Saturday, March 10, 2012.
Lost Restaurants Dinner Number Two.
A routine Saturday for the first half of the day. No invitation from Mary Ann for breakfast, so I went alone to The Fat Spoon. I asked them to make the same omelette I loved so much a few weeks ago at the Camellia Café. They didn't carry it off as well. The difference was the Spoon's fried potato cubes. The Camellia used skillet potatoes, moister and more buttery. You always ask for trouble if you expect one restaurant to cook the same way as another. The omelette was decent anyway, if a bit filling.
A two-hour radio show went on and off with ease. Paul McIlhenny--the chairman of Tabasco--called to disagree with my stand on muffulettas. (I say they should be served at room temperature; he says they're better heated.) We also discussed frying potatoes in rendered bear fat, which he says he does every chance he gets. I'll remember that if I see a bear coming out of our woods. With ursine numbers increasing, I expect to see that someday. So many of our neighbors discharge guns that I shouldn't have to worry about having to kill the beast.
Dan and Kathy Scott occasionally invite us to have dinner with them in the private Beau Chene Country Club. When the Lost Restaurants book came out, Dan--who is always full of ideas--said that he'd talk to the management about having a dinner of dishes from the book. Since Beau Chene's chef Hosie Bourgeois is an alumnus of Crozier's, we would certainly have the dish from there.
This was an even bigger dinner than the similar one last night in Thibodaux. When we arrived, the bar was jammed with people, of whom a majority wanted to tell or ask me something. I spent most of the evening moving from one table to another in this pursuit.
Except for one dish, Chef Hosie chose a different menu than the Nicholls chefs did yesterday. We began with Joe's hot shrimp from the extinct La Cuisine in Lakeview. Great with cocktails, that. Next was a trio of oysters Roland, from the founding chef at Christian's. Chef Roland served his in a casserole, but even using oyster shells instead, Chef Hosie nailed the flavor.
Then a ramekin of LeRuth's famous crabmeat St. Francis, a dish that seems impervious to screw-ups. Wonderful, with a little salad tossed with Chef Warren Leruth's avocado dressing.
The entree was trout Lafreniere from Elmwood Plantation. It was interesting to see how different Chef Hosie's version was from the one cooked last night by the John Folse Culinary Institute. A comparison between the work of a seasoned chef and that of students is unfair. But it was interesting how close both dishes were to the original, while different from one another. Neither re-creator knew the original dish, and had nothing to go on but the recipe I wrote.
I'm just thankful that neither kitchen wanted to use Masson's almond torte for dessert. If I ever see that again, it will be too soon. But everybody else seems to love it.
I could have sold and autographed a hundred Lost Restaurants books tonight. Instead, I sold about twenty copies of Hungry Town. One must stand by one's guns.
