Saturday, August 18, 2012.
The 500. New Orleans Food And Spirits. Boom! Crackle.
I've decided that this will be the weekend I finally put the 500 Best New Orleans Restaurant Dishes into the ether. The book-length project has been in the works for the last two years. At some point one has to stop revising (at least temporarily--I plan to update it continually) and get the thing out.
I broke at midday for lunch with the Marys at New Orleans Food And Spirits. Every time we go, we ask ourselves at the end why it doesn't get more of our business. We had a couple of big salads, pecan-crusted catfish with steamed vegetables for me, and a big hamburger for the Hamburger Princess. She was the only one to complain, and then only mildly. I say, anyone who eats a hamburger in a predominantly seafood restaurant is asking for imperfection.
Another thought we have after meals at NOF&S is that its menu is too limited. Other than their big-time non-conforming dish (the famous stewed rabbit with white beans on Thursdays), it's mostly straightforward local seafood, with too many cream sauces with crawfish and shrimp. Now that the place is locked in a tough competition with the nearby, very cool Chimes, it needs to add some diversity and sparkle to its menu that the Chimes doesn't have. (They sell a lot of burgers, too.)
While we were eating, one of those explosive thunderstorms we've had so many of lately roared through, actually shaking the building. (The NOF&S is on stilts over the bank of the Bogue Falaya River.) When we arrived home, I wasn't surprised that the power was out. I should have unplugged everything before we left, but the clouds didn't look as threatening as they proved to be.
Fortunately, everything was back on by the time for me to go on the air with my radio show. Three until five, very busy.
ML went out with friends. MA and I had enough lunch not to need dinner. We thought we'd go to a movie, than decided to stay home for the same purpose. But there was something wrong with the U-Verse feed. Of all nights! My eyes were so tired from working on the 500-dish project that I looked forward to falling asleep intermittently through the kind of movie MA likes to watch.
She went to bed early, and I messed with the TV to get it going again. Wound up chatting online with one of AT&T's men in India about what to do. He fiddled with the thing from afar, but concluded that a service call was needed. Must have been that thunderstorm.
In closing our chat, I asked him what he was having for supper: dosa, vindaloo, or lamb rogan josht. "Butter chicken and naan!" he wrote back. "Have you ever been to India?" Not yet, I said, but I love the food.
You always get a pleased reaction from other people when you talk about good eating.
New Orleans Food & Spirits. Covington: 208 Lee Lane. 985-875-0432.
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.
