Thursday, August 15, 2013.
Canal Street Café. Orange Scallop?
Mary Ann met up with me after the show, and we went straight into the discussion of dinner. I should pick a place I need to go to for editorial purposes, she says. But it must be a place that she would like. This is like trying to rent a car with a white exterior, maroon interior, real leather, independently-operated air conditioning for each seat, a stash of maps for all fifty states in the glove compartment, a certification that nobody has ever smoked or farted inside the car, that no Democrats were involved in its building, that the rental-car manager has a dog he adopted from a pound, and that all the radio pre-sets are on talk stations.
Mary Ann remembered that one of the radio station salespeople was asking me to try to the Canal Street Café, the all-day restaurant of the J.W. Marriott Hotel. This was Shula's Steakhouse until about six months ago. The new restaurant had one thing going for it: Chef Chuck Subra, who ran La Cote Brasserie's kitchen for most of its existence. How bad could it be with him there?
Well. . . he ain't dere no more. But the place looked good, and the menu, while sparse and steakhouse-expensive (they still have beef as a specialty), seemed reasonably inviting. They even have a Coolinary menu--something a restaurant uses to bring local people in.
They started us with an amuse-bouche of some hard-to-identify pickled, spicy vegetables wrapped up in a small lettuce leaf. Not a big thrill, but it did cleanse the palate.
We then split a pair of appetizers. Grilled oysters on the shells, with a topping that could have been called a gratin--in the sense of melted cheddar cheese. The grilled oyster phenomenon continues its headlong plunge into the World Of Cheese, where it is diminished with each new iteration.
The other starter was a beet salad, part of the Coolinary package. I am eating a lot of beets lately. They must be in season. I liked this just fine, with its crunch and the slight peppery quality that fresh beets have.
Mary Ann's entree was short ribs of beef with a dense, dark-brown gravy over mashed potatoes. So, roast beef and gravy with mash. She is a fan of short ribs, gravy, and mashed potatoes. Nevertheless, she was not much impressed by this, except by its $32 price tag.
My entree was a trio of sea scallops, one of them rather small. This was surrounded by grilled Brussels sprouts and all held tenuously to the plate by a cauliflower puree. It was as ordinary as could be imagined. And one of the two big scallops (upper right in the photo) showed a puzzling quality: it was pale orange. I've never run into that before. I asked the waiter to check with the chef, who said that this is common among scallops.
At home, I looked into the matter and found that indeed it is a normal condition. It marks the scallop as a female, although not all females are that shade. Well. There's always something new to learn. But I eat scallops a good deal, and I'd never run into this before. If I were a chef, I don't think I'd serve such a scallop except a) with other orange ones or 2) as a single amuse bouche, calling attention to the color.
We had some creamed spinach on the side. Then a little lemon tart for dessert--the finale of the Coolinary. Snore.
What we have here is a standard vanilla hotel restaurant, the kind that was disappearing when hotels started making deals with well-known chefs to run their eateries.
Speaking of that, I heard a rumor that the Marriott Hotels locally will shortly be making changes to this and most of its other restaurants. Those would include Rene Bistrot and Mi-La. I can't wait to hear what is afoot.
Canal Street Cafe. CBD: 614 Canal. 504-586-7211.
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