A Tasty Tradition

I don’t really know a lot about the Silver Whistle Cafe, but I do remember Tom speaking highly of it from his days hanging around the hotel with Albert Aschaffenberg, the most visible member of the family that owned it for generations. The Silver Whistle Cafe and The Pontchartrain Hotel itself were well-entrenched in the local color of the city, particularly of the Uptown culture.

Tom was not from Uptown but he was a man-about-town for a long time, and he had history there. We had our first date at the Pontchartrain Hotel when Tom was a regular at the Martin Wine Cellar wine tastings in the late 1980s.

Just mentioning the place sparked some conversations with tales from that era that Tom could remember, and articulate. These conversations sparked great memories. So it behooved us to get to the hotel to see how it was circa 2023.

The Silver Whistle is a small place right off the lobby entrance. It is styled like it was through the 20th century. Terrazzo floors that have not been touched, tables from the 1940s, and decorative metal tiles under the bar. The ceiling is the most interesting thing about the place. I can see why it is a ‘thing.”

We started with a menu item that is as famous as the place itself. The blueberry muffin is also a legend at The Silver Whistle. We had to have one. I couldn’t imagine why a blueberry muffin would be a “thing” here or anywhere. And then I tried it.

The Silver Whistle signature blueberry muffin is first of all very large. It is covered in streusel crumble. I cut this large thing open and was immediately struck by how many blueberries were in it. Loaded. I was then struck by its cloudlike texture. This was the softest and most moist muffin I have ever encountered. It was light and fluffy, with an assertive citrus flavor of lemon, punctuated by blueberries. Sublime, and I am not a muffin person.

I ordered a double espresso for Tom and he seemed to have trouble drinking, and I mean from lack of interest. I have never seen Tom dawdle over espresso before. When we arrived at the end of the meal I encouraged him to take the last two sips and he announced that it was terrible. I asked for a Café au lait, which is what I should have ordered for him from the beginning. This was The Pontchartrain Hotel’s Silver Whistle after all. Then I happened to see that all the coffee is French Truck now, which befits the new management, but not Tom the New Orleans traditionalist. We took the Café au lait in a to-go cup, where it was still sitting on the kitchen counter the following morning.

I ordered a New Orleans Breakfast, or an American breakfast, which I get for breakfast anywhere I go: two eggs, etc. etc. This one came with wheat or white toast, grits instead of potatoes, and bacon. The only choice was in the toast. The eggs were done exactly as I requested, the bacon was of good quality but greasy, and the toast perfect, but these grits…

Grits have become a point of great interest to me in this age of up-the-ante. I have often said I prefer the grits of yesteryear, which should be creamy, and basic, leaving it up to the beholder as to how much salt and butter is needed to enhance them.

Creamy grits using actual cream and cheese grits using often weird cheese, and any other chef-inspired enhancements to grits annoy me. The Silver Whistle was sort of a hybrid. They definitely were new-fangled stone ground grits, and they definitely did have some chef-inspired enhancements, but these upgrades did not fundamentally change the goodness of the grits and they did not annoy me. Neither did they excite me enough to finish them. They arrived on the plate in the middle as a self-contained scoop.

I ordered a waffle for Tom, which did not arrive for some time. As an afterthought, I ordered the waitress’s recommendation, a very 21st-century breakfast sandwich called the Broken Yolk, which lived up to its name by dripping yolk over the other ingredients. These ingredients were predictably bacon and cheese, but the chef upgrades were a very assertive cheddar and garlic aioli. To me, this did not work at all. The strong garlic flavor and assertive cheese did not belong on a breakfast sandwich in a place that closes for the day at 11am. Too early!

After a bite or two, I passed this to Tom while he waited for his mysteriously absent waffle. He agreed with my opinion of the sandwich by not eating it. I pulled the aioli and cheese off and it became a nice sandwich.

Finally, the waffle showed up and there was clearly a glitch in the kitchen. This was not some jack-up waffle that took extra time to prepare. It was an everyday generic waffle with a few berries for garnish and barely a pinch of powdered sugar. This waffle looked and tasted like something straight out of the Silver Whistle’s heydey, the early to mid-twentieth century. I wondered why this lowly waffle was neglected in the tweaking of this place represented by the breakfast sandwich and the French Truck Coffee.

The Silver Whistle is a charming little blast from the past in decor. We sat at a two-top by a window where sunlight streamed in through shoots of a plant on a windowsill. Service was definitely Southern-style friendly, even though clearly none of the waitresses were original, as evidenced by their ages.

I’m glad we finally made it to The Silver Whistle Cafe. I don’t need to go again, but certainly wouldn’t mind if I am in the neighborhood. And that blueberry muffin is definitely worth dropping in to pick up. There is nothing else like it.