Saturday, February 2, 2013.
Red Bean Omelette. RocketFire Pizza.
I don't know what the groundhog indicated this morning, but if he's looking for winter he won't find it here. It's chilly at night, but on my daily mile-and-a-half walk around the ranch, I am fine in a T-shirt.
Mary Ann joined me for breakfast at the Camellia Café. I was in the mood for a red bean omelette. The man who runs the place-who I don't remember meeting before--came to the table and confirmed something that a waitress told me months ago: that they put the red bean omelette on the menu because my talking about it made the odd-sounding but wonderful dish a mini-phenom. I didn't invent it, though. That honor goes to the Coffee Pot on St. Peter Street, a decades ago.
Mary Ann announced that she will spend all of Super Sunday tomorrow at the Hyatt Regency Hotel's Vitascope Bar, the closest watering hole to the Superdome. She spent a lot of today rounding up friends to join her, and I think she may have found one. She told me that I was unwelcome to spoil, with my anti-sports attitude, this reverie of college days or whatever it is.
She did take time out of disdaining me to have dinner. We almost went to the Acme, but the restaurant was packed. I guess The Chimes isn't hurting them as much as I would have suspected. We moved on to the RocketFire Pizza place, where they bake pizza on a coal (!) fire on the west bank of the Abita River. We like the place and the people, but they're still working through new-restaurant issues. I discovered, for example, that the bartender doesn't understand the concept of the Manhattan.
We started with a dozen of their baked oysters. They amount to spinach-artichoke dip spooned atop the oyster in its shell, then sprinkled with bread crumbs and a walk through the coal oven. A better idea than it sounds. A little too rich, though. I will only have six at a time from now on.
The pizza was roasted chicken with pesto. Another good idea, even though it's far from having anything like the classic pizza taste. (No tomatoes, but I knew that going in.)
Camellia Cafe. Abita Springs: 69455 LA 59. 985-809-6313.
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