Thursday, June 16, 2011.
One Stitch Out. Dat Dog. Hot Chicken At Drago's.
After nearly three months, the surgery process on my broken fibula came to a close when a paramedic snipped off the single stitch over the spot where, a couple of weeks ago, they pulled a screw out. Melanie Merritt, the physician's assistant who has been my interface with the hospital all along, assured me that a) everything looks great, and 2) the swelling and itching of my foot were normal. She was impressed that I walked in with no braces at all--just some high-top shoes. But she thought I should wear the air braces awhile longer, just in case I put my foot down funny. And she gave me a special sock that would be good for wearing around the house. Then she bade me farewell. She is moving to Ochsner's main campus, remaining in orthopedics. I will miss her. She made all this potential hell very easy for me.
We were in and out so fast that we had time for lunch before the radio show at a quick place. Mary Ann had one such in mind.
Dat Dog is a gourmet hot dog stand in a very spartan shed on Freret Street. It's owned by some guys with a bit of experience in real restaurants. The trendline for such people serving such food is nearly vertical on the upside. Especially if it's on Freret Street, where Chef Adolfo Garcia recently joined the fray with a pizza and sandwich joint. Dat Dogs has received a tremendous amount of press, of course.
The idea is a grabber, though. Dat Dog doesn't make its own hot dogs from whole pigs (we'll wait for John Besh to do that), but it uses the next best sourcing strategy. They found sausage makers around the country with excellent products. (Actually, this is probably better than making them in house.)
They grill these well-made wursts on an open fire. That leaves crunchy, black spots on the skins--exactly what you want. The buns are five or six levels above the standard, thicker and yeastier than normal, but no longer, so the dog pokes out both ends. That gets toasted to stripes of char on the grill, too.
The assortment of sausages is large and offbeat enough that a couple of minutes and four or five questions precede ordering. I was intrigued by the Slovenian sausage. Was it similar to cevapcici, the beef sausage from next-door Croatia? No, the guy behind the counter said. "It's all pork, cut up into chunks with red pepper, in a casing." This sounded good to me. I picked sauerkraut and Creole mustard from the long list of available accoutrements.
Mary Ann got a kielbasa--Polish sausage. She's a sausage lover--we can't fire up the grill at home without throwing a few links of something or other on there for her. So all of this was right up her alley.
The Slovenian sausage was excellent. The meat was red with pepper and had a flavor to match. I liked the bun, even though it was too much to finish. Mary Ann was very happy with the kielbasa. She didn't like the battered fries, but I thought they were good enough that I ate too many.
The creature comforts at Dat Dog approach zero. They have a few tiny tables inside, but there was no detectable air conditioning. Mary Ann prefers sitting outside, anyway, so we sat at one of the sidewalk tables, swatting flies away three or four times with each bite. (Nobody to blame here: it's summer in New Orleans.)
We spoke with a number of regulars, and found out that Dat Dog is preparing to move to a bigger place across the street. Gosh, I hope it doesn't ruin that casual, seedy quality. No, wait. I hope it does. It won't affect the dogs, which are incontestably excellent. Yes, even to an alleged food snob like me.
After the radio show, Mary Ann and had supper with Tommy Cvitanovich at Drago's. The writing of the cookbook is well underway, but I had to check a few facts before I set the beginning of the work in concrete.
What I learned was at odds with my main thesis--that the char-broiled oysters were what changed Drago's from a neighborhood seafood house to a phenomenon known nationwide. It's true, but not exactly in the way I have it.
"We had the char-broiled oysters for about a year before everybody in town started talking about them," Tommy told me. He also said that it was the lobsters--a loss leader at first--that saved the restaurant, which had been losing money for a few years in the early 1990s.
We ate. I put away a dozen raw oysters. Big and meaty, unusual for this time of year. But not very salty. The intrusion of Mississippi River water through the spillways is probably to blame for that. The beer du jour was a new one for me, called LA 31. Hoppy, a little bitter (a quality I like in a beer), clean.
After a half-dozen char-broiled, Tommy had me try a few new items. One was a Buffalo-style chicken salad whose sauce had no butter. The fried chicken breast gets coated with a mixture of Louisiana hot sauce and bloody mary mix. I had my doubts, but this really does work in every way. We also had a grilled shrimp wrap sandwich. The popularity of wraps keeps growing, Tommy said. Not with me. I never did like the things. The shrimp inside the green flour tortilla were better outside it.
Closer to normal was the fried and stuffed soft-shell crab. It's cut into four pieces after being fried, and put atop the stuffing, with some of the seafood pasta sauce at the bottom for enrichment. Frankly, I think a just-plain fried soft-shell would have been better. But there are not many purists out there.
Tommy's dad Drago, who is approaching ninety, sat at the bar as he always does, smiling and shaking hands with all the customers who love him. Sometimes he recognizes me. Today he didn't. But as long as he's smiling, I'm happy for him. His life, which I will tell in some detail in the book, has been more interesting than most.
Dat Dog. Uptown: 5031 Freret St. 504-899-6883.
Drago's. Metairie: 3232 N Arnoult Rd. 504-888-9254.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
