Sunday, June 5, 2011.
One Hundred Fifty Percent. Sesame Inn.
The weekly newspaper Gambit came out with one of its two annual restaurant sections this week. It listed 704 restaurants, each with a paragraph and mentions of a few dishes they serve. It took eleven writers to do it, but that's still impressive! No ratings, of course--Gambit has never rated restaurants. This implies that all 704 are equally good. I'm glad someone else does this sort of thing, because I always find a few restaurants in it that I didn't know existed.
I spent the day going through all that and updating my database with the new-found eateries, after first verifying the addresses, phones and websites. (I don't use their comments or dish recommendations, of course; I only research reviews first-hand.) When I was finished, I had added about fifteen restaurants to my New Orleans Restaurant Index, bringing the total to 1205. That's just shy of 150 percent of the number of restaurants open before Katrina.
A blind spot in my coverage turned up in Gambit's list. The Marigny and Bywater sections have been adding quite a few new restaurants. Many of these are primarily bars, but looking at their online menus persuaded me that they had significant food operations. I have to start visiting some of these places.
Mary Ann said she would consent to having a restaurant dinner today, but only if it were at Sesame Inn. That sounded good to me. On the way, it occurred to me that we have an open Eat Club Wednesday next week. This would be a good place to have one of our dinners. The kitchen is quite creative. Every time I dine here, I eat something I never had before, usually by ordering one of the two specials.
We had both of those today. One was a fried soft-shell crab in a brown sauce with vegetables. The other was a spicy shrimp concoction with cabbage and a different brown sauce. Both the crab and the shrimp were big and fresh. (Steve, the owner, told me that for him there's only a short season when soft-shells are up to his standards.)
We wrapped up with a rarity: a Chinese dessert. They don't really eat dessert in China, which makes for one of the major differences between the ways we and they eat. When the last batch of savory courses is eaten in China, not only does the meal end abruptly, but everybody gets up and leaves without ceremony of any kind. Friends who have been to Chinese banquets all say this is rather surprising. But today we had a plate with orange sherbet, lychee nuts, pineapple, and little fried balls made of rice with some sweet stuff in the centers. Nice.
I asked whether he would be interested in hosting the Eat Club. Usually this offer gets an enthusiastic response from restaurateurs, but it made Steve stop and think. "We have a lot of regular customers here who would be disappointed if they came and found the restaurant filled with a private party," he said. Well, that's Steve, all right. He's one of the most congenial hosts in the business, and as a regular customer myself I know he takes very good care of us.
He wound up agreeing to do it, but we needed a menu and a price first, and he wanted to think about it. A few days later, we had the menu, but didn't have enough time to pull the attendees together. We decided to do it later in the summer. I think this was a relief to Steve, actually. I still want to do it.
Sesame Inn. Mandeville: 408 N Causeway Blvd. 985-951-8888.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
