Thursday, April 4, 2013.
Dickey's Barbecue. Eat Club At Annadele's Plantation.
A tremendous rainstorm came through last night, the drops banging down on our tin roof so hard that I thought our roaring air conditioning unit was on. My father would have loved living here. He had a thing for rain. He told me once that he actually looked for ways to get caught in the rain under minimal shelter, so refreshing did he find it. During Hurricane Betsy, he opened the kitchen door and sat up all night taking in the power of the squalls. He is interred in the uppermost tier of a mausoleum, with the rain beating just above him.
The Marys went to lunch, ignoring my advice about new restaurants as flagrantly as they always do. This time Mary Ann's curiosity was grabbed by Dickey's, a long-running barbecue icon in the Dallas area that is expanding aggressively across America. MA brought a brisket sandwich for me. No smoke or spice to speak of, although the sauce was okay.
A Taste Of Covington begins today with a slate of seven vintner dinners in or near the town's charming downtown. The Eat Club and I went to Annadele's Plantation, which is even older than downtown Covington, enough so that it's off all the main streets and a little hard to find.
More historical issues came up during a visit on the radio show (which originated at Annadele's) from the mayor of Covington, Mike Cooper. His father was mayor in the past, but that didn't come up. The main thing is that this is the bicentennial of Covington, and a lot of events are on the calendar for this year. All of them are agreeably small in scope. Covington doesn't even attract a big crowd to its Mardi Gras parades. I think this is a good thing. I never did understand the advantages of bringing large mobs of people together for pleasure.
The dinner began with something new to me: a gazpacho made not with ripe tomatoes, but green ones. It was quite good, and I think it would have been even without the crabmeat. Good wine with this, too: Liberty School Chardonnay, whose grapes come from the vaunted Mer Soleil vineyards in California's Central Coast.
Next, a very good fillet of poached flounder, topped with hollandaise. Not many restaurants poach fish anymore, which is a shame. But when they do, hollandaise is de rigueur. And not, as my wife says, merely to add butter and eggs to what had been up to that moment a lovely fat-free fillet of fish. I order the combination everywhere I run into it.
The chef's name for the next dish was the only off-note of the evening. On the plate were juicy slabs of buffalo tenderloin. (As in American buffalo, the one depicted on the back the the old nickel.) I have seem this only rarely in my eating career, and order it every time I do, because it tastes like this one did. Just different enough from beef to be interesting without being offputting. Great flavor, great sauce (a red-wine demi-glace is what it tasted like).
So why did Chef Ronald Bonnette call it "desconstructed pemmican"? Well, he was outlining the history of New Orleans with his dinner, and this course referred to the Native Americans. Fair enough.
When will deconstructed this and that go out of vogue?
The wine with this was unusual in a few ways. Its name was Troublemaker, produced in California by Austin Hope. And it was a blend of vintages. That is something we normally see in only two kinds of wine: Champagne, from the bottom to the top; and inexpensive generic wines. It was just fine with the buffalo.
Cannoli for dessert. Just like Angelo Brocato's, but made in house and made a bit creamier.
My sister Karen called me this morning to say that she was enticed to join me for this dinner. She had a few days off from her job as a hospital pharmacist in Lafayette, so the logistics were right. To make it even nicer, she checked into the bead-and-breakfast units of Annadele's Plantation. We see each other far too rarely, and it was nice to spend some time after the dinner.
Annadele Plantation. Covington: 71518 Chestnut St. 985-809-7669.
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