Monday, March 15. Jude! Nuvolari's. Mary Ann is on a high whenever Jude is expected to vouchsafe us a visit from Hollywood. She's cleaning the house much more thoroughly than usual, but that's the kind of VIP treatment she accords our firstborn. When I raise an eyebrow at this, she accuses me of being jealous. I am guilty as charged. But this is a good thing. Being envious of one's children's lives says we must have done a good job with them.
The golden boy arrived home in the middle of my radio show. When I emerged from my cloister at seven, there he was, sitting on the sofa with the Marys, watching the new television service we've added since the last time he was here. His cheeks and chin were covered with the shortest possible beard, an effect I showed him how to create during the holidays. (A standard electric clipper does the job.)
"Nuvolari's!" was his first word to me. Jude has come to town with a list of restaurants he needs to dine in. The yearning for the food of his hometown has finally overtaken my sophisticated son.
Nuvolari's was busy for a Monday night. Co-owner Wally Simmons was running around even more than usual, bussing tables and filling in as needed while still making cocktails at the bar.
We had a light supper as Fitzmorris family feasts go: no appetizers, just salads followed by entrees. Jude and Mary Leigh split a filet mignon. Mary Ann had some grilled redfish with crabmeat (below). That's one of her favorite dishes, and one of the best arrows in Chef Thomas Smith's culinary quiver.
For me, something new. The veal spedini (below) was three rolled-up slices of veal, as the name implies. (The idea is that they're run up a skewer, then broiled or baked.) But instead of being stuffed with bread crumbs and prosciutto or cheese, these were filled with crabmeat, and sauced with what I think was Marsala sauce. It wasn't as big a taste as the classic, but that's okay--veal and crabmeat match up reasonably well.
All of this was subsidiary to the buzz of Jude in our midst, for the first time since New Year's. He's as busy as ever, but spending more money. Fortunately, a lot of the dollars are his own. He has begun to experience something I warned him about a year and a half ago, when he first moved to Los Angeles to pursue his degree at USC. Although he has lived away from home for almost five years now, always before he shared quarters with other students in dormitories. But now he's in an apartment by himself. And he spends so much time working on movie sets that he hasn't developed the base of friends he's always surrounded himself with. He seems more eager than usual to come home and reconnect.
I know well the way he feels. One night when I was almost exactly his age, I sat alone in my apartment. The place was furnished to my taste. I was living on my own the way I always wanted to do, with everything going well in my life. But I had nothing to do, nobody to call, and there I was. The next few hours were very disturbing. I thought I was losing my mind. It happened a few more times, until I learned that it signaled a need for more dimension in my life than what had worked for me in the immediate past. (One's mind expands rapidly in those years.) Once I was engaged with new challenges, the problem went away. Jude will get through this, too. But his mom is worried. Wants to go to Hollywood to help him. Jude is smart enough to discourage this.
That's something else I envy. She listens to him.
Nuvolari’s. Mandeville: 246 Girod St. 985-626-5619. Contemporary Creole.
