Thursday, October 25, 2012.
The Eat Club Goes For The Fifteenth Time To Café Giovanni.
The market for wine dinners continues to grow, but the number of wine dinners (and beer dinners and cocktail dinners) is rising faster. It has become harder to fill dining rooms with wine diners than it was when we first began holding our Eat Club events, back in 1994.
We still sell out most of them. But tonight's was unusual. Like most chefs, Duke Locicero has too many other things to do for him to compose the special menu for our dinner tonight. I didn't get it until last Friday. Ordinarily, that would have spelled disaster. I need at least two weeks to penetrate the consciousness of my readers and listeners.
But the reservations just rolled in. Nobody seemed to care what Duke was serving or how much he charged. I have seen such trust in only a handful of other restaurants--Commander's, Emeril's, Brigtsen's, the Grill Room.
I had seventy-five people signed up. That's an overfull house, but we didn't have to face that problem. The French Quarter's streets are so ripped up (part of the program to get the city looking good for the Super Bowl in February) that at least a dozen people apparently gave up trying to get to the restaurant.
The first item that passed my lips wasn't on the Eat Club menu. During the show I asked Duke if he had any soup hanging around. He brought me a gigantic bowl of crab and corn soup, enough to make a meal. With it was the bruschetta that he would send out as the first course of the official dinner. "Italian relish" is not exactly what it sounds like, but very good on the ciabatta bread, with four cheeses melted over all.
During the dinner that course came with what I was saying would be an outstanding wine: Ruffino DOCG Chianti Classico. It didn't stand out. It wasn't even good. We would have no further oenological disappointments tonight, though.
Everybody seemed to love the avocado salad with crabmeat, shrimp, and two varieties of pesto (the normal green abd the abnormal but tasty reddish-brown). I never got a taste of it, moving as I was between tables when it came out. This always happens at our dinners, but it's usually a good thing when six courses are the plan.
Here's the pasta course. Duke's cannelloni, stuffed with beef, pork, and veal (meatball ingredients, but kept loose) came out with two hot sauces, white and red. An old classic here since the place opened. The wine was ideal: A Mano (no connection with the restaurant of that name) Primitivo, a big red. What one is supposed to say now is that Primitivo is believed to be the ancestor of Zinfandel. Or maybe the same thing exactly.
Fish next. A little fillet of puppy drum, a heaping spoonful of mirliton shrimp stuffing, with a few fried oysters and an allegedly Herbsaint-scented (lost on me) butter sauce. A nice course with the Robert Mondavi Carneros Chardonnay. I remember being there when they first started growing that wine, but the story is too long to tell. It involved a tent on a hill, I'll say.
I'll bet the filet mignon with the peppercorn and foie gras sauce is Chef Duke's most popular dish (unless it's spaghetti and meatballs). If it is, tonight's sampling of it--using the tips of the tenderloin, which for my money is the best part--explained why. I was close to asking for a second order, but got control of myself.
The dessert was a cream of limoncello that Duke is making in house, flooding over berries. Nice finish. But we were indeed finished. Because we waited a bit for people who were caught in traffic, the dinner started and ended late. Everybody started leaving before I could get up there and do my customary song with the singers and their pianist.
That was just as well. I was bushed. I remembered the days when I would have remained for another hour, hanging out with the chef and some lingering guests. It never happens anymore. Maybe I ought to make it happen, just to keep advancing.
Cafe Giovanni. French Quarter: 117 Decatur. 504-529-2154.
