Thursday, March 22, 2012.
Chef Rene On The Move Again. Speakeasy Dinner.
The Marriott Hotel chain operates under so many brands that it would surprise most people how many Marriotts there are around New Orleans. During the past five or six years, quite a few of the hotels have emphasized their restaurants much more than the Marriott did in the past. Among these are MiLa and La Cote Brasserie in the two Renaissance hotels, M Bistro in the Ritz-Carlton, and the more obvious Shula's Steak House in the J.W. Marriott. The latter is not to be confused with the enormous just-plain Marriott across Canal Street, where the 5Fifty5 Restaurant has the trappings of an excellent bistro. (And occasionally the reality.)
A press release today announced a change at the aforementioned La Cote Brasserie. We knew something was up, because Chef Chuck Subra--who ran La Cote's kitchen since Day One--recently moved to Shula's. But I wouldn't have guessed that Rene Bajeux would be taking over, turning the expansive, cool warehouse adaptation into a rebirth of one of his numerous former restaurants, Rene Bistrot.
I'll pause to let you find a notepad and a pencil. You'll need them to keep track of what follows.
Okay. Rene came to town originally as the chef of the Windsor Court Hotel, a position he held for three years. He left to open the first Rene Bistrot in the Renaissance Pere Marquette--where MiLa is now. While he was there, he assisted in the opening of La Cote Brasserie, a fact that was well noted in the opening p.r. about that restaurant.
Even though he said he loved it, Rene left Rene Bistrot behind after the hurricane, and did some gigs in the Caribbean and elsewhere. He came back (really, his family never left New Orleans) to be the chef and partner at La Provence, not long after John Besh bought the place. That looked like a perfect match, what with the farm and everything (Rene said he grew up in France on a farm.) But that didn't last a year. Rene was off again opening other restaurants in other hotels in other places. This seems to be his specialty--not an uncommon one among chefs, especially European chefs.
It has not been a full year since he stirred hearts with another homecoming. The Omni Royal Orleans Hotel was in need of a chef to restore its famed Rib Room restaurant, which had been in decline for at least a decade. A grass-roots effort persuaded management and Rene to talk about the gig, and a deal was made. A flood of p.r. followed, as did new menus and a juggling of Rib Room personnel. All the people who once (and in many cases, still) ate regularly at the Rib Room rejoiced. The perfect chef! A certified master chef, at that. (That fact is on every press release about Rene.)
He took over at the Rib Room May 25, 2011. His last day there was a couple of weeks ago. And now we have this news about the new Rene Bistrot in the Renaissance Arts Hotel.
Comment is superfluous. I think I've laid enough of it between the lines.
On a brighter note, Arnaud's held a Speakeasy Dinner tonight. The concept is unique. In order to attend or even to hear about a Speakeasy Dinner, you have to be on The List. Then you get e-mail notices of the bimonthly events. How you get on this list, I'm not sure. I am on it because I have an active program of getting on every restaurant's list. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to keep the existence of the Speakeasy club a secret, but I didn't.
Apparently, anyone can get on the reservation list. A few Eat Club regulars were there, and said they found out about the dinner from me. They were freely given the secret location and the secret knock to get in. No discrimination here.
I hope I am not breaching another confidence by saying that the dinner was in Arnaud's Creole Cottage, a building on the Dauphine Street end of Arnaud's sprawling complex. It's usually used for corporate meetings. Unusual wallpaper, featuring an improbable number of monkeys.
I was the first to arrive. I gave the secret knock, after checking in with the hostess, who had a more official list of guests. A bartender had two offers: a glass of pink bubbly, or a drink called The Stork. The recipe came from Lucius Beebe's book about New York's Stork Club, the most prominent boite in the Big Apple in the first half of the 20th century. It's gin, bitters, orange juice, and an orange twist. It was served in a coffee cup, recalling Arnaud's practice during Prohibition of camouflaging its cocktails as java.
The secrecy shtick harkened back to the 1920s, when Arnaud's was the hottest new restaurant in New Orleans. The theme was enhanced by some customers who showed up in 1920s attire. I'm dressed that way most of the time anyway.
As the room filled, oysters Bienville in small vol-au-vents, crabmeat in a spicy sauce on artichoke leaves, soufflee potatoes with bearnaise, and asparagus wrapped with prosciutto were passed around. I ate too much of all that.
The dinner began with fried frog legs Provencale--a butter sauce with peppers, onions, and tomato. This came with the first of three wines from Stephen Ross, a Pinot Gris from California's Edna Valley. This was a good, fragrant wine and perfect with the frog.
Then a very spicy, dark-roux crawfish bisque with stuffed heads. I reiterated my long-standing thought that stuffing crawfish heads is absurd, because a) it's a mess both in the making and the eating, and always do, and 2) you can serve the same stuffing as a fried ball without the troublesome shell.
Something else was on my mind. They served this with a five-year-old, nicely-developed Zinfandel. I love Zinfandel, but its high alcohol content makes it a bad match for anything spicy. I think I may have offended the winery representative by saying this. (On-the-fly wine criticism is not usually welcomed at wine dinners, I find.)
Next was pompano en croute with green peppercorn cream sauce. Like the other dishes on the menu, this was to be a relic from the past: pompano en papillote, an old fancy-restaurant specialty that has been forsaken even by Antoine's, which was famous for it. Chef Tommy DiGiovanni said--wisely--that doing forty of these at one time would be a disaster. So he baked them in puff pastry. The pastry overwhelms the fish, and they have better ways of cooking pompano at Arnaud's. But in a theme dinner the theme must be followed. At least sort of.
We had a Pinot Noir with that, which worked. But, as with the wine before, I liked this better without the food than with.
For dessert, floating island— a blob of meringue floating in a thin sea of creme anglaise. I love this stuff, and suggested it would be great with a chunk of bread pudding. Which was duly brought.
So was a non-conformist dessert wine from Meeker Vineyards. It was a Zinfandel ice wine. It doesn't freeze much in California, so they picked the grapes and put them into a freezer. Then crushed the grape marbles vinified the concentrated sweet juice. Everybody loved this, and was trying to score a second glass.
All my carping above hides that fact that this was a noisy, lively, fun party. They've done the Speakeasy Dinner three times now, qualifying it as a tradition that must be observed from here to eternity.
Arnaud's. French Quarter: 813 Bienville. 504-523-5433.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
