Monday, September 26, 2011.
Pizza Gleaning And Veal Sorrentino At Carmelo.
It happened again. At the end of my radio show, our plans to cook the remaining part of the tri-tip roast we grilled so successfully last week were scrapped, because we both were too hungry to begin the process of cooking at six o'clock. So we went to Carmelo. I had in mind getting two pizzas: one to nibble at with a glass of wine here as an appetizer, the other to restock my collection of appetite killers. A slice of pizza, eaten instead of a real lunch or dinner, is relatively harmless to my weight-loss program. On Mondays, one pizza gets you a second to take home.
Mary Ann satisfied herself with three slices of the pepperoni half of the eat-in pizza. And a tray of Carmelo Chirico's hand-cured olives. Then tomatoes topped with crabmeat that didn't seem to have been touched by any kind of dressing. The one consistent flaw in this restaurant's cooking is that they underseason a lot of their food.
That was not true of my entree, though. Veal Sorrentino is a dish I've enjoyed at Carmelo since he first opened in the French Quarter in the 1980s. It's a classic--I had it once in Sorrento itself, in fact. But it's not commonly served in New Orleans restaurants. This one was as good as any I've ever had. Three medallions of baby white veal, tender as it's famous for being. Grilled, well-seasoned eggplant over that. And a slice of prosciutto and an oval of fresh-milk mozzarella over the top. The sauce was a light brown job, not the marsala-flavored style that usually shows up. It was as generous as it was delicious, and I shouldn't have killed it, but I did.
I shouldn't have had dessert, either, but I did. It was a semifreddo--sort of a cheesecake broken into chunks, scattered with something like the innards of a tiramisu, and rendered a semi-solid (hence the name) in the freezer. Oh, well.
Ristorante Carmelo. Mandeville: 1901 US Hwy 190. 985-624-4844.
