Thursday, October 7. Make It To Katie's. Forty-five degrees at 7:15 a.m., as the unseasonably cool weather continues to delight. I hear this will not persist through the weekend, but that would be too much to expect.
Finally made it to Katie's. It was after eight, but the dining room was nearly full. I sat at a deuce sort of under the bar's overhang, but it was perfect for me, because it had good lighting for taking food pictures. No hope of sneaking in unannounced. Scot Craig was all over the place, and a couple of tables tipped off the waiters. (Other diners are the usual bringdown of any attempt at anonymity.)
My urge on a first visit to a place like this is to check out the roast beef poor boy. But the menu looked more ambitious than that. My revised, radical dinner plan began with a cheese pizza. At Bud's Broiler on Monday, Scot told me that pizza would be a major new specialty. This one didn't make my top five, but it was pretty good, with a handmade crust and a tremendous amount of cheese over the tomato sauce. I ate two slices and brought the rest home to add to the quick-lunch collection.
The entree was out of proportion to my appetite. But who, really, can eat a seafood platter? Let alone a big one? I'd asked for the one without the soft-shell crab, but I got an upgrade. The usual configuration: a half-dozen or so big shrimp and oysters, four catfish fillets, a stuffed crab, and the soft-shell, all stacked across a mound of fries that were bound to lose all crispness to the seafood's steam. But who eats many fries with a seafood platter? Aside from everybody?
The seafood was without flaw. Hot out of the fryer, crisply crusted and golden, a nice cornmeal-flour mix, well seasoned. This kind of cooking provides the foundation of a great neighborhood place. If Katie's can maintain this standard all the time, almost nothing else matters. Fried seafood like this is rarer than we think.
Yet it was steak night, according to the blackboard. They had a filet and a ribeye at attractive prices. Steak nights are spreading lately, not only to restaurants but bars, too. The attraction: a price in the low to mid teens for a filet. Even if you hear it's a bad filet, it catches your attention anyway. The only place that ever pulled this off consistently over the long terms is Crazy Johnnie's, which has done so for decades now. Elsewhere, steak nights compute in my mind to "we don't have good enough food to make it without packing the place for cheapo steaks."
That's a corollary of a rule I've found very reliable in predicting the goodness of a meal. If a restaurant's main draw is something other than food, the food will not likely be memorable. (Except perhaps memorably bad.) I include atmosphere, price, convenience, coupons, extreme portions, all-you-can-eat, and even the presence of guys doing radio remotes on the premises as distractions, not enhancements. Not that those are bad things. But if the quality food isn't the primary selling point, look out.
I left stuffed, and with the knowledge that I'd have to come back a few times to cover this very large menu. I did leave with the feeling that Katie's is at the very least back where it was before the storm. And that they've assembled a better wait staff than I remember.
Katie's. Mid-City: 3701 Iberville. 504-484-0580.
