Thursday, May 26, 2011.
Last Meal At Hunt Room Grill. The Royal Street Non-Stroll. Tornado Calls.
Busy day. Physical therapy first, quick trip home to change clothes and finish the newsletter, then off to the main event: the annual broadcast from the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience's Royal Street Stroll.
For the second year, the show originated from the back parlor of the Carousel Lounge at the Monteleone Hotel. Getting there was difficult for my wheeled walker. First I had to get over the cobblestones of the parking garage. Then two lengths of incline in a long passageway (with some amazing vintage photos lining the walls) to the lobby. The only handicap access to the Carousel is through the Hunt Room Grill.
This trek highlighted the shortcomings of my cart. The worst is that it can't really be steered. The only muscles I can use to turn the thing are those on my good ankle, which is getting less good as a result of the stress. Mary Ann revealed last week that the walker is not designed to be used the way I'm using it, and that the salesman tried to talk her out of it.
As much as I like the Carousel Lounge, I will ask that we do this show somewhere else next year. The problems that plagued the broadcast last year were back again. The phone line went out six times for about two minutes each--enough to bring the audience down to zero each time. Meanwhile, emergency weather reports broke in several times during the show.
The coup de grace was a NOWFE media party in the same room where I was broadcasting. Speakers using microphones on a loud sound system made it impossible to hear what the person sitting across from me was saying--let alone anyone on the phone. NOWFE pays for us to do this show, but this way they're not getting much out of it.
The Monteleone Hotel was entirely hospitable, however. And they had some interesting news. A few months ago Ron Pincus--the general manager of the hotel--told me that he was on the verge of getting approval to renovate the hotel's entire restaurant and bar complex. Executive Chef Randy Buck confirmed that the construction will begin next week.
That means we were in the last few days of the Hunt Room Grill, the hotel's little gourmet room. No great loss. The restaurant had never really amounted to much. The bigger Le Café had a decent brunch buffet, but mainly served hotel guests their breakfast. They're going to combine the two into one completely new restaurant, with Chef Randy at the helm. That sounds good to me. Randy is not well known to diners, but he has a long and culinarily successful career behind him.
The Carousel Bar will, of course, remain. Through the entire show, any empty stools at the revolving bar refilled within a minute or so.
While Randy and I were talking, I saw a server walk into the Carousel with a plate of bar food. What's that? "We have some small plates in the bar," the chef said. "I'll send you some."
I was thinking things like French fries or maybe boiled shrimp. What came out was a stunning array of food--enough to make a chef's tasting menu for two people. On it were. . .
- Cylinders of cucumber stuffed with crabmeat, suspended over shot glasses of gazpacho
- Miniature ice cream cones filled with shrimp remoulade
- Grilled beef bruschetta with reduced balsamic drizzle
- Cubes of tuna tartare with a microgreen salad
- Shrimp curled around skewers and wrapped with bacon, a great new way of making shrimp kebabs
- Miniature lamb chops with an Asian-flavored sauce
. . . and a few other things. This presentation revealed hidden talents in the Monteleone's kitchen. But it will be six months at least before we see this again. Chef Randy says that it's unlikely the new restaurant will be open in time for Christmas. That means I won't be able to enjoy the chef's usually-great Reveillon menu this December. It's one I try to make every year.
A lot of winemakers drifted by to talk. So did Brady Lowe, the organizer Cochon 555, a national competition for chefs at the highest level of sophistication in the cooking of "pig," to use Brady's word. They're having a heat here: five chefs, five pigs, five winemakers. (Hence the name.) It will go off right after the NOWFE Grand Tasting Saturday, with three of the five chefs local guys: Stephen Stryjewski of Cochon, Adolfo Garcia of RioMar, and Eric Loos of La Provence. Also competing is John Currence from Oxford, Mississippi, who may as well be a New Orleans chef.
Brady wanted me to be a judge. I would have liked that, but this Saturday is already a mad day, and if I eat a lot of pork it's almost a certainty the gout will fire off. I'd put up with it if I weren't going into the hospital next week to get the screw removed from my ankle. That probably blows my chances for life to do anything for this high-end promoter of better pork. But one can't do everything.
Mary Ann grabbed a pass for the Royal Street Stroll, and came back a half-hour later outraged. The line to pick up wristbands went down Royal Street from in front of Brennan's to the corner of St. Louis, then wrapped around and headed for the river. A new addition to the program--restaurants dispensing food in tents on the street--also had inconveniently long lines for the usual tasting portions of food. Three minutes waiting for fifteen seconds of eating.
She ran into one of her brothers, who reported that getting a taste of wine was also difficult. The first three galleries he visited in the first hour had no wine to pour, and food in the shops was scarcer still. Her brother and his wife have come to the Stroll for years, but he was so put out that he said never again. I've heard that sort of thing before, then seen the person saying it the next year. But the reports coming my way in the following days indicated that the Stroll had a major breakdown of food and wine distribution.
But I don't know. A combination of the flagstone sidewalks and sloping street surfaces made my own exploration of the Stroll in my stroller unthinkable. Mary Ann was willing to let me park somewhere and to fetch food and wine for me.
But another concern intervened. A tornado warning was issued for the part of the North Shore where we live, and indeed a major twister blew down houses and many trees near Bush. That's uncomfortably close, with our daughter home alone. We left the rainless French Quarter and blew through a couple of tough storms on the Causeway to do whatever one can do in tornadic weather.
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.
