse (I think that's what it was) finished the repast. We got by on a bottle of Viognier and a bottle of Pinot Noir. The men at the table didn't think that enough to slake our thirst, so we had a couple of glasses of the Pinot on top of that.
I got the check, which Scott wanted to split. I said he could get the next one. The next one, it has been determined, will be Stella!
Clancy's owner Brad Hollingsworth follows the styles he knew when he was a waiter at Galatoire's, LeRuth's, and the Caribbean Room. He has succeeded at that in many ways, one of which is the venerable wait staff here. I suspect the average term of service of Clancy's waiters equals that of any other New Orleans restaurant. Even the bus personnel are first-class.
Clancy's. Uptown: 6100 Annunciation. 504-895-1111.
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.
