Saturday, July 10. Testy Breakfasts. Fun And Good Eats In Bay St. Louis. I don't know why Mary Ann and I keep going to breakfast together on Saturdays. Every week, a political argument breaks out, and we wind up being mad at each other the rest of the day.
The breakfast itself was good enough. It was our third time in five weeks at the Toad Hollow, the New-Agey café in old Covington. We must like it. Mary Ann had her usual overcooked eggs and the house's excellent multi-grain toast (she ordered the former to get the latter). I tried the breakfast burrito, filled with scrambled eggs, salsa, beans, sour cream, and turkey bacon. Now I know what I had just assumed: turkey bacon is to real bacon as graham crackers are to lost bread. I suppose they have a good reason for not having pork products on the menu here, but I always miss it.
I was on the radio from noon till three, took a fifteen-minute nap, then struck out for Bay St. Louis. I was invited by Bay Books, a small independent bookstore on Main Street, to meet their customers and sell them a book or two.
Bay St. Louis looked great. It was ground zero for Katrina, with the kinds of winds and tides that rip highways right out of the ground and blow buildings clean away. Many lots are still empty. But the streets and sidewalks were built anew, and if there was unrepaired damage to the structures lining them I didn't notice it.
Almost from the moment I sat down, a continuous stream of people advanced to my table for my cookbook, Hungry Town, or both. The two hours hadn't quite elapsed when the store was sold out of two cases of each.
The people on the Gulf Coast are unique. Open and friendly, they want to know all about you and seem genuinely grateful that you're walking their streets. I'd use the expression "Southern hospitality" if I weren't afraid of stepping in a cliche. Many of them are writers themselves--as quite a few told me. (I bought a book from one of them.)
Adding to the camaraderie was Art Walk, a monthly festival in downtown Bay St. Louis. The stores, cafes, and bars all enter party mode. You couldn't walk a block without encountering at least two instances of live music. Kay Gough, the owner of the bookstore, told me that Art Walk has become so much a part of the fabric of the town that they even held it the month after Katrina. "All we had was a card table, a bottle of whiskey, and a stack of cups, but we were here!" she said.
Many (perhaps most) of the people were curious to know where I might be dining this evening. When I said I wasn't sure, they began ladling the advice. Bay St. Louis's restaurants are not all back, but the major ones are.
Many of my new friends touted the Sycamore House. I've heard good things about it for years. It's a pair of ante-bellum cottages pulled together into one structure in the 1850s. It evolved into a boarding house over the years, until such things became extinct. Chefs Stella LeGardeur and Michael Eastham--Culinary Institute of America grads and a couple--took over in 2002. There is no sycamore tree. The place is named for the house in England where Michael's grandmother lived. The dining spaces are slightly maze-like. A screen porch covers two sides.
The Sycamore House is one of the growing number of otherwise formal, non-Italian restaurants that also serve pizza. We saw many people leaving the place with boxes. I'm glad they did. We got the last table--a deuce wedged between the fireplace and the passageway used by the waiters to serve the room beyond. This is the worst table in the house, I hope. But the alternative was worse. After we sat down, we heard murmurings about a half-hour wait for dinner.
We began with cocktails and duck liver pate, nicely presented and livery enough, but tasting if not a particle of salt had been used. (And there was no salt or pepper shaker to be had.) Good thing some crackers and Creole mustard were there to add some tang.
Now a new idea to me: the flauta du jour. Goat cheese, spinach, and roasted red peppers, rolled up and fried inside a corn tortilla. ("Flauta"="flute" in Spanish--but wait. Shouldn't that have made it flauta al dia? Never mind.) Good stuff. Also here was tuna poke--the Hawaiian tossed salad of raw tuna, dressed with a spicy marinade. That's always welcome at my table.
I was impressed by the number of fish the kitchen had available, and particularly that one of them was tripletail--a.k.a. blackfish, a species seen only in restaurants that put unusual effort into shopping for raw materials. They "meuniered" it, to use the expression I once heard a chef use. Mary Ann ate most of that, and thought it pretty good. Before me was a sirloin strip steak with bordelaise sauce; no complaints here.
I was trying to stay under the radar, but the restaurant was filled with people who, a couple hours earlier, had asked me to sign a book for them. They tipped off the owner. On the way out, he said that his kitchen had been slammed, as it always is on Art Walk night. He said we should come back on a calmer evening. I certainly will, and hope I bring my camera next time. (These terrible pictures were made with my cellphone.)
We really ought to spend a week around here. My knowledge of the restaurants on the Gulf Coast is abysmal. I need a vacation anyway. I suggested to Mary Ann that we check into a hotel and spend at least a long weekend, or maybe a week. "I can't believe after all these years you wouldn't know that would be the most boring thing in the world for me," she said.
"I thought you liked the beach," I said.
"I do like the beach. But not this beach. And that was when the kids were younger. Mary Leigh would only want to go to the beach with a bunch of her friends. She'd sit around watching TV all day if she were with us."
This is a problem, being married to someone whose tastes in vacation have diverged so far from one's own. And become so ambitious. Mary Ann has talked me into an Eat Club trip to Paris and London for New Year's Eve, followed by a transatlantic trip home aboard the Cunard Queen Victoria. I love the idea, but have no idea how to pay for both that and this year's astronomical tuitions. (Contrary to widely-held belief, we do not travel free on these adventures.)
I know that women's minds are made that way, so their men will be pushed to greater heights than they might otherwise achieve. Ask for the impossible, and get the best possible, I guess. But, boy, I'd like to have a week in which I don't have to work eighty hours.
Sycamore House. Bay St. Louis: 210 Main St. 228-469-0107.
