Saturday, May 22. The Oil Thing. Maple Street Books. Ciro's Cote Sud For Mussels. The BP oil spill in the Gulf is deep, in more ways than one. Some people are very much worried. I'm worried too, but more mildly. Since I am frequently asked for my opinion on the matter (both by individuals and news organizations), I formulated one. It is not the same as the one most often heard. Indeed, it carries the risk of making me seem like a fool. But it's where my hunches point. I believe that by Thanksgiving, we will be wondering what we were so worried about.
This is not to say that the situation is less than a disaster. We'll clean up beaches and marshes for years, yes. And (we hope) we will change the way deep-water drilling is regulated. And people who believe that being angry makes them sound smart will throw blame around ad nauseam.
But those are for others to discuss. My focus is on the native seafood. I think we will have it all back, more or less as it was before the spill, by Thanksgiving. Including oysters. Without exception, people tell me, "I hope you're right!" I hope so, too. I'm no more sure about this than they are. But someone has to emphasize the positive here. My prediction is well within the realm of possibility, and I really do think it's the likeliest outcome.
Diane Newman, the operations director of the radio station and my boss, ordered me to include interviews with experts about the oil spill on my show today. Harlan Pearce--chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Marketing Board--was on. And Tenney Flynn, the chef of GW Fins, a restaurant that is a major user of first-class local seafood. Both spoke of virtually no interruption of seafood supplies, and only spot increases in prices.
Tommy Cvitanovich from Drago's had the most downbeat thoughts. "We're experimenting with char-broiled mussels," he said. "I see the shutdown of all the oyster beds as a possibility. And I don't want to buy oysters from Apalachicola Bay or Texas. If I can't have Louisiana oysters, I won't have oysters!" Strong words from a restaurateur whose star attraction is oysters. But holding to principles is what that family is all about.
After the show, I crossed the lake for a book signing at Maple Street Books. The good old independent shop has been fighting the stupids (to quote their slogan) for decades. They were serving Sazeracs to would-be buyers. The lady who owns the new Maple Street Patisserie a block away brought an assortment of cannoli, petits fours, and fruit tarts. I've been hearing a lot of good things about this place, and now I understand why.
We didn't sell an enormous number of books compared with the signings at the big suburban stores, but that's what I figured would happen. Although you can find almost anything you'd want there, Maple Street is to bookselling what a little corner cafe is to the restaurant world. It has its regulars, and that's mostly it. But they couldn't have been more helpful.
After the signing, Mary Ann agreed to join me for dinner at Ciro's Cote Sud. I continue gathering information for a long-overdue review. I was there early enough to get one of the two tables in the windows up front, the prime seats. I ordered a plate of pates and saucisson. Mary Ann usually likes such things, but wasn't wild about this very French charcuterie. On the plate was a coarse pork and duck country pate and a mousse of what I think was chicken liver. The saucisson--it looks but doesn't taste like a well-made salami--was also good with a little mustard and cornichons.
While I finished off that plate, Mary Ann indulged in a nice little vol-au-vent of crawfish in a delicious, pretty sauce. The patty shell (the local name for vol-au-vent) blew onto the top
of a few leaves of salad. She said it looked better than it tasted, but I think she was expecting spicy crawfish, and the French don't really cook them that way. This was more like Nantua style.
I knew when I walked in here I was having mussels for an entree. Last time, I was intrigued by the several sauces available for the bivalves, particularly the one described as "curry." This, I thought, might be mussels mouclade, with a cream sauce thickened with a bit of egg and curry spices. The owner said he'd have to look up that word, and that there was no egg in this one. The sauce was exactly what I was hoping for: rich, spicy, full of the flavor of the mussels. Some three dozen of them were in the bowl, nice and plump.
Mary Ann's entree was a slab of grilled salmon with wild rice pilaf and a butter sauce with spinach--or was that sorrel? (The latter would have been really good.) It made her happy enough.
Dessert: poire Belle Helene. Can't say I've ever had it this way, with the wine-poached pear cut into slices and intermingled with ice cream and a little chocolate. But it was tasty enough.
To pay for the meal, I had to dig out the $100 bill I always carry in my wallet for emergencies. This wasn't an emergency, just a fantastic inconvenience. They don't take credit cards here, a problem about which I've already written. Maybe they enforce that to keep the crowds down. The food here is in the top ranks among French bistros locally.
Ciro’s Cote Sud. Riverbend: 7918 Maple. 504-866-9551. Pizza. French.
