Thursday, July 25, 2013.
Eat Club Goes To Antoine's.
Even after the big dinner last week at Commander's Palace, the Eat Club event I hosted at Antoine's tonight attracted a big crowd. It sold out (actually, oversold) over a week ago, and I had many people begging me to get them in.
If only they had known what would happen, they probably wouldn't have bothered me as much.
I think the time has come for me to require chefs to give me specific descriptions of the dinners they're planning for us. For twenty years of weekly Eat Club events, that was only rarely an issue. I cannot deny that we've had some disappointing dinners, and even a few out-and-out terrible ones. I can think of around a dozen people who stopped coming to our events after suffering what they felt was poor food or service.
The evening started out well enough. Antoine's poured an unexpected round of Prosecco while we nibbled on paté and soufflee potatoes. Both of which were below peak, but nobody seemed to be complaining.
We were in a good place, the Twelfth Night Revelers Room, on the second floor of Antoine's oldest building, just above the main dining room. We would have been better off with forty-something attendees instead of fifty-something, because the noise level once everybody had a glass of wine was reaching uncomfortable levels.
And we had a nice celebration. Clark, the Gourmet Truck Driver--a regular caller to (and character on) the radio show for many years--was celebrating his fifty-sixth birthday. (He's on the left in the photo, talking with Carl, the Gourmet Retired River Pilot, another long-time Eat Clubber.) This was especially important this year, because Clark has lately been suffering with an ailment that he hinted might be very serious. But he was in good spirits tonight, and all the other guests cheered him on.
At the table, we started with shrimp remoulade atop a little salad. It was the first course of a menu I presented as the best dishes at Antoine's during the past 100 years. Four shrimp, stack of lettuce. But we had seven courses in the meal, so that seemed about right.
Next came three baked oysters on their shells: Rockefeller, Bienville, and Thermidor. The latter is not for everybody--it's cocktail sauce and bacon over an oyster. But I like it, and about the goodness of the other two there was no doubt. The standard portion is six oysters, but the sauces are so ample that six is really too much for a meal of any more than two courses. The oyster were hot and tasted right.
Now vichyssoise, which I think Antoine's does better than anybody else. It could have used a bit of Tabasco (I fetched a bottle for that purpose and passed it around). And it could have been colder. (In the old days, they served this in a bed of crushed ice.) But it was 90 percent as it should have been.
Then the trouble started. We would have small portions of two entrees. That seems to me to require about one-third to one-half of the regular portion. The regular portions of these two dishes are a fillet of fish (drumfish, which is fine for this purpose) and a chicken breast. (It used to be a half-chicken, but now they're raising such enormous chickens that a typical breast is about the size of a chicken half.)
What we were served were single medallions of fish and chicken. No more than a quarter of the entree size. That fired up dissent around the room, as well it should have, in a $95 dinner.
I hate to bring up the matter of portion size. In my opinion, restaurants serve us far too much food, and the movement away from entrees in the direction of small plates is a good one. Most people who complain about small portions don't notice anything else about their food.
But there are side effects to cutting dishes down this much. The worst of them is that everything gets cold too fast. Cold food was all over the room in these courses. And small slices of fish or chicken are almost inevitably overcooked and dry, as both these were.
Again, I take responsibility for setting this up. And that's why I say that it might be a good idea for me to actually know what the chef plans to serve. I would have vetoed a three-ounce piece of fish or chicken. (And the half of a soft-shell crab that Commander's Palace served us last week, too.)
Would have, could have, should have. But it's never been a big problem before.
I congratulated the chef for stepping up to the final challenge. I requested an entirely new dessert, representing the next 100 years. He made one: a little tartlet with strawberries.
After that, we lingered over coffee and the last of the wine, long enough for a lot of our diners to drift by and give me pieces of their minds. Even some of the best-natured guests were clearly disappointed. The next day, we took a few calls on the radio making the same points.
I love Antoine's. It pained me in the past to see them performing at minimum levels. I thought those old bad habits had passed when the place revolutionized itself (relatively speaking) after Katrina. Apparently some of them have come back. I can't believe that they'd send out the fish and chicken that they did without flying off into emergency mode to make it right. And if they're doing it to a customer like me, I hate to think what Joe Blow is getting.
None of this was typical of my recent Antoine's experiences. But why did it have to happen tonight?
Antoine's. French Quarter: 713 St. Louis St., 504-581-4422.
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