Last Saturday we visited dear friends at their company Christmas party, which was held at Rock’n’Bowl. I have been to Rock’n’Bowl only once or twice, and both times for a party. This is the kind of casual fare you know is bad for you, but you don’t indulge often. But, if someone offers you fried chicken wings and pizza….
There was also a salad bowl on that table with the chicken wings and pizza. That bowl remained filled to the brim the whole evening, not because the staff was so attentive (they were) but because no one touched it.
The chicken wings were crisp and greaseless and well-seasoned. They were irresistible. The pizza was neither good nor bad. It was just pizza, cut into squares with one single large slice of pepperoni. Quite ordinary, but if you are eating bar food, it works. And there were fried mozzarella cheese sticks, which was a bit over the line for me. Tom stayed firmly planted at the dessert table, snacking on cookies at the same pace the rest of us downed chicken wings. A fun evening and a great visit with our friends.
It was still early when we left and we headed out to Metairie to visit another friend, Danny Millan. We have run into Danny all over town all of these years, first starting at Brennan’s when Jude was a baby. Danny’s resume includes the A-listers these last thirty years, finally starting his own place on Harrison in Lakeview in 2014. Cava was a success for Danny, who enjoyed tremendous popularity until he sold it in 2018. The space is now Junior’s on Harrison. Danny left Harrison Avenue near Canal Blvd and moved a few blocks west to Harrison at West End where he built Azul from the ground up. Plagued with kitchen problems from the very beginning, Danny wound up in the kitchen quite a lot. Azul was a great departure from everything Danny knew, and it was short lived.
Danny fell off the radar for a while after Azul, taking some time with his family. He turned up again recently as the proprietor of Cava Bistro, in the space that was formerly Cypress Bistro on Transcontinental. And here he returns to his roots.
When we walked in Tom immediately noticed a resemblance to the old Louis XVI, where Tom dined and Danny worked for a time. The soft lighting, white tablecloths and tall vases with red roses set a romantic mood of an elegant dining space.
Danny was in the kitchen again, which made me a little nervous. Danny was in the kitchen at Azul, which seemed an odd match for someone whose entire career was front of the house.
The menu was the perfect size for a new restaurant. Very manageable, with approximately eight choices each of appetizers and entrees and a few less soups, salads and desserts.
On Saturday night the soup du jour was smoky tomato basil with filet mignon meatballs. This was an impossibly delicious soup. Rich and creamy (texture, not dairy) and smooth, the color was arrestingly a deep beautiful red. This soup was a hearty and satisfying winter soup. The meatballs were great too, and I wished I had a bowl of spaghetti to toss in it. He should bottle that stuff.
Danny is very proud of the extra step he takes to drive to Lafitte twice a week to get the very best crab meat from the Higgins company. He has been doing that for at least as long as his tenure at La Foret, but I am sure this practice dates farther back. It is indeed superior crab meat, which he proved again with his crab claw dish. Instead of the usual clarified butter with garlic and herbs, this dish featured long diagonal crostini arrayed on a plate and napped with a spectacular cream sauce. The claws themselves were outstanding. I get crab claws absolutely everywhere I see them, and these were fatter and far meatier than any I have seen, with the exception of Pat Gallagher’s which are more like stone crab claws and come in a neat amount of six. The Cava Bistro appetizer featured regular crab claws served in a generous amount, but were far superior to any of their ilk. It is hard for me to imagine a dish like this that I have preferred to this one.
Meanwhile, Tom was happily devouring a fried oyster dish which includes a creamed spinach base nestled in a shell and topped with a fried oyster. These oysters were also meaty, fried with a nice crunch and delicious. It was a classic and a bit old fashioned, but classics are classics because of their goodness.
We were already full from the party, so we called it an evening after that appetizer course, but we are definitely looking forward to returning to Cava Bistro for some of the entrees we did not get to try. These are delicious and hearty cool weather favorites like osso buco. So after the Azul misstep and a hiatus, Danny Millan is back. And that odd little space on Transcontinental is the home of delicious food again. We’ll happily take these two very positive developments in an otherwise crummy year for restaurants.
