Saturday, May 19, 2012.
N'Tini's Breakfast. More Baseball. Dinner At Orlando's.
Mary Ann planned to spend most of the day across the lake. But she feels guilt about depriving me of consort at meals. She agreed to accompany me at breakfast--as long as it could be at N'Tini's. She's trying to sell some advertising. To her great pleasure, owner Mark Benfatti wanted to buy it.
He sat with us for a good while, talking about his daughter's post-Katrina life in the Northeast, and how he's trying to get her to move back to the New Orleans area. I'm not sure whether he was kidding, but it was all so funny that I decided to write a screenplay suggested by a synthesis of his tales and ours. (Mark lost not one but two homes in the storm. "I had three feet of water in my house in Chalmette," he says. "On the second floor!")
The first time we tried N'Tini's for breakfast was the first day it was open for that meal. That was unintentional. Mark had people waving signs at passing vehicles to herd them in. (He still does.)
That breakfast was just okay. Today's was much better. Mary Ann got one of her grossly overcooked omelettes stuffed with vegetables. For me, a titanic flour tortilla stuffed with eggs, cheese, and hot sausage, with pico de gallo over the top. Half of it was all I could manage. (Maybe if they served it in a bigger plate I would have had more.)
Mary Ann spent the afternoon at a performance of her grown-up nieces' dance company. They allowed her to set up a table to sell her Suzie Homemaker book. Images of hundreds sold dance in her head. She bought new clothes for the occasion. One thing I like about this book is that it has improved her wardrobe, which is always in great need of enhancement.
For the second consecutive day, a baseball game (in extra innings, yet) got in the way of my radio show. I didn't get on until quarter to four, by which time I'd usually be long gone from the air. Instead, it went on till six. But I learned something important while there: the late-starting crawfish season is ending early, with shells already getting thick and the mudbugs earning their nickname by digging into the soft earth.
Once again I am alone at dinnertime. This is when I try new places. The Marys like new restaurants, but only when they find them themselves. If the idea comes from me--or, worse, from a radio listener--they are disdainful.
A lot of people have reported good news about Orlando's Seafood, the last building on LA 22 heading west out of Madisonville. It was a more pleasant space than I expected, with high ceilings and decorations made out of the likes of old crab traps and shrimp nets.
First the soup of the day--shrimp and crab. Rustic, pretty good, Second course: a half-dozen grilled oysters in the universal style of Drago. Nice and plump, although the seasoning and butter sauce were much less assertive than the original version.
The meal peaked with a pile of thin catfish fillets, coated in cornmeal and fried right before they appeared. It was in a league with the leaders in the catfish derby, and surpassed most of them. Good potato salad, too.
The gap in the fried-seafood-house category on the North Shore has been closed in the last couple of years. First we got Mandina's, then Camellia Café, K-Gee's and Shuck 'n' Jive, and now Orlando's.
Orlando's. Madisonville: 304 Highway 22 W. 985-845-4446.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
