Saturday, January 10, 2009.
Breakfast Is Back For One Week Only. Annadele Plantation.
It's just Mary Leigh and me here for the next few days. She has no plans, and neither do I. She surprised me by rousing herself around nine-thirty instead of a Saturday's usual eleven. And again by wanting to have breakfast with me. Just a week after our farewell to that weekly practice of ours!
Not only that, but she wanted to return to the Abita Café, which has not received much of our business since Mary Leigh discovered the excellence of the pancakes at Mattina Bella. It was just like old times. (Old times are defined as six months ago.) And, in a nostalgic touch, I still can't get the cooks there to put the meat inside the omelette instead of on top of it--although it's well enough made that this is a quibble.
We returned, I did two hours of radio on WWL, and we went back out again for some shopping. (I'm pulling out all the heavy artillery to keep my daughter amused.) She told me she needed an iPod dock, but I was pleased to see that she couldn't bring herself to ask me for the $100 for it. (She had a big Christmas. Was it two weeks ago already? How time flies.) We both bought underwear from the menswear department at Target. She said that girls are now wearing a lot of boys' briefs, because they're more comfortable. Come to think of it, Mary Ann has been wearing my pants for years.
Back home, we each fiddled with our own projects until dinnertime. I persuaded her to join me at Annadele Plantation, where neither of us have been on quite awhile. (I think she was with me last time, in fact.) We met the unexpected. First, the restaurant was nearly full. Second, a live pianist was in the bar, playing my kind of music. Mary Leigh groaned. She knew that meant Dad would go in there and attempt to sing at some point.
Even with that hanging over her head, she and I had a marvelous evening. She grabbed my camera and took a bunch of artsy photos of spoons, asparagus spears, the old chunk of wrought-iron fence hanging on the brick wall next to us, and me. I took pictures of her, and looking at them later I saw a girl who looked as if she were out on a date--and not one with her dad, either. She's just lovely.
I started with a savory cheesecake with grilled shrimp; she with a blue cheese salad. (They didn't have a wedge.) She ordered her default fancy-restaurant dish: a filet mignon. She said it was wonderful. Certainly looked that way. I had the combination of grilled lamb chops and quail, an echo of the first days of this era at Annadele. Pat Gallagher was chef-owner then, and the lamb-quail combination was one of his specialties. The chops were beautiful American lamb, well-trimmed and crusty here and there, the bearnaise rich and aromatic. The quails (two of them!) were plenty good enough, but it takes a lot from a quail to excite me. Besides, there was too much food here. 
They had the kind of dessert my daughter loves. I don't think I have this quite right, but it was something like a flourless chocolate cake with a molten chocolate interior, with shaved chocolate over the top, all set in chocolate soup. I had bread pudding, just to flesh out my knowledge base. You know.
A thunderstorm came from nowhere while we dined, forcing all later arrivals to make a run for it under umbrellas. It was about finished when we left, but about fifteen degrees cooler. It went up to at least eighty degrees today. We had the air conditioning running in the house last night. But that warm spell is now over.
Annadele’s Plantation. Covington: 71495 Chestnut. 985-809-7669. Contemporary Creole.
