Thursday, February 25, 2010. The Eyes Have It. Bathtubs At Charlie's Seafood. I was four months overdue for an eye examination, something that took on critical importance since that retinal problem I had--could it possibly be almost three years ago? I never did like even a routine eye exam, but these, requiring deep inspection under lights so bright it's hard to imagine that they don't themselves do harm. (But they don't, says Dr. Arend, who has taken very good care of what could have been a very bad problem.) Between that and the necessary pupil dilation, I'm left functionally blind for hours afterwards.
Of course, an eating tradition has grown around this routine. Since I can't drive in the aftermath, Mary Ann picks me up at Ochsner and we go somewhere nearby for lunch. Jefferson Highway has a wealth of restaurants I don't visit very often.
Today's was Charlie's Seafood, the old joint in Harahan that Frank and Marna Brigtsen took over last year. Mary Ann was excited by the prospect. She loves seafood platters and boiled crawfish. Both are specialties of the house.
We started off with shrimp remoulade--oversize but perfect boiled shrimp, with Frank's tangy orange sauce. Then both seafood platters: the standard fried and the decidedly offbeat unfried. The latter is a variation on the "Shell Beach Diet" platter Frank serves at his gourmet bistro in Riverbend. It consisted of two big baked oysters with shrimp and a creamy sauce, a small fillet of redfish with oysters and shrimp bordelaise, a potato salad with more shrimp, and an individually baked mini-cornbread in a ramekin. All tasty eats, except for the baked oysters, which were extraordinarily delicious. (A half-dozen of those would have made a meal, if a rich one.)
Mary Ann was at first unimpressed by the seafood platter. She's my seafood platter consultant, I paid attention. But as she ate, she came around to the position that this was about as good as any in her experience. What parts of it I had (fried oysters, mostly) made me happy enough.
In the middle of the meal, we learned that a batch of crawfish from the Atchafalaya Floodway--the finest source for wild-caught crawfish--was in the boiler. It took a little longer than we expected to emerge, but I was in no hurry. I still couldn't see well enough to drive. A goodly pile finally appeared, still warm from the pot. Very good, on the small side but not disappointingly so. (It's been cold out there.) Frank says they were very expensive.
He wanted to show me the seafood boiling rig he inherited from the previous owners of Charlie's. They consisted of two custom-built stainless-steel tanks, each about four feet high. "This one was originally a milk collection tank from a dairy," Frank told me. Then he showed me the old purging setup, which he refuses to even think about using. It was three bathtubs, end to end along the back wall.
I wish I had pictures of all this, but I couldn't see to shoot. Shoot!
Except for the brilliant sunlight--which dazzled my still-dilated eyes even with sunglasses on--I didn't have a problem driving after lunch. I went to the radio studio, dispatched my three hours, then headed for home, still full from lunch at Charlie's.
Charlie's Seafood. Harahan: 8311 Jefferson Hwy. 504-737-3700. Seafood.
