Saturday, May 5, 2012.
Friends Coastal.
A welcome low-key day began with solo breakfast at Camellia Café in Abita Springs. Mary Ann was off most of the day delivering her Suzie Homemaker Chronicles books to the local bookstores, but she probably wouldn't have joined me anyway. My menu was prosaic: scrambled eggs, bacon, wheat toast. But very good at that. I wonder why this place isn't full for breakfast on the weekends.
Starting at noon, an hour and forty-five minutes on the radio. No new ground broken. They can't all be gems.
Dinner at Friends Coastal Restaurant, an exceedingly popular eatery on the west bank of the Tchefuncte River in Madisonville. Not long after we moved to the North Shore in 1990, a woman we met at a party raved about it to us. We went, and found it distressing. We went again a couple of years later, when the kids were old enough to get a kick out of the deck next to the water and the big boats coming and going in the adjacent marina. The badness of the food overcame even our dedication to making every moment of our children's lives fun. We've been back maybe a half-dozen times since then, usually at the invitations of friends. New owners a few years ago made Friends' menu more ambitious, but the place never pushed onto our A-list, even though Mary Ann likes few things better than dining on a dock.
We thought Friends was due for another try. I never give up on a restaurant. We had to wait a few minutes for an outdoor table, but we expected that. A big storm grew in the east, dumping its rain back at home but not here. It did, however, create a cool breeze off the river.
We began with Caribbean rum punch, initially served in a go-cup. The waitress seemed apologetic about that, and fetched a re-usable plastic cup when I objected. Then came an order of the worst guacamole either of us could remember--green mush, with the texture of mashed potatoes. Even the chips were awful.
Fortunately, that bad start didn't carry on into the next course, a thick, creamy soup of chicken, corn, and something smoky (bacon? sausage?). Mary Ann very much liked this, and I thought it was okay, too.
My entree was a black bean salad topped with grilled tuna. The beans, interspersed with tomato nubbins and cilantro leaves, was pretty good. The tuna was substantially overcooked but edible, but only a minute on the grill away from becoming tough. Mary Ann made an entree out of crab claws served with what tasted like barbecue shrimp sauce--and a tasty one, at that. It overwhelmed the delicacy of the crabmeat, but it had me dunking French bread into it.
A fine, custardy bread pudding for dessert. We lingered to listen to a singer accompanying himself on the keyboards. His repertoire was extensive, even though he stuck mostly with pop music. Although I'm not as enthusiastic about it as MA is, I have a taste for this whole scene, and the evening was more pleasant than any previous.
But then, suddenly, we both reached critical mass in another feeling we shared: that the cleanup regime here isn't assiduous enough for our sensibilities. The tables on the deck are topped with a grill-like wire screen. I couldn't bring myself to setting my fork and knife down on it. We both changed clothes as soon as we got home.
And then we both got back to work on our never-ending projects.
Friends Coastal Restaurant. Madisonville: 407 St Tammany. 985-845-7303.
