Thursday, July 8. Eat Club At American Sector. The World War II Museum is among the best non-linear ideas ever to burst forth in New Orleans. The connection between The Big One and our city seems gaseous at first thought. But it solidifies in the light of an important but little-heralded fact: most of the boats in which the D-Day invasion took place were built here in New Orleans, at the Higgins boat works. General Eisenhower himself said that Andrew Higgins had done as much to win the war as anyone. And there was no major museum devoted entirely to the war. There's so much WWII memorabilia out there that, far from having to scramble for artifacts, the museum finds itself turning down excellent helmets, uniforms, medals and guns because it already has seven of those.
The idea of placing a major restaurant inside the Word War II Museum is another leap of ingenuity. The American Sector is no standard museum snack bar, but a full-fledged restaurant, operated by John Besh, no less. The theme is brilliant. The menu is retro to the 1940s, filled with the dishes that were popular back then. The difference is that Besh and his chef Todd Pulsinelli are using first-class ingredients and current cooking techniques to brush up what was really Depression cuisine. But it takes none of the fun out of a bologna sandwich (a popular item on the menu) when the bologna in is made in-house.
John's people wanted me to host an Eat Club dinner at The American Sector. The menu they offered was so attractive in both edibility and price that I didn't hesitate for a second to agree. And then the menu grew unexpectedly. We were originally going to be served a bunch of appetizers, family style, then each pick an entree. What happened was that almost the entire menu came to the tables, encompassing so much food that the quantity alone was an entertainment for the attendees.
And not only were we comprehensively overfed, but the drinks were overserved, too. Each new round of food was accompanied by four or five cocktails, many of them ancient concoctions we haven't even heard about in decades. (When's the last time you had a Pink Squirrel?) A lot of the cocktails were from the Trader Vic's/Bali Ha'i playbook. Tiki drinks galore.
So much food came that I couldn't keep up either photographing or eating it. I don't think any of the sixty people who joined us sampled everything that came out. But these were generally agreed to be the high points:
1. The watermelon sodas, served from old-style seltzer bottles into soda-fountain glasses (photo above).
2. Garlic-glazed fried chicken wings, served with pickled watermelon, zucchini, and okra.
3. Crabmeat pies. Like little empanadas.
4. Beef short rib sloppy joes, served on slider-size buns. (They serve these for seventy-five cents with half-price drinks all afternoon, every day.)
5. Shrimp in a jar. These were boiled shrimp marinating in a pickling liquid with pickled vegetables, and served with remoulade sauce.
6. Lamb ribs. These came out under a glass dome filled with wood smoke. When the bell was lifted, the smoke wafted around the table, smelling delicious. Lamb ribs are a great, little-seen idea.
7. Vietnamese poor boys. Besh's version of banh mi, without the mystery meat (although that might have been both better and true to the 1940s, when megatons of unidentifiable cold cuts were eaten.)
8. The hot dog. It was made in house and alarmingly large. When it landed I got a laugh with, "Aagh! My worst nightmare!" To which one of the women at the table said, "And my most wonderful dream!" Let me put this another way. It was double the size of any hot dog you've ever seen, not only in length but girth, with a proportionally expanded , baked-in-house bun. Otherwise, it was normal, and very good.
9. Pork cheeks with blackeye peas. Tender and wonderful.
10. Blueberry milk shake, an amazing shade of purple, absolutely delicious. (That's what chef Todd is drinking in the first photo above.)
And: Fresh-cut fries and potato chips. An ultra-thick hamburger on a slider bun (not so good). Heirloom tomato soup (served from a tin can). Trout with potato chip crust (just what it sounds like). And on and on. In the sixteen years of Eat Club dinners, I've never seen such a sophisticated crowd get so excited over a dinner, or have more fun that we had this night.
The wines were good, too: Cambria's Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, both of which I find consistently excellent over the years.
My favorite moment came during the radio show. A lady called up to ask a question about the restaurant to which I didn't know the answer. But longtime public relations person and friend Clem Goldberger was standing by, and did. The lady on the phone said, "Oh, good, I was hoping that's how it was."
"Wonderful," I said.
"Marvelous," Clem said.
"You should care for me," I sang, picking up the lyrics of the Gershwin song "S'Wonderful."
"S' awful nice, s' paradise," sang Clem, a sho-biz girl from way back. We sang a few more verses of the song as a duet.
The next day, one of the radio sales people said, "You really had your straw hat and cane yesterday!" Yes, I did. I love shows where stuff like that happens, even when I know ninety-eight percent of the audience doesn't get it.
American Sector. Warehouse District: 945 Magazine. 504-528-1940.
