Thursday, May 9, 2013.
Twenty-One At Harrah's Casino. Seventy-Five At Besh Steakhouse.
Today is Mary Leigh's twenty-first birthday. Her request for her dinner celebration was The Besh Steakhouse, the upscale restaurant in Harrah's Casino downtown. The steak part of it was no surprise. But the casino?
"They won't let you in with out an ID that says that you're twenty-one," she said. "I want to walk up there and show it to them."
She was in deadly earnest about this. She waited until today to renew her driver's license, so she would get the horizontal card. I didn't know this: before you're twenty-one, your license is vertically laid out.
I have not set foot in The Besh Steakhouse, or any other part of the casino. I am unalterably opposed to the casino in New Orleans, for reasons everyone must have heard before, from me and others.
But there are hierarchies of values, and I place love for my daughter and her healthy happiness before my dislike of casinos. A person always comes before an abstraction. Sure, we'd go the casino for her celebration of this big moment.
Once.
The casino is across the street from the radio station, so I was the first to arrive. I ordered a glass of Orogeny Pinot Noir and scoped out the place. It was only six-thirty, and hardly anyone was there. The main crowd shows up later.
Chef Todd Pulsinelli discovered me and came over to say hello. He was the opening chef at Besh's American Sector, and said that while running this show was much different from any other restaurant he's worked, he liked the hours. (They only serve dinner.)
The Marys arrived grinning ear to ear. Sitting in for Jude (he's in the thick of a movie production in L.A. and couldn't make it) was The Boy. Who often fills Jude's old space at the table.
The Marys were not much impressed by the look of the Besh Steakhouse. A place full of Blue Dog paintings makes a statement they disagree with. I intended to keep my thoughts to myself, so as not to take anything from ML's big day.
My misgivings, however, began with the reservation. When I called, I kept getting bounced back and forth between two automated menus of possibilities, none of whose options led to the Besh. I finally hit 0 for the operator, who once again returned me to the two apparently unavoidable menus of things I didn't want. The second operator finally got me through.
So here we were. Chef Todd lifted our spirits with an assortment of appetizers. A row of four sliders the size of normal hamburgers had an interesting sauce and garnish. If I had eaten a whole one, however, it would have finished my appetite. And another sandwich quartet followed, these made with Chinese steamed buns cut to look like puffy tacos. Korean-style grilled beef and condiments were nestled in the fold. These were even better than the sliders, although I don't think I'll ever develop a taste for Chinese steam buns.
Salads next. Mine was the funny-looking one, made with beets and spiky-looking greens. For once, here was something that wouldn't fill me up. Mary Ann, on the other hand, swam through a pool of seafood gumbo. She said it was terrific.
The shank of the dinner had the young lovebirds splitting a ten-ounce filet mignon, with sides of gratin dauphinoise and asparagus. For her main course, Mary Ann commandeered an appetizer assortment consisting of an ordinary crab cake, shrimp remoulade, and a fried oyster.
My main interest was in The Besh's dry-aged, eighteen-ounce, boneless sirloin strip. My favorite cut of meat. It was beautiful to behold and delicious to eat, although the dry-aged flavor I prize wasn't really apparent. The steak was so big that after I ate all I could and sliced off some more for the others, half a steak remained.
It came an upstanding marrow bone and an even taller tower of four mammoth, stacked onion rings. I will never understand why anyone thinks onion rings this size are good.
The list price for this platter was a gasp-inducing $75. The filet was $46--also a cut higher than average. These are probably the highest steak prices in town. Yet I might consider paying it forth again, were it not for some other matters.
While we were there, The Besh was patronized largely by people who were. . . well, let's just say underdressed. At a table ten feet from ours a big couple wore dirty shorts and T-shirts. We didn't see the dirt, actually. We smelled it.
At another table not far from ours were a couple of guys whose aromas were also less than attractive. Mostly in the heavy- cigarette-smoking part of the olfactory spectrum. (They didn't smoke in the restaurant, of course, but clearly had gotten ahead of the game before coming in.)
I've dined in enough casino restaurants to know that a) there's nothing a restaurant can do about this sort of thing and 2) this kind of customer is very common. But who am I to say that such people shouldn't celebrate a big hit at the tables, or be excluded for any other reason?
I do, however, claim the right never to have to subject myself to it again.
Mary Leigh and The Boy took fifteen dollars into the casino and played some slots and drank beer. Why not? They're old enough. I can't really picture this as becoming part of their routine, however.
The Besh Steakhouse. CBD: Harrah's New Orleans Casino, 8 Canal. 504-533-6111.
