Thursday, February 17, 2011.
Sixty-Three Restaurants Gets You Antoine's.
The management of the radio station challenged the sales staff to sell advertising contracts to fifty-five restaurants for the month of February. They sold sixty-three. Reward: dinner at Antoine's. We have total separation of sales and content at the station, but since this was about my show, they invited me.
Maybe they just wanted my connections. My regular waiter Charles Carter managed the service, in what used to be called the Roy Alciatore Room. It has a new name now--don't ask me what. The painting of Roy Alciatore, the third-generation "proprietor" of the restaurant, still hangs in the room. Charles told me something about the room I didn't know: the heavy wood paneling was salvaged from the demolition of the St. Louis Hotel, which stood where the Royal Orleans is now.
Well, okay, then. A bunch of salespeople calls for cocktails. I had my two Sazeracs, all right. To make them even more urgently called for, piles of soufflee potatoes (there's one below) circulated around the room.
Then we sat down to big plates of shrimp remoulade (I've decided that nobody make's them spicier than Antoine's), crabmeat ravigote (not as lumpy as usual, but this is the off-season for crabs), oysters Rockefeller and oysters Foch. One could fill up on those items alone.
We had a choice of the two classic Antoine's entrees: filet mignon marchand de vin and grilled pompano. The pompano before me was big, fresh, and exquisitely cooked. I have a long-standing cavil with Antoine's penchant for overcooking fish. (I'm not the only one.) This one was exactly the way it should always be, and sloshed over with hot brown butter--also the ideal.
At Butch Steadman's dinner at Galatoire's a few weeks ago, I was totally turned by their serving the fish on top of creamed spinach. This is hardly a new idea--trout florentine is an ancient Antoine's entree--but when I slipped some of the spinach next to the fish and ate the two things together, once again it was a taste thrill. I will be eating this a lot wherever I can until I get tired of it.
Chris Claus--the top cheese over all six radio stations--began the atta-boy speeches congratulating the sales folks. Pat Galloway, coach of the team, then noted a gratifying statistic: almost a third of all the restaurant advertising on all six stations (one of which is WWL) runs through my three-hour show. That sure makes my life easy over there.
We ended with a giant baked Alaska, of course. When the party disassembled, a part of it reassembled in the Hermes Bar. I introduced a number of the younger sales guys and girls to absinthe. The bartender brought the absinthe apparatus over to our table, flamed an absinthe-soaked sugar cube for a moment, then dripped ice water over the sugar on its special spoon into a waiting glass.
As I expected, it wasn't to everyone's taste. A liking for the licorice-like flavors of anise and similar herbs is not common among younger eaters and drinkers. My son Jude, for example, hates oysters Rockefeller. But it seems that more liqueurs in that part of the flavor spectrum are appearing all the time.
Antoine's. French Quarter: 713 St. Louis St. 504-581-4422.
