Sunday, March 7. Day In, Day Out. Why Is Barbecue So Cheap? Jonathan Schwartz, an old New York disk jockey who plays the Great American Songbook on Sirius XM, does his best show on Sunday afternoon. I like it so much that I'm hesitant to leave my desk, where I listen while I perform my weekly maintenance of the website. Schwartz breaks a lot of radio rules, which is what I like about him.
Today he started his show with a down-tempo version of Day In, Day Out by Frank Sinatra from 1953. I'd never heard it before. Then he played the same song, performed much the same way by Sinatra, but with a Nelson Riddle arrangement. Remarkable. Next, he played the song yet a third time, still with Sinatra, but recorded five years later with a swing tempo. That's the one everybody who knows the song at all remembers. After it came out, nobody sang Day In, Day Out as a ballad ever again, said Schwartz. How many people would care enough to listen to the same song sung by the same singer three times? I would. How many people would read a long paragraph about a disk jockey's doing that? This I don't know, but I still think it's worth writing.
The Marys declared that lunch today would be served at VooDoo BBQ, somewhere around one. I followed the girls to explore (not for the first time) a culinary mystery. VooDoo would not be given a second thought in Texas or Memphis or Kansas City--all places where barbecue is native. But by New Orleans standards I find it pretty good. There does seem to be some variation among local chain's locations, judging by the comments sent to me by readers. But I've had consistently good luck at the one in Mandeville.
VooDoo does pretty well with brisket, as well as a barbecue chicken variation they call Caribbean jerk chicken. It's moist, not crusty, and not strongly smoky, and therefore doesn't fit my usual criteria for good barbecue. But the sauce is terrific. And several their side dishes are excellent--notably the potato salad, the corn pudding, and the collard greens, but emphatically not the cole slaw or fries.
The mystery--still unsolved--is how barbecue restaurants make money serving the quantity of food they do for what they charge. Mary Ann--trying to eat light, as usual--took advantage of a special appetizer consisting of potato skins filled with your choice of barbecue meats for four dollars and change. What came out were four skins (two spuds' worth), piled with small slices of brisket. Perhaps these were scraps left after the beautiful big slices for the brisket platters came off the roast. But there was nothing wrong with them. This appetizer was easily enough to make an entree. In fact, she wound up giving me one of the skins.
She ordered another appetizer before we knew how much food the potato skins would encompass. I'm always wary of barbecue shrimp in any restaurant, and doubly so in a barbecue restaurant. But this is a New Orleans place, and the menu seemed to imply that they knew what the local dish consists of. Wrong. It was shrimp in a funny sauce that made not statement at all. Scratch that off the list.
My favorite aspect of this place may be that it's on the short list of restaurants approved with enthusiasm by all members of my family. I wish we had more, so we wouldn't get into a gridlock of indecision every time we go out to eat.
VooDoo BBQ. Mandeville: 2999 Highway 190 985-629-2021 . Barbecue.
