Saturday, January 15, 2011. Mande's. The Baton Rouge Fiasco. Fleming's. Mary Ann and I had breakfast at Mande's. Her idea, and a good one. Mande's reopened only a few months ago for the first time since Katrina. It's amazing that their regular customers were still eager to come back. Or maybe not so amazing. A career strategy I've considered (but not had to use yet) is to disappear for a few years, and then come back. Seems like every entity that does this profits from it.
Mande's is a handsomely built space near the lakefront on Causeway Boulevard. It first appeared as a neighborhood-style café in the mid-1970s. After a few meals there back then, I wrote it off as not very good. But it evolved over the years into a major breakfast café, and that's gained for it a large regular clientele. I can't remember the last time they served dinner.
The restaurant took a serious hit from both Katrina and Rita (the latter did more flood damage to Mandeville than the windier former). But it looks good now, with tall ceilings and loft-style windows. The menu is straightforward, with only about a quarter of the selections offered by the other Mandeville breakfast powerhouse (The Broken Egg).
The dish that intrigued me was the Cajun Benedict--made with crawfish sausage patties in place of the usual ham. I saw that they had hot sausage available, and asked to have that swapped out for the crawfish. No problem, said the pleasant waitress, without giving the matter a second thought.
The sausage was hot indeed. Hot, and very thick--maybe housemade, but at the very least hand-pattied. It was a bit too much to finish, in fact. A good hollandaise went over the deftly-poached eggs. Great potatoes--cubes, grilled to crusty dark brown on one or two sides.
Mary Ann was less lucky. She had pancakes whose mediocrity was obvious just by looking at them. Mattina Bella--whose pancakes are the best I know in the entire New Orleans area--have us spoiled. Also sub-optimal were the biscuits, which were large, bready and dry.
Still, I can't say this wasn't a pleasant breakfast, and it's nice to have yet another hurricane-closed restaurant back among the living.
My Saturday radio show on WWL returned today for the first time in a couple of months. Football games wreak havoc on that show. I'm glad to have it back, because it's a good source of new listeners for my weekday show. And because I needed to boost the numbers for Andrea's Eat Club dinner this week, which has not been a rousing success, even though the menu looks great to me.
During the show, Mary Ann had an idea for fun. It was familiar. "Let's go to Baton Rouge for dinner," she said. "I need to swap out some shoes." She goes to Baton Rouge for shoes?
The restaurant she had in mind was Ruffino's, where we had a spectacular dinner from the hand of chef and co-owner Peter Sclafani III last winter. It would not be repeated tonight. When I called for a reservation, I heard those words all would-be diners dread: "We have five-thirty, then nine-forty-five." We'd never make it for the former, and we might not make it home if we took the latter.
"Did you tell them who you were?" said Mary Ann. "I'm sure they'd give you a table after all the publicity you give them." Probably, but I don't play that game unless it's an emergency or on behalf of someone else.
"Well, then, how about Galatoire's?" I was hoping she'd say that. The last time we had dinner at Galatoire's Bistro in Baton Rouge was over two years ago. I remember its being very pleasant, even romantic. The reservation was made for what we estimated our time of arrival would be, and we launched toward Baton Rouge.
Galatoire's is a double hook shot from the North Shore. You come in on I-12, then hook back towards New Orleans on I-10. You stay with it for about seven miles. Mary Ann inevitably tells me we've gone too far--we must have missed the exit. Then I point at the restaurant, we make the exit, and hook back.
And indeed I saw the building. But it was dark. Looking for it on Perkins Road, we drove right past it. It was nearly invisible in a cloak of darkness. A bunch of cooks were hanging out near their cars. "The power went out three hours ago!" they said. "We're closed for the night." Three hours? How could that be? It was only an hour and a half ago that we made the reservation!
Now we were in Baton Rouge on a Saturday night with no reservations. Mary Ann insisted that this was an emergency, and I ought to pull rank at Ruffino's. She is persuasive. A large parking lot jammed with cars fronted Ruffino's. While she parked, I went inside to hear the hostess tell the person at the front of a five-person line that the wait would be at least two hours. Around the large bar, standees were three deep. No way am I going to ask to be jammed ahead of this mob. We left.
Mary Ann's next idea was Fleming's Steakhouse. She said she knew where it was, in a shopping mall full of upscale chain restaurants. But she didn't exactly know how to get there from here. She wanted me to look it up on her iPhone, but my fingertips are too big to punch in words accurately in a moving car. Her frustration rose. I kept my mouth shut and let her drive. Baton Rouge is largely terra incognita to me.
In the meantime, I called the restaurant using good old 411. I was told that the current wait for tables was an hour and forty-five minutes. After driving in circles of a half hour or so, we found it, entered, and learned that this was no exaggeration.
But Mary Ann had a plan. She said I should grab a spot in the bar. Maybe they would let us eat there. Trouble was, you couldn't physically get into the bar, whose stools, tables, and standing room were tightly full. The only open water was in a spot where one had to move back and forth to allow the servers access.
Even though we were clearly in the way, a cheerful waitress came by, took our drink order, and told us not to worry. She also said that the dozen or two formally-dressed people in the bar all were off to the same ball, and that they would be departing en masse within the half-hour. This indeed happened, and we soon found ourselves sitting at a bar table. The spot was less comfortable than the tables in the dining room--no tablecloths, for example--but it was a lot better than standing around for an hour.
This waitress continued to take good care of us. She was full of opinions (both pro and con, which is essential) about the food. She thought Mary Ann's interest in the crab wraps--dumplings, sort of--was reasonable. But she brightened up visibly when I asked about the mushroom ravioli. "That's my favorite appetizer, and something I think people ought to order more often."
Music to my ears. And these things were indeed delicious, made with wild mushrooms, a buttery sauce, and slivers of Parmigiana. Almost impossibly good for something so simple. Mary Ann's tidbits were also good, filled with tomatoes, avocados and crabmeat--local crabmeat. "The chef asked the corporate guys if we could use local crabmeat and shrimp, because the people around here know the difference," said the waitress. "They let us do it. In fact, they let the chef develop some new dishes with local product, and that's something they don't let any other Fleming's location do."
Maybe it's because Paul Fleming is from around here. Fleming, whose first big restaurant was the pseudo-Chinese P.F. Chang's, is from down on the bayou--Franklin, Louisiana. "Paul Fleming is out of it now," this well-informed young woman let me know.
My confidence fortified by all this, I ordered the chef's special: a blackened strip sirloin, topped with grilled shrimp, served with a foie gras butter. The steak was decent (but just), the shrimp were uninteresting, and the sauce displayed no gustatory or visual evidence of foie gras. Still, it was pretty good until the memorable price was figured in: $52.
Mary Ann continued her skimpy eating habit with an appetizer of crab cakes (rear of photo, above) in lieu of an entree. She said these were delicious, and once again we were looking at local lump crabmeat. In the midst of all this was a combo plate of mammoth fried onion rings and fresh-cut fries. We thought these were very good, even though our preference is for thin-cut rings.
Dessert was solid: a great creme brulee with berries for me, and a gooey-rich turtle pie for MA. She liked it. But she never eats dessert! Well, she was never predictable.
Except perhaps in her soft spot for well-run chain restaurants. "If you compared that meal with any stand-alone restaurant," she said, "it would definitely hold its own. I thought that was a great meal." My perspective on chain is jaundiced, but I couldn't argue with that. I'd also say that this one, using local ingredients and ideas, was a lot better than the Fleming's across the street from Jude's old apartment in Los Angeles.
Fleming's. Baton Rouge: 7321 Corporate Blvd. 225-925-2710.
