Saturday, December 3, 2011.
Pitot House. Glorious Oysters, Sorry Catfish. Fighting With Tigers At Barnes & Noble.
A busy weekend for book signings. By the end of it, I'd autographed somewhere in the neighborhood of 425 copies of Lost Restaurants Of New Orleans. Too band Peggy Scott Laborde had to be in New York and missed the excitement.
The Pitot House is the former home of New Orleans's first mayor, on Bayou St. John. It's a museum now, and holds a holiday market every year. The assortment of goods on sales leaned in the artsy and antique directions. Heading to the table where I'd be working (if you can call signing one's name dozens of times and talking with a lot of pleasant people working), I was stopped by one of the vendors.
"I know you like fountain pens," he said. "I hear you talking about them all the time. Look at these!"
I looked. The decorated parts were made by hand, using unusual woods. This sent my feelers to twitching. Was this the guy from whom Mary Ann bought a fountain pen in Covington a year ago? I hoped he was. She paid $300 for the thing, but it had no filler and was therefore useless for writing, despite its undeniable handsomeness.
"No, I'm not," the man said. "But if I had been I wouldn't have charged you anything like $300. Tell you what. You give me a copy of your Lost Restaurants book, and I'll give you. . . this pen." A beauty. I opened it up and saw a filler duly installed. Deal. I gave him a copy of Hungry Town to boot. In return, he gave me an extra filler for the dry pen at home.
After my tenancy of the book-signing table ended, Kit Wohl showed up to take my place. Kit is one of my Five Hundred People*. Our paths began crossing during my days with Figaro in the 1970s. She and her husband Billy hosted me for many a Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mary Ann and I had our wedding reception in their house. And now Kit is writing cookbooks, one after another. She's about to come out with one full of the best recipes from James Beard Award winners.
Lunchtime. I was thinking Galatoire's, but I've been there enough lately. On the other hand, I haven't been to the Bourbon House in quite some time.
En route there, I ran into Webb Williams, fellow writer and frequent radio show caller. (He's another of my Five Hundred People. He even used to come to our house for kid parties back when we were both in that stage.) Webb was on his way to Galatoire's himself. I thought about joining him and his wife there, but knew I'd have to duck out early.
The Bourbon House was busy for two in the afternoon on a Saturday. I collected a Christmas bell at the front door. All the Brennan family restaurants give out bells on ribbons during the holiday season. Even after all the years they've done so, I still don't have a complete collection. I do have one from Bacco, whose closing early this year may make its bell more valuable.
Started with red bean and andouille soup, served with a floating rice cake. The idea of the latter is more interesting than good, but the soup itself was beyond reproach. More restaurants ought to serve red bean soup.
Next, baked oysters 2-2-2. By tradition, two of those twos are Rockefeller and Bienville, while the third pair is a unique creation of the house. Here it's called Fonseca, a bright orange-yellow concoction whose dominant flavor is richness. Delicious.
What came next was disappointing. The Bourbon House has always had excellent fried seafood--indeed, Mary Ann, who loves seafood platters, says they're the best in town. But the catfish were covered with a bulky, overseasoned batter. The fish was effectively camouflaged both in look an flavor.
The fried seafood restaurants of our town, with very few exceptions, continue to stick with frozen French fries. Dickie Brennan has broken from that standard at the Bourbon House with fresh-cut potatoes. The bad news is that these were slender and overcooked (I suspected double-fried) to make what Mary Ann derides as not fries but "sticks." So the whole platter was a failure. Even the tartar sauce (which I had to ask for) was substandard. I know that the Bourbon House cooks many thing better than fried platters, but I must cover those once in awhile. I wish I'd picked a better day.
I didn't need dessert, but I got one anyway. White chocolate bread pudding. Why would anyone serve just a little bread pudding?
I had some time on my hands after lunch, so went over to Galatoire's to check on Webb. He was still there with about a dozen friends. At a table next to theirs, a lady spotted me and became starstruck. I feel terrible when that happens. I am not enough of a celeb to waste such emotions on.
It came out that her son was a classmate of Jude's at Jesuit. I asked whether he still knew the alma mater. He did. We sang it together, and got a round of applause from the room.
Even with that stop, I was early arriving at Barnes & Noble in Harvey. This has always been one of the best stores for sales of autographed copies of my books. When the cookbook came out, I sold over 300 of them in two hours, with a line reaching to the back of the store--still an all-time record.
That magic battled with and lost to the undefeated LSU Tigers, who were playing football during my visit to the store. When the Saints or the Tigers are on the field, every consumer business in New Orleans dies. It's a wonder restaurants and stores haven't raised more hell about this. But what can possibly be done about it?
I left for home after dark, and routed myself across the Huey P. Long Bridge. First time I've crossed it since the new superstructure was put into place. The roadway is still the same 1920s-narrow pair of lines that I was dumb enough to traverse on a bicycle when I was fourteen.
*Tom's Theory Of New Orleans Society states that only 500 people live here. Each of them plays so many roles that you run into the same people again and again, where in other towns you'd encounter different people.
Bourbon House. French Quarter: 144 Bourbon. 504-522-0111.
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.
