Saturday, March 6. Business Breakfast. First Taste Of Stone's Bistro. Mary Ann told me upon awakening that we needed to have a business meeting to make changes in the web site. We are the classic equal partners of production and sales, each one trying to adjust the other's performance to make his or her own easier or better.
I knew she was serious today, because she said we would have this meeting over breakfast. This means that in the fifteen minutes or so it takes to drive from the Cool Water Ranch to the Courtyard Café, we would rehash all the old arguments about how my lack of ambitiousness and insistence on doing everything myself is keeping the project from making millions. All I have to come back with is soft-peddled ways (which she sees right through) of saying that she's unrealistic and greedy. Programming and ad sales have bitched this way to one another in every episode of my thirty-eight years of working in the media.
But we actually got something done. She thought that some new ideas I'm working on are, for once, in the right direction. But she still thinks I ought to hire a webmaster. I do too, but I don't know how to pay for such a person, whose main effect would be to shorten my work week from eighty or so hours to sixty, without much change in the website.
I had a good breakfast. MA didn't eat. Her diet is an obsession, and it's having the effect the diets usually have on people. Namely, that you don't lose weight nearly as fast as you'd like, and you get testy. Mix that with her campaign to bring down the communists she believes have taken over the government, and it's hard for a light mood to emerge.
On the brighter side, the waitress and the chef I'm used to seeing at the Courtyard--missing last week--were back again. The scrambled eggs were creamy, the biscuits were not overbaked, the brabant potatoes (they're not what I would call hash browns) were spicy. I was nourished enough to push through the three-and-a-half-hour radio show that started at noon and ate most of my afternoon.
Since our family dinner was canceled last night, we went for it tonight--even though Mary Leigh was, as has been her habit every weekend lately, spending the night across the lake with friends. Major party tonight. A rave, she called it. What makes a rave different from another party? She couldn't quite explain it. Mostly, I suspect, because she didn't think I'd understand what teenagers think is fun. The teenage part of my soul--which is very much alive--felt a pang of the same rejection it did when my body was also in its teens, and I never seemed to be doing what everyone else was.
Stone's Bistro took over the space where Christiano's served steaks and Italian food for a bit over a year. That restaurant closed some eight months ago, and Stone's--an existing catering outfit--moved in quietly in October. I had little trouble persuading Mary Ann that we should try it. She likes a drive en route to dinner, often a much longer one than this. And she likes the building, whose dining rooms overlook a lagoon and a golf course.
Stone's parking lot was full. They had a valet, but Mary Ann doesn't like valets. (Something about having a stranger's hands on the wheel, and then touching it afterwards.) We parked in the lot of an adjacent law office (we weren't the only ones). Inside, the hostess told us that we were just in time to get the last available table. It offered a view of what was left of the sunset. When that flickered out, we found ourselves on the other side of a window from two guys who had what looked like accounting books spread out on their table. If the glass had not been there, I could have reached over and patted one of them on the back without stretching. I couldn't do that to my wife, here at my own table.
The menu is a list of the greatest hits of other restaurants, interspersed with Creole standards. I find such a menu appetizing. I like to see dishes that inspire a clear taste image to emerge in my mind, even when the dish is something completely new. If everything is familiar, that happens even easier.
A helpful, friendly waitress was free with her opinions about the menu. I don't think her tastes are the same as mine, but I still like to hear what a person who looks at this food all the time (and witnesses customer responses to it) really thinks.
We started with oysters with Brie, a variation on Clancy's appetizer but without the spinach, but with a dousing of a great peppery sauce over the top of fried oysters on which little wedges of Brie were melted. If it had been me, I would have used less cheese, but that didn't stop me from gobbling these things right down. (I got them in lieu of the other oyster appetizer. Which was, of course, in the style of Drago's.)
Mary Ann was completely thrilled by a trio of artichoke bottoms topped with a ball of crabmeat, shrimp, a bit of breading, and what looked like a little hollandaise. This is her kind of dish, except for the portion size. I helped alleviate that problem for her.
We followed that great start with a wedge salad with blue cheese. It was two wedges, actually, all fresh and crisp down to the garnish of red onion. I think the blue cheese dressing could have used a little more zip (strangely, this could probably have been accomplished by adding a little water to it). Mary Ann loved the look of one of the day's three (!) soups. It was a chicken soup with spinach, with an Italian aspect. But the chicken didn't seem to be part if it, just sitting there, and a little dry, at that. An odd quality for something in a broth to have.
Things picked up again in the entree course. Mine was a sextet of large scallops, seared nicely on both sides, moist and bulging, everything I was hoping for. But more, because the garnish was exceptionally good. It was a risotto with corn and truffle oil, topped with fried crisp onions. A tremendous dish, and a steal at $19. Mary Ann's barbecue shrimp were only slightly less good. Big shrimp came out in a thick, emulsified sauce that could have had more pepper (for my tastes, a lot more). It also had a tinge of sweetness that I can't say I like. (Caramelized onion or garlic?) Heads-on shrimp would have made this better, too. But MA was happy, so I'm happy.
A creme brulee ended the meal. (I'm tempted to use a generic photo of creme brulee every time I get it, which is often. The photos all look exactly the same. Say! That would make an interesting display.)
The prices here caught my attention. There's a sixteen-ounce sirloin strip here for $20. What? I asked the manager whether that were a mistake. Unless it's cheap beef (and I see no signs of cheap food here), the food cost percentage on that must be astronomical. The whole menu is like that. The scallop dish I would expect to come in at well over $20 almost anywhere else.
So we have a new contender for best restaurant in Slidell. The people running it seem to know what they're doing, and the skills of the service staff we encountered was far above the North Shore average.
Stone's Bistro. Slidell: 300 Oak Harbor Blvd. 985-643-7211.
