Thursday, March 21, 2013.
Hanging With Visiting Food Guys. Drinks At Café Adelaide. Dinner At Herbsaint.
The March Madness thing in college (?) basketball is here. Every year, the broadcasts of the tourney foreshorten some of my radio shows and cancel others. I have no show today or tomorrow. I used to get upset about that, but this year the break is welcome. I have many projects that can use the three hours a day that saves--six, if the commute is included.
I went into town anyway. A group of assorted food professionals from out of town is here to make the rounds. Whoever assembled their itinerary knew what he was doing. In two days they've already been to Lilette, Cochon, Commander's Palace and Restaurant August.
The leader of the group asked if I could do a short talk about the current scene during a cocktail expo at Café Adelaide. Why not?
My first mistake was in decrying the rising tide of hamburgers at high prices. One of the people in ti audience was the operator of several Red Robins, a big hamburger chain on the West Coast. Also there was a man from the Idaho Potato Council (or something like that). So I shifted gears to recount the months after Katrina. The group was intrigued by that, and my theory that the restaurant community contributed more than any other segment of business to the city's recovery. The coordinator asked me to repeat the whole thing for his videographer.
After the booze at Café Adelaide ran out, the group took a bus to Herbsaint for dinner. I thought I could walk there faster, and did. A table for the dozen and a half people was set up in the far rear of the restaurant. Not the most comfortable part of the place. I'd say it qualified as Siberia. Service was a long time in coming--as in twenty minutes or more before anything happened at all. Our host sent some bottles of wine around.
I sat next to a woman in top management with the company that runs most of the restaurants in major airports around the country, even the ones with familiar. "If you see a Starbucks or a Wolfgang Puck's in an airport, we probably own it," she said. According to her, the food in major airports will continue to get more ambitious at a more rapid rate in the coming years.
Once the wait staff found time to take orders and such, I had decided to start with the unique spaghetti and panneed egg that has become a specialty at Herbsaint. Good as ever. The nest of thin fettuccine Alfredo held the egg, which flowed when you cut into it. Atop all of it was a slice of guanciale. Smoked, cured hog jowl, and it's amazing how much it looks and tastes like bacon.
The entree before me was a thick segment of black drum fillet, pan-fried with a cornmeal crust. It was soft and seemed a shade undercooked in texture--like the butter in the pan wasn't hot enough--but it was clearly fresh and tasted all right. The beurre blanc that ran around it and the spinach in back worked well. The arancino did not. It was a ball of rice with nothing else inside, covered with a coating that made it look like the egg from the last course.
I'll give the restaurant a pass for being busy (isn't it always?) and for having to serve an eighteen-top jammed into a space barely big enough for it. But this wasn't Herbsaint at its best.
I drove home with the nice knowledge that my weekend had begun, a day early.
Herbsaint. CBD: 701 St Charles Ave. 504-524-4114.
