Saturday, June 19. Toad Hollow's Breakfast. Hammond. Tope La. Mary Ann and I tried Toad Hollow for the first time this morning. It's the little restaurant (bigger than it looks) where Del Porto started out before it moved to the end of the block a few years ago. A few days ago, a radio callistener mentioned that he had a terrific breakfast at Toad Hollow. I didn't know they served it, and we're always looking for new options for that meal.
We knew we'd like it from the moment we entered. It was quiet, bright, nicely decorated. The staff was welcoming. And the menu made clear that they pay attention to the fine points. It wasn't the standard collection of breakfast dishes. For starters, there are no pork or beef products anywhere on the menu. This means no ham, sausage or bacon (unless you count chicken-apple sausage and turkey bacon as acceptable substitutes, which I don't). The tradeoff was that a number of Latin American breakfasts could be had, and the bread for toast came from an artisanal bakery (the server didn't know the source, only that it came from the South Shore.
The juice was squeezed from fresh oranges. The coffee--a Mexican blend--was exquisitely good. Coming from a lifelong chicory drinker like me, this is high praise for a pure coffee. we were off to a great start.
I had the better of the two entrees: huevos rancheros. I was asked to specify how I wanted my eggs, a question I've never been asked in association with this dish. Sunny side up, I guess. What came from that request was beautiful. Flour tortilla against the plate. Spicy black beans atop that, with cheese and pico de gallo next, then the eggs, then some extra pico. The flavor was clean and good, the beans were firm, the cheese was melted just enough.
Mary Ann specified an overdone omelette with cheese and peppers inside, and got it exactly that way. I liked her toast, and wanted some of my own--and then saw that the French toast looked good, and asked for that as a dessert--and an excuse to keep getting more of that good coffee. The French toast was a shade soft--it would have been better with one slice of thicker bread instead of two thin ones--but it made me happy enough.
That lingering breakfast almost made me late for getting on the air with the WWL edition of my radio show. The station persists with its all-oil-spill, all-the-time theme on its local programs, but they've given up on getting me to talk about that. Although the spill has inflicted serious damage on our seafood supply, only two or three callers even mentioned it. People need a break.
On the other hand, much local media is cashing in on the advertising for a wave of attorneys looking to institute suits against BP. A lot of people whose lives were sludged over will get payoffs that may be much larger than they might have earned during the rest of their lives if all had gone well. The Obama Administration already has persuaded BP to set aside a $20 billion fund to fix the mess. That will give quite a boost to the local economy. The environmental cost of the boost is obviously too high. But the worst cost may be the perpetuation of the psychically impoverishing idea that the best thing that could happen to a person is for some wealthy entity to hurt him. People who hope they slip and fall in Wal-Mart so they can get a big settlement, for example.
That's what was running through my mind while I drove to Hammond for another book signing. I was an hour late. I got lost. The Books-A-Million listed in the Yellow Pages online was no longer there. I was supposed to be in a new store in a new mall I didn't know of. The only good thing to come of this blunder was that eleven people were waiting to have me sign copies of Hungry Town. And that none of them--nor the nice people running the store--were upset. We sold a couple dozen books, and would have sold many more if they had more than two copies of my cookbook. I've got to tell the bookstores to stock up on both books for when I come over.
Mary Ann met me in Hammond for our first dinner at Tope La. It's a bigger and more mainstream place than I supposed. The main dining room, with its rows of booths, resembles a Houston's or Zea or Copeland's. The menu, on the other hand, had a distinctly local flavor. Except, of course, for the presence of spinach-artichoke dip and tilapia as the default fish.
The tilapia lowered my hopes. But then the server advised us of three other fish, all local, in the day's specials. The two of those we ordered were even better than they sounded. Seared lemonfish, served with bearnaise sauce and green beans, was just to my taste. Mary Ann thought the redfish stuffed with crawfish and sauced with artichokes and mushrooms (below) sounded good. What came out was folded around the stuffing, breaded, and panneed. She said it reminded her of fish sticks--and then admitted to liking fish sticks.
We started with a crabmeat and artichoke soup that I will remember only by reading this, and a shrimp cheesecake that needed to go on a diet. It was too big (it would have been enough for a table of four), and the filling was much too dense. The cream cheese component overwhelmed everything, including the shrimp. Its being ice-cold was no bonus.
But then we had those good entrees and a slice of light, well-made bread pudding with bananas Foster sauce, and all was forgiven. The pleasant but inexperienced waitress was able to tell us that "tope la" means "hands touching." So my wife and I touched hands. Then we went home in two separate cars, I by way of the old highway, US 190, whose span between Hammond and Covington I like for some reason.
Along the road it occurred to me that today I dined for the first time in two different restaurants. That almost never happens unless I'm out of town. Is Hammond out of town?
Toad Hollow Cafe. Covington: 207 N New Hampshire. 985-893-8711. Neighborhood Cafe.
Tope La. Hammond: 104 N Cate St. 985-345-9494. Contemporary Creole.
