Thursday, June 30, 2011.
Gibberish. Shut Out Again At Meson 923. Dinner At A Mano.
My system is programmed--by over forty years of habit--to get a fifteen-to-twenty-minute nap in early afternoon. When I miss it, it goofs up my brain. The siesta comes right before the radio show, and I start the show refreshed and focused. Naples, today I aired sheer gibberish for the first ten minutes or so. Fortunately, the only people listening then are the holdovers from ESPN, and gibberish is what most sports talk boils down to. Near as I can tell, anyway.
Terrible timing has characterized my dinners at Meson 923. Last time, the place was on the last day of the old menu, right before the change to a drastically different new one. Time before that, the superior upstairs dining room was closed, and we ate wedged between the kitchen and the bar. Today, I hobbled on my cane a block and a half from my parking space to find that Meson 923 was taking its Fourth of July vacation the week before, not the week of. I should have called for a reservation.
Fortunately, another restaurant I was interested in was nearby. I went to A Mano a couple of times after having waited out the crowds that filled it at the beginning. I thought the menu was way off balance. It was a statement of the kitchen's abilities to turn out Southern Italian dishes that few had ever heard of, plus a large collection of housemade salumi. Less focus was on what might make a comprehensible meal for a diner. I've done weeks of traveling around Southern Italy, and even to me this menu didn't add up.
But that was six or more months ago, and new restaurants usually improve--especially when they're breaking new ground. Tonight's was a much more enjoyable dinner.
I started with a tripe stew, sent out in a soup cup in a thick, creamy-looking (but creamless) sauce with a major tomato component. It was clean-tasting, yet a little musky. "Sex right after a shower" was the phrase that entered my mind. But where does the grilled bread enter this simile?
I had nothing like that to ponder when the next dish came out. It should be the signature dish of A Mano--which means "by hand." Pici is a hand-rolled pasta. You pick up a strip of dough and roll it between your hands (after you take another shower) into a thick string. The irregularity of the pasta showed that genesis clearly. It was tossed with a spicy, garlicky, herbal olive-oil sauce, and topped with bread crumbs. This was fantastic, and somebody at my table (perhaps me) will be forced to get it on my every future visit.
A desire to keep a lid on the bulk of this meal led me to order the fish special. That, and the fact that the fish was mangrove snapper. It's related to red snapper, but has a meatier texture and a great flavor. Simple prep: pan-seared, then placed on a cool salad of blackeye peas and turnips. Different, but bing! Fish and beans. Always a good pair. The turnips were cut into matchsticks and left crunchy. Good.
I had the cheese plate for dessert. It was enough for two, and I only ate half. With a couple of puddles of honey, it fulfilled my hard-wired liking of a touch of sweetness at the end of a meal.
I usually get a lot of reading done when I'm in a restaurant alone, but I keep forgetting to put some literature in Mary Ann's car. I still can't drive mine. I tried to push its clutch pedal a few days ago and backed off before it was two-thirds of the way down. (My bad-ankle leg operates it.)
I read A Mano's wine list instead. Well, they've done something unique with that. I can't think of a restaurant that has more Italian bottles. Maybe Domenica. But what makes this list unique is the number of wines from Sicily and southern Italy. Like most of the menu, most of these wines and the grapes they're made from are unknown to all but the most avid partisans of Italian wine.
A Mano wasn't very busy, but it's the Thursday before the Fourth of July. At least they were open.
A Mano. Warehouse District: 870 Tchoupitoulas. 504-208-9280.
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.
