Thursday, August 1, 2013.
Aunt Sally's #2. Mr. John's #2 (a.k.a. Desi Vega's).
After decades in the French Market, the owners of Aunt Sally's Pralines decided to open a second location, one more accessible to locals. It's on St. Charles Avenue, downtown and river side of the intersection with Julia.
This is my old neighborhood, one of several where I wish I still had a home. I walked the five blocks from the radio station's parking garage to the new Aunt Sally's, routing myself in front of the Camp Street townhouse where I lived in the late 1970s. My space was a loft conversion of the slave quarters. The office of my typesetting company was in the main building. The attorneys who use it for an office now have done a beautiful restoration. It must have belonged to someone reasonably wealthy when it first went up.
This was grand opening day for Aunt Sally's, and they made a big fuss over it. The small store was jammed with people carrying glasses of wine and appetizers. And pralines, of course. I always thought that Aunt Sally's were the best, largely because they were the last to add flavored pralines to the classic ones. (I always thought that, say, chocolate pralines make about as much sense as crabmeat in nectar syrup.) During the show, I was offered a Tabasco praline and a bananas Foster praline. Give me the original praline flavor, please.
The new store is aimed at natives who like sending packages of New Orleans flavors to friends out of town. So, pralines, as well as seasoning blends, a whole shelf unit of Tabasco products, and cookbooks, including my own.
The peak of the party had the six-piece Treme marching band coming inside the store and playing for a few minutes. This made it impossible to continue the live radio broadcast I was here for, and I just held up a microphone to the band while they played. This didn't lose any listeners, apparently; we got right back into the conversation after the impromptu concert.
May as well stay in the neighborhood for dinner, I thought. I walked down St. Charles, mulling over the many possibilities. My phone played Mary Ann's Theme. "Where are you?" she asked. "Want to have dinner?"
Sure, I said. And added that I was standing in the doorway of Desi Vega's Steakhouse when she rang me. How about that?
The first table offered by the hostess was a terrible spot close to the front door. When MA showed up, the hostess decided we needed a better table. (And people think I get special treatment! No, it's always the good-looking women who make things happen.)
Desi Vega's occupies the handsome restaurant space in the Lafayette Hotel that has been (among many other eateries through the decades) Mike's on the Avenue, Mike Ditka's, and Anatole. It was the perfect place for dinner tonight. Especially the martini part.
Mary Ann couldn't decide what to order, so I helped her along by getting what she really wanted but couldn't order without guilt: the cowboy-cut ribeye steak. Ribeye is not my favorite cut--it seems to be one of those things you either are wild or indifferent about. This one was the best I could remember ever having had. It had the tight texture of a sirloin strip, and better flavor than my last few strips. That's probably because of the natural fattiness of a rib steak.
But that wasn't the dish of the night. Something called Who Dat Shrimp walked away wit dat prize. The shrimp were big, peeled (except for the tailfins, of course), broiled shrimp topped with a bright orange rouille. Underneath was a sweet-heat Thai-style pepper sauce. Incredibly fine flavor.
Mary Ann had that and two other appetizers in lieu of a standard meal. The other two were a crab cake, sizzling in butter (loved it).
She also had a good-sized slab of braised pork belly, with creamy grits on the side. Since when did she have a taste for that? "I've always liked it," she said. "I can't believe you didn't know that." It occurred to me that the second of those sentences might be in the top ten uttered from a wife to a husband.
Also on the table--and, like the cowboy steak, ordered in an effort to give MA one of her favorite things, even if it's not something I'm crazy about--was macaroni and cheese with crawfish and tasso. Ironically, neither one of us liked it. Good taste wins for a change.
Vicky Bayley, who runs the front door in the shank of the evening, came by our table to talk about the restaurant and the crazy round-table show we did together yesterday. She almost seemed to be apologizing for the latter.
Here, then, is what I learned today. There never was an actual person named Aunt Sally. And the only culinary difference between Desi Vega's and Mr. John's (same owners and concept) is that Desi Vega's doesn't have the Italian dishes that Mr. Johns' serves. (Except for the amuse-bouche of a meatball and red gravy, made to Desi's mother's recipe.)
Desi Vega's. CBD: 628 St Charles Ave. 504-523-7600.
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