Thursday, October 18, 2012.
MA Loves Hamburger Steak With Brown Gravy On Beef Wellington Night. Oyster-Havarti Remoulade Poor Boy?
Even though it's only two days since I had dinner with Mary Leigh and The Boy, another such meal was scheduled for tonight, because Mary Ann was in town. The usual controversy as to where we will go began. It ended when Mary Ann suggested Ye Olde College Inn. There would be something for everybody there.
I was the first to arrive, and I used the time to take photos of the dining room. While I was distracted doing that, Mick Fisse suddenly appeared. His son Patrick and Jude were in the same Scout troop. That seems very long ago. Back then we were all good friends, always visiting each other's homes for Scout stuff, then for purely social reasons. We haven't seen them in years. Mick says that he calls the radio show pretty often, using fake voices. That's just like him. He was always entertaining to hang with.
Even though tonight at the College Inn was Beef Wellington Night (I still find that hard to compute), our menu was predictable. Mary Leigh was on the wedge salad; it met with her approval, but did not equal the benchmark version at the Acme.
I had not sampled the College Inn's most famous dish--the oyster loaf--since the new regime took over. It is now served with Havarti cheese, which struck me as a little strange. I asked to have it slathered with remoulade sauce instead of the standard spreads. The oysters were enormous, to match the sandwich. They're lying when they call this an eleven-inch poor boy. It's easily twelve or thirteen.
Mary Ann's eyes widened when she saw that the College Inn had a stuffed artichoke. Unfortunately, this is one of the dishes that the place decided needed an updating, and it came out lying on its side, striped with an orange mayonnaise, and just warm instead of steaming hot. MA insists that stuffed artichokes hew strictly to the standard set by her mother, so this was a disaster.
The most interesting dish on the table was in front of The Boy. Hamburger steak--once a dish that could be found in dozens of New Orleans restaurants, has become nearly extinct. But here it was, using the ground beef that the College Inn generates for its Straight Stick Ranch hamburger program out in the parking lot. They even raise their own cattle. Well, it was a big, long burger, estimated weight one pound, covered with brown gravy. Mary Ann kept eying it, and finally just reached over and cut off a hunk. Her eyebrows rose and a smile spread across her face. This was her kind of food. The Boy--who, despite his involvement in at least two rigorous physical training routines, has never scarfed down a lot of food in my presence--welcomed her to it. I think MA ate about a third of the thing.
Mary Leigh continues to be delighted by how well these meetings have been going. I can see her life changing before my eyes.
Ye Olde College Inn. Carrollton: 3016 S Carrollton Ave. 504-866-3683.
