Thursday, June 28, 2012.
The Night Of The Moleros At Canal Street Bistro.
Yesterday afternoon, Mary Ann drove to Alexandria so she could appear on the local morning show on KALB-TV there. She doesn't like spending the night in such small towns. The hotels aren't up to her standards. She compromised and stayed at a Marriott Courtyard, but only because it just opened and still smelled new.
I called her in mid-morning and learned that the interview was not all she wanted. I could have told her that. Matt Lauer wasn't there to interview her personally, as she deserves.
Chef Guillermo Peters sent an e-mail to his list this morning saying that chicken molé poblano--the magnificent Mexican sauce made with bitter chocolate and hot peppers--would be running tonight at the Canal Street Bistro, his current stand.
Even though Guillermo's masterpiece Taqueros/Coyoacan (where the Irish House is now) was operationally squirrelly, his cooking has always been tops in the Mexican idiom hereabouts. About a year ago he took over the management of what had been the Eco Café (a place whose food and service tried to make the statement suggested by the name, with predictable results). He moved his Mexican repertoire into the dinner menu, but continued to serve a more or less standard neighborhood-style breakfast and lunch. The menus are so stridently different that I was under the impression that someone else was running the daylight hours, but Guillermo says it's all him.
This is a nicer-looking restaurant than I expected to find. It's a well-built brick residence that looks to me about a century old. across from Schoen's funeral home. That's in the Carrollton-At-Canal restaurant swelling, with its twenty or so places to eat. Mandina's, Redemption, and Juan's Flying Burrito are all visible from the dining room.
Guillermo sat down with me and two Modelo Negro beers, and we caught up on all the above. Like most gifted chefs, he's a talker, and full of theories about food. Just as that conversation was starting, in walked Errol and Peggy Laborde. They live a block away from here. They were inspired by the same e-mail message that brought me here. I motioned them to share my table if they could stand me.
Errol has been writing a weekly series in his e-zine (he's the editor of New Orleans Magazine) lamenting the Times-Picayune's plans to stop daily publication. He's really alarmed about that. I told him that, come this fall, I would be cutting back my eating to three days a week.
Guillermo sent out a quartet of shrimp in a tequila-based sauce into which a puree of chipotle peppers and butter had been mounted. This was very good. He followed it with a cold soup he said was made entirely from squash. No broth, no roux, no cornstarch, nothing but squash. I wonder where the slight pepper flavor came from. Than another cold course: a stack of onions and tomatoes, both vegetables in multiple colors.
Guillermo--dressed in formal chef's whites befitting his talents if not this little café--greeted a continuous flow of his fans. Errol, Peggy and I were not the only ones who saw the e-mail about chicken molé. "Here come the moleros!" Guillermo said, making up a word. I would be proud to be considered a molero.
My memories of other dinners with Errol--some as long as thirty years ago--seem always to include some kind of confusion as to what will be coming out of the kitchen. It's usually along the lines of ordering half again as much as would make a reasonable meal. Restaurateurs will rarely stop a person who strays down that path. It's a good thing I was here to keep Errol from getting both a platter of tacos and the molé poblano with chicken, beans, and rice.
We all got the latter, more or less. Guillermo persuaded me to get the molé not with the traditional chicken but with pulled pork. It released all the lusty flavor I anticipated.
The dessert could be called mango Foster without the ice cream. It was delicious except for the mango's having been sliced into five pieces. Since I was at this table first and was therefore its foreman, I let the Labordes have two slices each. That was not quite as bitter as the espresso. Which was more like Greek coffee. Quite a jolt.
A few paragraphs ago, I made a droll typo. I corrected it there, but here it is as my fingers originally rendered it: "Rastarateur." That would be the owner of a Jamaican vegetarian eatery. The background music is reggae, of course.
Canal Street Bistro. Mid-City: 3903 Canal St.. 504-482-1225.
