Thursday, July 11, 2013.
Dominique's Is A Little Quieter.
One of these days I'm going to get back to Salú for dinner. But not for the first time, I drove around for ten minutes looking for a place to park closer than five blocks from the restaurant, and never did.
So I kept on going, thinking about maybe Johnny V's, maybe Patois. Then I realized that I have much investigation to do at Dominique's new restaurant, on Magazine a couple of blocks from Napoleon Avenue. There, I found a legal space just around the corner from the restaurant. (They also have an off-street parking lot, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get into it.)
I took a table by the front window and noticed something weird. A restaurant across the street dazzled with colorful, glowing signs--some with animation--that looked as if the displays had come from a Canal Street tourist grabber. Or Coney Island, or a circus. They offered seafood, red beans and rice, crawfish, poor boys, all the cliches. Blue lights ran all around. Where did that come from?
Dominique wasn't happy about it. Like most restaurants with current styles of architecture and decoration, Dominique's has no curtains or blinds. The blue light and the flashing signs spill their lumens all over the art on Dominique's walls.
The restaurant across the street didn't seem to be taking much business from Dominique's. (It's hard to imagine that the two places would have any intersection of customer bases.)
I am reading a book called La Vie en Rosé, about a British attorney who decided to change careers. His new employment would be selling rosé wines by the bottle and glass. That already sounded unlikely to me, but here's the kicker: he planned to do it in France. Where the people regard his plan with as much skepticism as I am expressing.
Anyway, reading the book did get me thinking about rosé wines. Which, I notice, are more popular now than at any time since the 1960s. So I had a glass. It was charming but not whelming. (Let alone over-.)
The amuse-bouche was a large few mouthfuls of marinated octopus. Things like that have always been among Dominique's specialties. These were tender (for octopus) and tangy.
Now the third bowl of chilled tomato soup I've had in the last ten days. (I would have to look back through a few years of notes to find that many previous to these.) This one was quite spicy, and topped with a rapidly-melting floater of ice cream made with basil and olive oil. This was extraordinarily good, the mellowness of the ice cream playing well against the pepper content.
The advent of more and better vegetarian dishes has given me a new dining gambit. I ask for the night's creation as an appetizer. Vegetarians tend to eat light, so the plate doesn't have to be downscaled much, if at all. This one included no fewer than nine vegetables, with a range of textures that went from crisp (onions and parsnips) to middling firm (cucumbers and tomatoes) to smooth and spreadable (a mousse--or was it a custard?--of sweet potatoes). Quite good, all of it.
Dominique insisted that I have not one but both of the night's fish specials. One was flounder fillets made like brik--the Tunisian-French stuffed-pastry idea. Dominique admitted that this had been the entree of a wine dinner the night before, but that everything was fresh and assembled to order.
The flounder was good, but I like the lemonfish better. It was straight off the grill, encrusted with a peppery seasoning and homemade pasta. Good stuff.
The blue-light place across the street called it a night and turned everything off. That made quite a difference in the atmosphere where I was. Which I sweetened further with a very moist cake with strawberries and mascarpone.
Dominique sat down with me for a few minutes and unloaded all his good news. (He is among the most upbeat people I know.) He asked whether I noticed that the ambient sound in the dining room had been mediated. Come to think of it, I did find less of a din than I did a couple of months ago. "We put pads on the undersides of the tables," he said. That gets a lot done, but not as much as having tablecloths. Which Dominique's, in line with most other new restaurants these days--even those with lofty prices--do not.
Speaking of prices, one reason for the healthy traffic at Dominique's may be that his menu tariffs are attractive. I don't think there's an entree over $30. You don't even have to think about this for long. It actually feels less expensive.
Last time I was here a number of women who had been drinking attempted to make moves on me. That did not happen tonight.
Dominique's On Magazine. Uptown 2: Washington To Napoleon: 4213 Magazine St. 504-891-9282.
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