Saturday, November 19, 2011.
Sam's Isn't My Kind Of Club. Nine Roses.
Peggy and I disposed of the final two Sam's Club book signings today, with one in Kenner and another in Harvey. Of this I am now positive: Sam's is not an especially good place for us to sell books. We went through about twenty at each location--the smallest sales at any of our signings. Most people took a look at our sign and kept walking, showing not a glimmer of recognition. A few people didn't know us but came over anyway, because we were hard to avoid. I watched the familiar body language:
1. Person picks up book and begins flipping through the pages at a speed too rapid for anything in it to actually register.
2. Person says, "This is a nice book."
3. The page-turning begins to slow, and nodding commences.
4. Authors say a few things about the book, to fill the expanding silence. At this point we know that the person will not buy the book. However, the person doesn't know how to exit without embarrassing us, so he continues to stand there, turning pages ever more slowly.
5. I create a distraction, during which the person puts the book down, says thank you, and escapes.
Peggy had not planned to join me at Sam's in Harvey, but it worked out well for her to do so if I would drive here there and then back into town. It even gave us time for lunch.
Since we were headed for the West Bank, two ideas for the noon meal came up: Da Wabbit, and one of the Vietnamese places. I was distressed to see Da Wabbit closed for lunch on Saturdays. Peggy, who had never seen the place, had to get out and take pictures of the wonderful sign outside.
To Hoa Hong 9 (Roses), not far away. I think it's the best Vietnamese restaurant in New Orleans, with a long track record of goodness and the most varied menu of any restaurant of any ethnicity.
Peggy is only slightly conversant with Vietnamese menus. We agreed to eschew the pho--you can get that anywhere, and it's not all that exciting to begin with. I suggested one of the most exotic and interesting of Vietnamese dishes: beef fondued in vinegar. We ratcheted the order up to include squid and shrimp in the mix.
It's a fun and delicious dish. The server brings a pan of light stock with a good deal of vinegar in it, kept steaming hot over a Sterno burner. Also on the table are bowls of the usual greens and herbs, cool but cooked noodles, a plate of thinly-sliced beef (it looks like round to me), and a stack of rice paper, which in their dried state resemble thin discs of plastic. You soak them in a bowl of hot water to make wrappers for all the other ingredients.
As always in Vietnamese restaurants, there's no definitive way of assembling all this: you just eat it any way you want, with squirts of hoisin, Sriracha, soy, and fish sauces.
The pile of food was so large I didn't think we'd eat it all. But we did. The nicest surprise was how good the broth was as a soup when we were finished running all that beef, onion, and vegetables through the pan. A terrific lunch.
Then to Sam's in Harvey, which if anything was even slacker than the one in Kenner as regards our book, although the place was very busy otherwise. It's designed for customers who care more about price than the next three or four other considerations, although people are always telling me about some beef or fish or something they bought here.
I dropped Peggy off at the radio station, where her husband Errol met her. Errol drives a Crown Victoria. That's as perfect a car for him as a PT Cruiser is for me. That's what Peggy said.
I went upstairs to the radio studio and got to work on the twenty or so commercials I had to record before I could leave town. It took about three hours, although I worked in a fifteen-minute nap in the middle of the effort.
I wasn't really hungry, but I stopped off at Impastato's anyway. Mr. Joe wasn't there, which took away my main motivation for going. A minor motivation was to drop off my copy of "Frank: The Voice," an autobiography of Sinatra. I told singer Roy Picou--a Sinatra fan like me--that I would lend him the tome.
Hoa Hong 9 (Nine Roses). Gretna: 1100 Stephens. 504-366-7665.
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.
