Saturday, June 12. Radio Audience Sick Of Topic A. Creole Tomatoes In The Rain. Stone's Bistro. WWL Radio has been filling its talk shows with oil-spill news and opinion for the long duration of the disaster, as well it should. But for the past few days a lot of listeners have been telling me they're sick of hearing about it. This reminded me of something Alex Gifford told me when I interviewed him for a profile I wrote of him in New Orleans Magazine in the late 1970s. Alec was a television anchorman in New Orleans for decades. At the time he was riding high at Channel Eight. He gave me his philosophy of news, the salient points of which were:
1. "News is what went wrong in the world today."
2. "The news stories I hate most are developments on developments. The latest micro-details on a story that hasn't quite ended yet."
Important as the BP oil disaster is, we are very definitely in its developments-on-developments stage. Which is why I only brought it up in passing during today's radio show.
That was the second item on my agenda today. The first was a two-hour book signing at Barnes and Noble in Covington. It was only about a month ago that I had my first signing there. But we sold about as many today as then.
I struck out toward downtown after that session, did the show from the WWL studio for a change, and nearly had my ears blown out a few times by the loudness of the commercials in my headphones. (The perception that commercials are louder than programming is not an illusion.)
After the show I battled through the rain to the French Market, where I was due to take part in a panel discussion of Creole tomatoes, Creole food, and Creole people. The Creole Tomato Festival is going on, and although the Market had been thoroughly hosed down by the thunderstorm, no small number of people were wandering around, listening to music from the adjacent Zydeco Festival, eating food from the Seafood Festival (all three go on at once), and watching the cooking demos for the Tomato Fest.
I'm glad it rained, in a way, because it swelled the audience for the seminar, which was indoors. We had the usual discord as to the real meaning of "Creole," but we all agreed that Creole food embodies a paradox. While there are many ways to make most Creole dishes, even if you have all the right ingredients and techniques, a person who hasn't eaten it much has almost zero chance of creating that elusive Creole flavor.
The emcee was attorney and local-culture scholar Ned Hemard. He was a year ahead of me at Jesuit, but he and I were often on the same Airport bus on our way home. His nickname then was "Nougat," for reasons I've never known. He was surprised when I called him that.
When I was dismissed from the Creole Tomato Festival, I called Mary Ann to see if she could be wooed to an early dinner. She could, if I didn't mind waiting a half-hour or so for her at Stone's Bistro. That's a Slidell restaurant we tried and liked a great deal a few months ago. I needed to investigate it further. She likes the premises--its many windows overlook a golf course and lagoons in Oak Harbor.
I fetched up at the bar and bided my time with a Manhattan. Two questions attend the ordering of that beverage (or should):
1. Up or on the rocks? I say up.
2. Which bourbon would you like? I say rye, but I may give that up soon. Nobody has anything but that very ordinary Old Overholt--even though there's now a much better Sazerac rye out there. (Rye is an essential ingredient in a Sazerac cocktail.)
I have moved from martinis to Manhattans in recent times. It's a mellow drink: bourbon or rye, shaken with ice, a splash of sweet vermouth and a dash of Angostura bitters, and served with a cherry. I enjoyed one while watching the two televisions behind the handsome bar. Neither one of them--mirabile dictu!--were tuned to sports. News all the way, with the sound off and the words crawling up the screen. Main item: developments on developments in the oil spill.
MA arrived at around six-thirty, and we moved to a window table on the sunny side. These people have covered the windows well enough that one doesn't roast, the way one did when this was Christiano's. On the other hand, the table was set with the utensils wrapped in a paper napkin. This is much too nice a place not to have linen. Had they run out? I don't remember this from last time.
We started with a big crab cake and some artichoke bottoms stuffed with a seafood dressing. The latter was the better; the crab cake would have been better described as a stuffed crab, without the shell. I also noted something that would bother me more later: these crab lumps were unnaturally large.
Entrees were a grilled salmon with a balsamic reduction and black pepper for Mary Ann, and grilled redfish with a crabmeat for me. I asked them to substitute some vegetables and orzo pasta for the standard mashed potatoes. (I don't know who first thought that fish and mash are a good match, but everybody's doing it, and I wish they weren't.) Also scattered about the plate were those massive lumps of crabmeat. They had none of the flavor of our local crabs. The whole plate lacked zing, I thought.
Things came up a bit in the dessert course, in which I had a bread pudding while Mary Ann looked on. We agreed that this wasn't as good as the first pass through here. But Chef Ryan Stone was in the building, and the service staff was helpful and efficient. Bad night? (Stone's is also in the catering business.) Wrong items ordered? Don't know. We'll come back another day, because the restaurant itself is very pleasant.
Stone's Bistro. Slidell: 300 Oak Harbor Blvd . 985-643-7211. Contemporary Creole. Seafood.
