Sunday, February 26, 2012.
The Pleasures Of The Routine. Asian Oysters Return.
Mary Ann continues to be very nice to me. I know this is primarily because tomorrow she leaves town to visit Jude in L.A. And because I have been helping her with some details of her book, which is in the last stages of design. But I don't question happiness when it comes my way.
Lunch at Zea. Readers of this department must get sick of seeing that again. I mentioned this to Mary Ann as we were deciding where to go. "There's no reason you have to do everything for work reasons," she said. Indeed. Zea sounded good to me, for reasons explained below. So let's just enjoy.
Zea has activated its annual seafood menu. For the most part, it's a separate card listing all their regular seafood offerings, to make the point to Lent-observant diners that there's more to the place than rotisserie chicken, hamburgers, and ribs.
It does, however, include a few things not available the rest of the year. The best of those is the Asian sesame oysters. It's a simple dish, really: cornmeal-coated fried oysters, scattered with sesame seeds and green onions, atop enough raw cabbage to lift it out of the sweet-heat sauce underneath. This is a strong candidate for Best Fried Oyster Dish In Town. I mean up there with Antoine's oysters Foch, Clancy's oysters with brie, and Chef Duke's oysters Giovanni. They only serve the dish when oysters are big and meaty--as they are now. Ten of them for $15 makes a filling entree, needing only a salad to be ordered to complete the meal.
Or, perhaps, a bowl of oyster-artichoke soup. Rich, creamy, and--for once--hot. I wonder if someone at Zea read my complaint that their soups never come out hot. The fix is easy: heat the bowl. Which they did.
Mary Ann had a spinach salad and fried catfish. She immediately began beating up on herself for eating the latter. I took some of the pressure off by removing the hush puppies to my plate.
In mid-meal, MA left the table for a few minutes. Alone with my thoughts and with nothing to make me anxious, I found myself immersed in The Moment. Zea, on a Sunday afternoon. How many times have MA and I been here then. It started two years ago as a place for her to watch the Saints games before we got cable. After the season ended, we kept coming. Not every week, but more often than anywhere else. It's relaxing and satisfying.
Just the two of us. It's like the Saturday breakfasts I had with Jude, then with Jude and Mary Leigh, then with Mary Leigh when they were little. The regularity of it made us happy. Gave us something to look forward to every week, and joy while it was happening. I was sad to see it stop, even though I knew it would.
Maybe this Zea Sunday lunch is the new version of that, with Mary Ann. Why not? We only have each other, after all.
I related this reverie to MA when she returned. "I feel the same way," she said. "This is nice." She paused. I expected her to move on to another topic.
"For some reason I'm liking you again," she said.
