Thursday, January 21, 2010. Andrea's Is Twenty Five, And Seventy-Five Show Up. Another pretty, cool day. I wish I could take a stroll down my trail in the woods, but the water in there is standing in so many places I'd need white rubber boots to do it.
The radio show and the Eat Club dinner were at Andrea's, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary today. The minute I saw that we were set up to broadcast from Chef Andrea's new bar, I knew we should move to a quieter space. Even though only a half-dozen or so people were in the bar, its acoustics are so lively that I couldn't hear the phone calls, and on the air it sounded as if we were in a busy train station. Few things drive me more to distraction than trying to do radio show from a noisy place. The worst--and I have to do three hours from there every year--is on the steps of Gallier Hall on Mardi Gras. The crowds and the marching bands are not the problem. It's the disk jockey who entertains the crowd. His speakers are cranked up so loud I can't hear my own voice. I wonder how they broadcast from a Saints game.
The ordeal was irritating enough that I had to have a martini to calm down when it was over. Glass in hand, I made my way to Andrea's largest banquet room, where most of the Eat Club guests were nibbling on passed appetizers and drinking the first wine. Because of too many bad experiences with oversize crowds at Andrea's, I stopped taking reservations at when we hit fifty. (Which, really, I think is still about ten too many.) But Andrea was also taking reservations from some of his regulars, and we wound up with around seventy-five people in there.
The problems were already manifest. As I went around saying hello, three tables told me that they'd received no wine; two said the appetizer passers kept avoiding them. One of these was the table at which Mary Ann was sitting. She saw some little sausage rolls and needed to get some. Indeed, when we finally were able to rope in the waitress, we found that the entire assortment of the pass-arounds were quite good. The bacon-wrapped oysters and stuffed mushrooms were particularly good.
The problem here is the mistaken belief on the part of many restaurateurs of the dynamics of a dinner with a cocktail period preceding it in the same room. They want people to mill around and go to the servers bearing the food and drink. In actual practice, almost everybody finds a table and a chair and sits right down, unlikely to move again. So the waiters--of whom there are never enough--have to go to the diners.
The seated part of the dinner commenced with plates of antipasto, heavy with escarole and roasted bell peppers and light with the items people really wanted, like prosciutto, marinated squid, artichokes, and things like that. The tomato slices on which the fresh mozzarella was served were emphatically underripe.
While that was coming out, I introduced the winemaker from Rocca Delle Macie, whose wines were terrific all night long. We had six of them, ranging from a very fine Vermentino to a pair of Chianti-style reds. This is a bigger winery than I thought it was.
The next course was angel hair pasta with a light cream sauce, smoked salmon, and Louisiana caviar. This was great when I had it a couple of weeks ago and almost as good tonight. The presentation was haphazard, enough so that I didn't bother to take a picture. That was followed by red snapper Livornese. I spoke with Chef Andrea three or four times about this, and never did it come out that this was fish in a red sauce. He kept talking about capers and olives and just a touch of tomato. But this was unambiguously a tomato sauce. I think tomatoes and seafood only rarely come together well, and this was not one of those nights.
I moved to a table presided over by Clark, the Gourmet Truck Driver, making one of his rare appearances at one of our dinners. He showed me a report from his doctor, who says that he can't be on his feet more than an hour at a time nor lift anything heavier than ten pounds. He injured his knees, and now he's off the road while recovering. Also at the table were some Eat Club dinner and cruise regulars. They thought the music was too loud.
The entree was the best course of the evening. On the left, a slice of roasted veal loin with a mushroom and cream sauce. In the center, lamb chops with a light, mint-flavored herb sauce. I thought this was delicious, but we had a few complainers. The beef tenderloin, on the other hand, was generally well liked. But the chunk of it I had was cooked out of all red hues and was juiceless.
By this time I was doing all I could to visit our unexpectedly large number of tables, and hearing when I arrived at a couple of them, "Well! We were wondering if we smelled bad or something!" Another reason I don't like enormous Eat Club dinners. Some table has to be the last one I visit.
I am painting a darker picture of this dinner than most of the people saw. Aside from a couple of guys who complain about everything at every dinner they attend, everybody seemed to be enjoying himself. Pianist and singer Philip Melancon (he made his name playing for many years at the Bayou Bar in the old Pontchartrain Hotel) was not only entertaining but indefatigable, staying until all but a handful of guests had departed.
Andrea came out to give a speech about his restaurant and this milestone and all that. He pulled me and a few others together. For reasons I'm at a loss to explain, I led the crowd in a singing of "God Bless America." Everyone was on his feet, as Phil played with spirit behind us. A good party, even though the food left something to be desired.
Andrea's. Metairie: 3100 19th Street 504-834-8583. Italian.
