Saturday, May 15. Books At Octavia--In The Rain. Snails And Pizza At Ciro's Cote Sud. Yesterday, British Petroleum stuck a pipe with a rubber collar around it into the biggest break in its well riser. The riser has been spouting oil for nearly a month, and they said that this new thing would suck most of it up and bring it to the surface to be collected on tankers. But even though the this new gadget pulled up five thousand barrels a day, on the underwater camera it looks as if just as much oil is billowing out into the water as before. This means that, all along, more oil was coming out than estimated. (Pessimistic observers have been saying this for a while now.)
Meanwhile, amazingly, as the oil spreads over more of the Gulf Of Mexico just past the mouth of the Mississippi River, there is no shortage of seafood in New Orleans restaurants. In fact, two large East Bank oyster beds that were closed a couple of weeks ago are back open. The inspection and tracking programs for seafood are so strict that it's extremely unlikely any contaminated seafood is getting into the supply.
In other parts of the country, though, seafood prices are going up more than they are here. The oil disaster is being used as a pretext. But most of the country doesn't get much seafood (aside from shrimp) from here! The sellers are just taking advantage of panic. Sort of like what the stock market does when it here any bad news at all, no matter how unrelated it is to the market itself.
Why are we all so edgy? I think it's because most of us don't have anything real to worry about. Maybe there's a minimum daily requirement of problems needed for the human brain. If we can't find a problem, we make one up. I tell myself how dumb that is, but I can't quite escape worrying.
I don't have to worry about the sales of my book. I had a signing today at Octavia Books, and even though the afternoon was shut down several times by heavy rainstorms, a good number of people came by and bought copies of Hungry Town. The first was my buddy Dr. Bob DeBellevue. He was one of my groomsmen when MA and I were married, and has shared his amazing cellar of Australian wines over the years. I would have been happy to give him a few copies of the book for nothing, but he insisted on buying. He also brought something I never heard of: Louisiana olive oil. He got it from Chef John Folse, who found some old olive trees on one of his properties.
I am atoning for not making Octavia the location of the first signing this time by bringing food. My first idea--one I backed away from because it was peculiar and untested--was pizza bread pudding. I'd make a bread pudding the usual way, but without any of the sweet ingredients. A sweet roasted garlic puree would go into the egg-and-milk mixture. I'd layer the bread with tomatoes, herbs, capicola ham, and cheese. No sauce on top, but perhaps some mozzarella. I think this would be good, but I don't want to look stupid for paying customers.
So I gave them a more conventional bread pudding instead. It did have an innovation: the custard was the one I use for a cheesecake, but with a fourth less less cream cheese. Also in there was a the zest of six small oranges. It was in the oven while I was doing the radio show, and I let it bake about ten minutes too long. It was drier than I was hoping for, but tasted good. Cheesecake bread pudding? I don't think anyone's done that before.
After all the books were signed and the bookstore closed, I had to wait out yet another cloudburst. I made a run for it too soon. En route to the car, even with an umbrella, I got pretty wet. But I was hungry, and I drove around with the air conditioner and heater on together for about fifteen minutes. That dried my clothes enough to look respectable when I got to Ciro's Cote Sud.
Ciro's Cote Sud is a restaurant I've not really tried. I used to eat pizza at the original Ciro's in the 1970s, when it was one of the best pizzerias around. Then it fell off my radar. It closed a little while, then was taken over by some French guys who turned it into a classic bistro. They kept the pizza, though. It doesn't seem to go with the rest of the menu, but somehow it works.
Its presence made for a peculiar dinner tonight. I started with escargots bourguignonne. The standard version, sizzling in butter, garlic, and herbs. A lot of garlic. Loved it.
Then a pizza? Yes. I was in the mood. Basic cheese, but with more than the typical amount of garlic in the sauce. Once again, right up my alley. The crust was the way I like it, too. Thin crusty, crisp at he bottom, bready and yeasty at the top. Although the price is around $10, the pie was big enough for two. I took half of it home.
I can now tell you that eating creme brulee after two garlic-dominant dishes may not allow the vanilla to fully express itself.
Cote Sud ("South Coast") has an unmistakable French ambience, along the lines of La Crepe Nanou and Café Degas. A hallmark of French restaurants (in France) is that they expect customers to go along with the house rules. They're much less amenable to customer requests to alter dishes from the way they are on the menu. Americans don't like that idea, and we don't see it often in the French restaurants here--although we once did. Gerard Crozier banned ketchup from his restaurant. Claude Aubert at Arnaud's wouldn't put crabmeat on fish until Archie Casbarian printed a new menu including that dish.
I've seen only one such issue at Cote Sud: their ridiculous cash-or-check-only policy. It makes no sense from a business viewpoint. I would have ordered another course and another glass of wine, but I had come to the end of my cash in hand. Restaurant acceptance of credit cards is so close to universal that a no-cards restaurant is about like a restaurant with no bathrooms or no napkins. If the smallest, brand-new Asian restaurants can figure out how to take all major credit cards (and they all do), why can't these guys take even one? Whenever I see this, only one explanation comes to mind, and it makes me even less happy about it.
I can't say tonight's dinner wasn't delightful, though.
Ciro’s Cote Sud. Riverbend: 7918 Maple. 504-866-9551. Pizza. Mediterranean. French.
