Thursday, March 18. In The Audi Showroom And At Andrea's With Chef Duke. We broadcast today from the showroom of an automobile dealer--not something we do often. In fact, I think it's been over ten years since the last time.
Performing such a broadcast is something I learned very early in my career. In 1974, I worked for about six months for Harry Ladas's advertising agency. One of his main accounts was Casey Ford, a large dealer on the corner of Canal and Claiborne. Harry was given to flashy (perhaps even hokey) advertising. One of his gimmicks involved sealing a guy inside a van parked athwart the top of Casey Ford's two-story building, and having him do live commercials saying that he could not come down until Casey sold a thousand cars.
Ladas did that bit twice. He wanted me to do it the third time, but I thought it would be a bad career move. On two occasions, however, I was marooned in the showroom for thirty-six straight hours, giving ad-lib commercials on a bunch of radio stations. (Three of the disk jockeys I did this with are legendary: Dan Diamond, Poppa Stoppa, and Shelley "Wear It Out" Pope.) The second time around, the sheriff shut the dealership down right in the middle of one of my commercials.
Our show today was much more civilized. The new Audi dealer on Causeway Boulevard, and the car they wanted me to push, are quite familiar to us. Mary Leigh's Audi A4 is far and away the finest automobile I've ever owned, even though she doesn't like my driving it. I only recommend things I like, even things I don't cover on my usual beat.
The food aspect was the presence of Chef Duke Locicero, the owner of Café Giovanni. Van Bohn, who owns the brand-new dealership, eschewed heavy cooking in the showroom. (Who wants a $50,000 car that smells like marinara sauce?) So most of what he did was warm stuff up. It's was all pretty good, with a St. Joseph's Day aspect (that feast is tomorrow). The caponata was exceptionally good.
I'm ashamed to admit that I have never been an especially effective spokesperson for any business outside the food world. When one is perceived as an authority in one area, many people believe this makes one an imbecile on every other topic. (I have had more than a few people, when they found we were on different sides of non-food issues, say "You may know a lot about food, but when it comes to. . . " As if they themselves, not being an expert at anything, were therefore an expert at everything.) The whole three hours we were there, not one person came in for a test drive. Toward the end, Chef Duke said he'd give someone a dinner for two if they got behind a wheel. But nothing came of it.
After the show, Chef Duke and I went to Andrea's for dinner. It was his idea. I put the word out that anyone who wanted to join us could do so. This, and Chef Andrea's Sicilian menu (also based on St. Joseph traditions) drew nine people on short notice, enough to make a convivial table in the main dining room. It must have been: we went through eight bottles of wine, and a few shots of limoncello. The only downer was that Duke lost his sous chef without notice today, and had to get back to the restaurant after a cocktail.
I know this Sicilian menu well. In fact, when I read the menu, I puzzled over a deja vu effect until I realized that I had written the copy for Chef Andrea about twenty years ago.
It started with caciu, an interesting item he ought to add to the permanent menu. It's a slab of caciocavallo cheese, seared in a pan until it almost but not quite melts. Then it gets tossed with a sauce of onions, garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. It's said that if you close you eyes and eat it, it seems like meat. (It's a Lenten dish.) This is almost true.
I followed that with pasta cu li sardi (a Sicilian dialect version of the Italian con sarde--"with sardines"). It was strongly flavored and good, but not as good as it was twenty years ago here. (Nothing is.) I missed the whole sardines he used to broil; those fish have become hard to get locally.
The popular dish around the table was the roast baby goat, served in a highly miscellaneous bone-in fashion. For me, the seafood stew, a variation on cacciuco or bouillabaisse. Mussels, clams, shrimp, crabmeat, lobster, fish, tomatoes, fennel, pasta. Pretty good. For dessert, a homemade cannoli. Not an unforgettable meal, but a pleasant one, mainly because of the company, and the very good Chianti classicos that Chef Andrea shared with us after we'd run through the six bottles of wine I and a couple of other people brought.
Not long before the end of the repast, Jude stopped in to say hello. A lot of the people at the table had either met him or read about him in this journal. One of them had been on a cruise with us in 2004 but not seen him since. The present-day Jude was shockingly different. A boy then, a man (with a beard, yet) now. When he left, I heard the same thing everyone says about my son: "He certainly seems poised and self-assured. Very likeable young man. You sure he's your son?"
Andrea's. Metairie: 3100 19th Street 504-834-8583. Italian.
