Saturday, December 19, 2009. Queasy. Mandina's Thai Spice. The Marys And The Saints. I think I will have to give up potent cocktails on an empty stomach. I think they're the cause of a very disturbing kind of dyspepsia that I experience after big meals that start with the likes of a martini or a Sazerac. It happened last night, disturbing my sleep. The late-night espresso didn't help. At least I know what causes it.
The Saints have stolen my Saturday radio show. A pair of two-hour standard sports talk shows hosted by the second string of WWL airmen (I am in the third string) has pushed my Food Show off the Saturday schedule. Nobody so much as told me. Hmph! But I'm used to being pre-empted this time of year. Still, this might be a good time to stop doing that show. It began after Katrina, when I did weekends for a couple of months before resuming my long-running weekday gig on 1350. But I kept on doing two or three hours on Saturdays. I viewed it as payback for the two months after the hurricane, during which the radio station kept me on full pay for doing nothing. But I've paid back all those hours four times over. If my kids were younger (and still around, in Jude's case), I would have given up the Saturdays long ago.
And this is a rare weekend with both kids in the house. But the Saints stole something else from me: my family. Mary Ann has decided that she will go to the Saints game at the Superdome tonight. Mary Leigh has wanted to attend a Saints game for a few years, and even has a Scott Fujita jersey (I bought it for her two Christmases ago).
But wait: Saints on Saturday? Yes, this week, because the game is on Thursday Night Football. I steadfastly refuse to consider that conundrum for another second, and instead shift the focus back to the girls, who left in mid-afternoon to begin the festivities with a tailgate party organized by Tommy Cvitanovich. Tommy bought an antique fire engine and retooled it to include a grill for those fabulous Drago's char-broiled oysters and everything else.
The Marys and Jude hung around there with the rest of the Who Is That? Nation until MA set out on one of her famous last-minute quests. She had no tickets for the game. She interviewed numerous scalpers before devolving her six hundred dollars on a guy she later described as "really, really skanky." What she liked about him is that he was willing to walk to the gate, turn over two of the tickets, and wait until they were accepted before she paid him. "There was a policeman there, but he just looked the other way," she said. He must have had Saints fever.
Jude, however, came to his senses and decide that other entertainments were preferable to watching a football game with a mob. He came back to the North Shore around seven-thirty, with dinner on his mind. Boy after my own heart. We'd already had lunch together this day, at Mandina's in Mandeville.
We played that meal by the book. I started with turtle soup and followed with redfish amandine. The latter was as beautiful a serving of that dish as I've ever seen at either Mandina's, where it's considered a major specialty. But once again my fork hand bypassed my brain and I started eating before I thought to take a picture of it. It's amazing how often that happens. It proves that the pleasure of eating is disconnected from rational thought. That effect worked on Jude, too. He ate a pile of chicken parmigiana and pasta without thinking to let me have a taste.
When he came back, Jude was interested in trying Thai Spice, one of the two excellent Thai cafes across Causeway Boulevard from one another in Covington. He'd been to Thai Thai (on the east side) before, and wanted to compare it with establishment on the west. Pot stickers to start. Thai garlic chicken (left) for him; he ate everything except the mushrooms. For me, Thai ginger with beef (right), a new dish for me but not a new idea. I still recall a Chinese-style ginger beef in from thirty-seven years ago at Gin's Mee Hong in the French Quarter. It was the first spicy Chinese dish I'd ever eaten, and alerted me to the possibilities.
The Marys returned at around eleven. Mary Leigh went right to bed. Mary Ann told me that the Saints lost. But, really, how could they have won a Thursday Night Football game on a Saturday? She also said the experience was terrible, because of the sleaziness of the people around them. But what could she expect from tickets bought from a sleazy seller?
"Ask Mary Leigh tomorrow to tell you about the guy right behind us who smoked cigarettes with one hand and banged on a loose vent panel with the other," Mary Ann said. "He did that non-stop through the whole game."
And people think I'm weird for never having gone to Saints game!
Mandina’s. Mandeville: 4300 La. 22 985-674-9883. Neighborhood Café.
Thai Spice. Covington: 1531 US 190 985-809-6483. Thai.
