Thursday, May 17, 2012.
Tariq And His Sorbets. Dinner At Le Foret.
The radio venue today was New Orleans Audi, where we have done quite a few programs in the past few years, although none lately. Today's motivation was next week's New Orleans Wine and Food Experience, of which Audi is a major sponsor.
Appearing on behalf of the food world was Tariq Hanna, the chef and tastemaker of Sucre and its meticulously artful pastries, chocolates, tarts, and other confections. Tariq came in his gelato truck, and passed out samples of a strawberry gelato to all comers. Quite a few people showed up for test drives in an Audi, because that qualified them for free tickets to various NOW&FE events.
We had a rare eruption of hotheadedness during the program. A guy called and asked about food trucks. I gave my usual and accurate answer: I have not yet found a food truck to sample its food, even when I went to locations where the trucks were seen the day before. I also expressed my belief that the interest in food trucks has more to do with the regard younger New Orleanians have for what the late writer Don Lee Keith called "Sleazy Chic." The more informal the institution, the more the Sleazy Chic crowd likes it. (Definitive example of the genre: Uglesich's.) Thence comes the current belief that food trucks serve better food than a brick-and-mortar restaurant, a notion almost always disproved by both simple logic and practical experience.
A call or two later, another person challenged my thesis. He said that if I ignored food trucks, I was not serving my audience. I would report on them if I could find them, I said again. He said I wasn't trying hard enough. After all, he said, what about those food trucks that are in front of a few bars after midnight. I noted that my current lifestyle doesn't place me in bars after midnight, although I certainly did in my youth. I begged pardon for my age, and the habits associated with it.
It just got louder and louder. Then a traffic accident occurred right in front of the dealership, followed shortly after by another one. J.P. Morgan lost another billion. The sticker price on the current Audi R8 supercar was revealed to be almost $150,000. And I hung up on the guy.
The rest of the show was calmer. Tariq made a yogurt and passionfruit ice cream that was luscious. All the tickets went.
Mary Ann suggested a few days ago that we have dinner at Le Foret, a restaurant we both love. It's walking distance from the radio station. But we hardly ever go there. Why? Because it's so reliably excellent that I don't feel the need to check up on it more often than once or twice a year.
I've got to start dining out more often for sheer pleasure.
Danny Millan, who manages Le Foret, acted as both maitre d' and bartender tonight. He had a big party going on upstairs, and the regular mixologist was there. I hung onto the bar and we caught up. Danny said that business during the Jazz Festival was off the charts--better than either Final Four or French Quarter Festival. Strange though it may seem, JazzFest-goers are on the older side. A lot of them started coming when they were in their twenties--back in the Seventies. A lot of them apparently like the contrast between the Fair Grounds and Le Foret's tony dining room and menu.
One of those was George Wein, who created the New Orleans Jazz Festival after pioneering with the Newport Jazz Festival back in the 1960s. He's in his nineties now. Danny said he was at Le Foret three nights running.
The New Orleans Wine and Food Experience will do well by Le Foret, too. The restaurant's wine dinner next Wednesday features Dom Perignon and other Champagnes from Moet. Even at $150 a person--one of the three or four highest prices for the NOW&FE dinners--Danny has seventy people booked.
Danny's consultancy to Tamarind By Dominique--in the Hotel Modern on Lee Circle--has come to an end. Now he's involved in Dominique Macquet's next restaurant, set to open in a few months on Magazine Street. Today, he drove to Baton Rouge to get the liquor licenses worked out. He also told me that he has a location (Lakeview) and a name for the first restaurant he will do on his own in the next year or two.
That's the modern restaurateur, isn't it? Many fingers, many pies.
Our dinner was thoroughly marvelous. After an amuse-bouche that included what we both thought was the best asparagus soup we'd ever had, here came prosciutto-wrapped quail, pulled apart into two legs and one whole breast (both sides) and roasted. Between these were oversized gnocchi. Everything was moistened with a quail jus (how many birds are required to get that?) and a little Creole mustard.
The other starter was a small version of the day's vegetarian entree. Irregular goat cheese ravioli were surrounded by five kinds of mushrooms, including one I never heard of (yellow foot). This was spectacular.
Now a mound of greens and vegetables, topped with a levee of jumbo lump crabmeat. All MA's favorite things. Crawfish bisque for me. The bisque was refined more than a Cajun would feel comfortable with. The broth was thick and intense, with the crawfish component thoroughly pureed into it. The only solids in the bowl were dice of andouille and potatoes and kernels of corn. I'm not sure it's a good idea to call this crawfish bisque, given the expectations that name implies. Mary Ann, who probably wanted to find stuffed crawfish heads, was a little put off. I loved it.
Danny returned to town from Baton Rouge the long way, through the town of Jean Lafitte. But that's where he goes three days a week to buy soft-shell crabs from one guy, and his unpasteurized jumbo lump crabmeat from the famous Mr. Higgins. Mary Ann already had the crabmeat, and now went to work on the giant soft-shell, enclosed in a mixture of corn, fresh herbs, baby lettuces, and little tomatoes.
On tonight's menu (it changes every day) was a dish I've been asked about a lot lately. After thirty years of waiting to be discovered, the sous vide method of cooking has made its way to serious menus. It involved enclosing uncooked food (a filet mignon, in this case) in an airtight plastic pouch. The entire pouch is then cooked in simmering water for a long time--I've heard it can be as long as several hours. When it reaches the right internal temperature, it's removed from the pouch and seared in a hot, buttered pan on top of the stove. The result is that the interior is very tender and juicy, and the crusty exterior doesn't penetrate deeply.
I have had deep doubts about this, by Chef Carlos Briceno made a believer out of me. I wonder how this would work with a sirloin strip, whose firmness might benefit from the slow, long cooking.
The meal wrapped up with a bananas Foster cheesecake and a dense coconut tart--both pretty and good, but too much to finish.
We kept our taste buds wet with a couple of glasses of Billecart-Salmon Brut Rose. That Champagne house in unusual in being better known for its rose than its other cuvees, even though all are excellent. Mary Ann loves rose bubbly, and so do I. Especially when I'm with a beautiful woman.
Le Foret. CBD: 129 Camp. 504-553-6738.
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.
