Thursday, October 4, 2012.
Another Best Hamburger? Flying Home. Pizza Over The Coals.
The vacation ended the way it began. Mary Ann had airplane tickets for all of us, but they were an odd combination of discounted seats, vouchers, and changed dates. And she had no codes with which to verify any of it. We were able to get on our way from New Orleans because we ran into a friend who works for Delta, and she walked us through it. We have no such friend in New York. It took two long phone calls to get it all straight. I don't know how MA can stand living on the edge like this. I think she actually likes it.
The plane was already boarding when we arrived at the gate. We had two delays. First, we needed to take a shuttle bus through the construction at LaGuardia, where Delta is currently operating out of two disconnected terminals.
And second, believe it or not, we had to have another Best Hamburger In America. This one was branded with the name Pat La Frieda. Pat and his family are butchers, and they have achieved some fame lately as the anchors of the Meat Men show on food television. Mary Ann was thrilled by the prospect of a Pat La Frieda hamburger stand at LaGuardia. She wanted to hit it on our way in two weeks ago. She was defeated and miffed by my need to help out the Eat Clubbers as they made their way to the ship. She would not miss it again on the way out. After all, they serve. . . hamburgers!
Pat La Frieda's hamburger stand operates like a fast-food place. But, to his credit, it is decidedly not fast. The burgers are made up to order, ostensibly using the best hamburger meat in the market.
While waiting, you go through a byzantine payment system in which you can't give the cashier your money until you have the food in hand. It took almost enough time to derange not only my mind (we were well past that), but Mary Ann's, too. And when the burgers came out, nice and hot, we reacted with versions of "Is this it?" I took two bites (the first one didn't have any pickle, and I needed that flavor), and I threw the rest into the trash. After two weeks on a cruise ship, I don't need to eat an ordinary (if fresh) burger.
That makes three hamburgers in forty-eight hours in New York. What I won't do for the love of my girls!
After a somewhat bumpy flight, we arrived in New Orleans to a switcheroo. New York was having a heat wave, and our hometown was actually cooler. That made it a lot more tolerable to stand with all the bags while Mary Ann--who was at first convinced that it had been towed away or stolen--searched the airport garage for our car. When she finally found it, she led us and the bags on a route that made us pull the five fifty-pounders up and down ten or twelve curbs with no cuts. I'm glad I didn't think of this.
We headed home in accordance with Mary Ann's new dietary plan: we would henceforth eat nothing at all, and certainly not in restaurants.
But that didn't get us all the way home. Mary Ann was intrigued by RocketFire, the new pizzeria that opened a few months ago in Covington. It took over the former Boule Steakhouse and Tapatini's, an interesting building that hangs over the bed of the Abita River.
RocketFire looks like a chain, but it isn't--at least not yet. Its selling point is its pizza oven, made of stone and fired with coal. Not charcoal, mind you, but actual coal. Interesting! They're also making their own dough and doing all the other things that move pizza up to a higher achievement.
We started with a half-dozen oysters roasted on the shells in the pizza oven. These were a lot like the ones we had two days ago at Guy Fieri's place New York, with elements both of oysters Rockefeller and oysters a la Drago. Pretty good, actually.
Then salads of decent goodness, followed by a pizza with all the pepperoni, sausage, and peppers on one side. It looked great, with the exciting char around the edges of the crust. But we all looked at one another as we ate, all with the same thought. There was something missing here. My first guess is that there isn't enough yeast in the dough, nor enough olive oil. But it's too soon to make any determinations, and we're all tired.
RocketFire Pizza Co. Covington: 1950 N Hwy 190. 985-327-7600.
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