Saturday, September 25. Looking Over The Food At The Lake. Mary Ann said, after she decided to go to the Lake House for dinner, that I should beware of large increases in the amount we spend on dining out, now that Mary Leigh is not around to steer us to less-expensive places. She might have something there.
I don't know if the Lake House was more expensive than my idea would have been (Nuvolari's, where a new chef must be checked out), but it's worth the money as far as I'm concerned. She and I must get into dating mode again. We haven't done much of that in the twenty-two years since our first date. Almost one year to the day after that evening, we had our first child. We have related to one another primarily as parent to parent since then. Now that our youngest is out of the house, we need a new paradigm. She says she is ready to put some effort into that. Sounds good to me.
My wife is an atmosphere junkie when it comes the restaurants. A beautiful environment with great service pretty much takes care of it for her. All the kitchen has to do is turn out edible food, and she's entirely happy. With one exception, surroundings don't make or break a restaurant for me. The exception: noisy places, which I find myself tolerating less and less as I get older.
She likes the Lake House, and its view of the Mandeville lakefront. The bar and the balcony were full when we arrived, but a table in the second-floor dining room was available. In fact, all of them up there were.
Bad news--at least as far as my getting up a review of the place is concerned. Chef Marvin Tweedy is hors de combat with knee surgery, and will be for some time. The menu looked much the same as last time we were here a few months ago, but I couldn't recall what I ordered then. Turned out that this was almost entirely a new menu, with dishes a lot like those on the old card, but different enough.
First came an amuse-bouche of barbecue shrimp. This is the third time I've had it, and each time I'm impressed by the polish they give this dish. Maybe it's getting only one of them that makes them seem more refined than the ones on the big bowl. A seared sea scallop followed that, meaning I would get two of them: mine and Mary Ann's. (I don't know why she or anyone else wouldn't like scallops of this quality. Maybe their first experiences involved the nasty little fried ones at Red Lobster.)
We both picked at a salad made in the style of a Cobb salad, but with one big step down. Instead of blue cheese, shredded Cheddar made a strip down the middle. Shredded cheddar cheese is right up there with bacon as the most overused garnish in the restaurant world. (This salad also had a lot of bacon, but that's part of Bob Cobb's classic recipe.)
Seared redfish with a brown butter and toasted almonds, though. Now that's a study in harmony. I studied it only briefly before digging in and finding that it was as good as it looked. (It was such a dark brown that overcooking was suspected, but no.) And then there was that layer of corn macque choux underneath, adding further flavor and texture contrasts. Great dish.
Mary Ann, claiming fullness, doubled up on the crab cake appetizer. They were crab balls, really. She was unimpressed. But happy to be, because it kept her from wiping out the dish.
I had two Manhattans in the early part of the dinner. I am trying to determine the perfect whiskey for this drink. I've given up on the classic rye, because so few bars have any good rye. (Old Overholt doesn't cut it. Why isn't Sazerac Rye more widely available?) So now I'm going through bourbons. Jack Daniel's is all right. Old Grand-Dad is not bad, but I wince at ordering something with a name like that--hits too close to home. Tonight I made it Jim Beam. I think that's the best yet.
The Lake House's owner Cayman Sinclair seemed as high on life as ever. He said he's walked away from the LA Grill, which has had a mysterious pattern of opening and closing since the hurricane. It used to be very popular. I never did like it much.
Lake House. Mandeville: 2025 Lakeshore Dr. 985-626-3006.
