Thursday, October 20, 2011.
Winter Visits. Eat Club Hit At Nathan's In Slidell.
Winter arrived came overnight. Thirty-six degrees at the Cool Water Ranch this morning. "I hate winter!" says Mary Ann. I don't hate it yet. The first wave of cold weather always makes me nostalgic, recalling past cold seasons.
Our nine-months-long hot weather makes us uncomfortable to miserable, cold weather stings when it moves in. It's time for my annual complaint about a prevalent problem in our local restaurants. The one I went to yesterday was a case in point. The dining room of the Blue Plate Café is separated from the sidewalk by one door. The closest table to the door is about five feet away. When it's as chilly as it was yesterday a wave of cold air rolls into the room. It stings. And we will have much colder mornings than this one.
Another set of doors is needed in restaurants with just one. Or a short canvas tunnel in front of the door, removable in the warm months. With clear plastic draperies on the street end of the tunnel, like the ones covering the doors of walk-in coolers.
Every year, restaurants with this problem resolve to fix it. But winter is so brief that by the time a contractor is found and the expense calculated, the cold weather is over and the project goes into estivation*. I'm sure I will be able to write about this another twenty times in what's left of my life.
The Eat Club convened for dinner after my radio show at Nathan's in Slidell. Chef-owner Ross Eirich must like us. This is the fifth dinner we've held over there. He must also be doing better than I suspected, because some serious construction is underway at Nathan's. Ross is adding twenty seats by closing in most of the balcony that ran along the back wall. He's leaving some of it for the people who like to get a drink from the bar and sit out there watching the sun set. He's leaving the wall, to make the former outside area something like a screened porch, but completely enclosed.
We could have used those extra seats tonight. Nathan's has fewer tables than I thought, and we were a shade overbooked. A little table-juggling took care of that.
I met Nathan for the first time. Ross's firstborn son and restaurant's namesake is in the fifth grade. Ross's other sons Christopher and Nicholas have a red snapper dish and a dining room named for them, respectively. I wonder whether Nathan will get any mileage out of having a restaurant named for him when he starts dating.
The dinner was the Eat Club's best yet at Nathan's. We began with a unique idea: three small crab cakes, each made differently. One was a classic Baltimore-style jumbo-lump cake. The second used a recipe that would result in a New Orleans stuffed crab. The third was smoked--both the crabmeat and the coating--and fried to crispy. They each came out with their own remoulade-aioli kind of sauce.
Second course: shrimp remoulade, sauce on the red end of the spectrum. Ross oversaw the making of this dish for some seven years at Galatoire's, and can probably make it in his sleep.
Our dinners at Nathan's always include a mystery course. This time we returned to the crabmeat box for a savory bread pudding with crabmeat in the pudding itself. Another original play on familiar foods and flavors.
The two entrees both received accolades, but I can only speak for one. A double-cut lamb chop, sauced with a lamb demi-glace with infusions of apple and mint. This was so good that I could tell who had it by the broadness of their smiles. I could complain a little about the fact that the bechamel-and-cheese matrix of the gratin of potatoes had broken, but I would do that only to avoid seeming like a cheerleader.
The other entree choice was no slouch, but more familiar: panneed Louisiana speckled trout, topped with yet more crabmeat, with a a side of artichoke-parmesan pasta and asparagus. This is one of the rare times of year when Louisiana speckled trout are available commercially.
The dessert was small but good, a very moist (almost wet) almond cake topped with strawberries. A little dessert was just right. A Merlot called Avalon appeared at a previous Nathan's Eat Club dinner. I liked it then, and again tonight.
Mary Ann graced us with her presence. We had a lot of former Eat Club cruisers with us tonight, all of whom have become good friends: the Charvets, the Smiths, and the Laugas. Sonny and Nell Lauga, who moved to Picayune after Katrina, have come to most of our dinners here, and a regulars at Nathan's anyway.
Nathan's. Slidell: 36440 Old Bayou Liberty Rd. 985-643-0443.
*Good word. Estivation is the opposite of hibernation, meaning inactivity during the hot season.
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.
