Saturday, January 29, 2011.
Are Eggs Sardou Made With Spin-Dip? Pizza Man.
Breakfast with Mary Ann at Mattina Bella. She said she wanted nothing to eat--still obsessed with the weight-loss matter--but she said that if I ordered the special that came with pancakes, she'd eat the pancakes. In other words, you don't gain weight from eating pancakes as long as someone else orders them.
The main part of my breakfast was eggs Sardou. Mattina Bella makes those with a minor variation. Instead of resting the eggs and creamed spinach on artichoke bottoms, they add artichoke hearts to the creamed spinach, and spoon that over English muffins. Mary Ann noted that this amounted to eggs on spinach-artichoke dip. That's a dish I regularly decry as the marker of a chain restaurant. (I believe there is a pipeline of artichoke-spinach dip that delivers the stuff to thousands of chain dinnerhouses. How else to explain its ubiquity?)
Well, the eggs and the pancakes were as good as ever. Vincent Riccobono, the owner, offered me a sample of a new chicory coffee he was considering installing. I'm all for that. Almost no restaurants serve chicory anymore, even though lots of Orleanians drink it. I know his regular coffee is French Market, but he told me it wasn't from them. The server brought it with a pitcher of warm milk. It was very good. So who made it? The coffee-roasting arm of PJ's, that's who. Wow. Phyllis Jordan's brain must be buzzing. She almost never served chicory at PJ's when she still ran it, a fact with which I challenged her every time I saw her.
Our server--one of Vincent's daughters, all of whom are lovely--was her usual smiling, ultra-helpful self. Her running back and forth with the chicory coffee, the hot milk, and the magic pancakes made me leave a ten-dollar tip on a twenty-dollar check. After I did this, this thought crossed my mind: how big a tip can you leave a good-looking waitress before she thinks you're hitting on her? (That wasn't remotely a motivation in this case, just a random mental jump.) I asked Mary Ann what she thought. She laughed. "I don't think you have to worry that any woman will ever think you're hitting on her." I still don't quite know what she meant by that.
Mary Leigh crossed the pond to visit and spend the night with us at the Cool Water Ranch. Well, that's nice of her, I thought. Then I found out the motivation. She came with an enormous load of laundry, which she knew Mary Ann would wash for her. That left her free to snuggle up on the sofa and watch endless episodes of "Friends." Mary Ann lets her get away with that, just to have her presence with us for awhile.
Dinner at Pizza Man. Quite a lot of new pizzerias have opened in Covington in recent times, including one a block away from Paul Schrem's 1974-vintage shop. Still, his place was nearly full. Good old Pizza Man. His son was running the kitchen, performing the same antics for the kids that his dad always did--throwing flour at the window, making faces on the pizzas with the sauce. "I think my son is trying to ease me out of the business," Paul said. "In fact, I'm going home in a few minutes. Nothing really for me to do." (It was only about eight.)
The usual order for us: Italian salad with anchovies, and a Board pizza. That's made with olive oil instead of red sauce, plus spicy capicola ham, garlic, artichokes, fresh spinach, feta, mozzarella, and herbs. Wait--artichokes and spinach? That's how I started this day of eating, wasn't it?
Good old Pizza Man!
Pizza Man.
Covington: 1248 Collins Blvd (US 190). 985-892-9874.
