Thursday, September 2. The Peripatetic Wife Returns. One For Two. Yesterday, Mary Ann called to say she was cutting short her two-month assignment in Washington, D.C. and heading home. She's there working on her sister's quixotic run for Congress--a thrilling project for her. Less appealing are her living arrangements with her sister's family. They own a number of rental properties, one of which has a troublemaking tenant. Tuesday night, she and her sister's family all heard someone banging on windows and doors at three in the morning. They never found out who it was, but that's over the line for Mary Ann.
She made it to Atlanta yesterday and is driving the rest of the way home today. I would like to have welcomed her back, but she said that I shouldn't break my dinner date with Mary Leigh, who wants to have dinner with me once a week. I'm not entirely sure whether this is a sop to my feelings, or a real desire to hang out with me in the kinds of places were I dine. Either way, I love the idea.
ML was pleasantly surprised when I picked her up in her car. She misses her Audi and wanted to drive it to the restaurant. First thing she did was turn on her carefully-programmed CD player. That caused "Brothers In Arms," my current audio book, to come on. How dare I mess with her sound? I didn't mention that I'm paying for this car and should be granted that right, because I was distracted by the speed with which she raced through the construction zone on St. Charles Avenue. There is very little about my kids that displeases me, but their driving habits do. I'd say they get that mad style from Mary Ann, but ML scares even her. And Jude? He drives like everyone else in Los Angeles, which is on the brink of suicide.
It's too long since I last dined at One on Hampson Street. It's not far from Tulane. The idea sounded good to Mary Leigh until she opened the menu and found little of interest to her limited palate. Her request was that we go to some place with gumbo, a new eating passion for her. One has a good dark-roux gumbo. But it's a rabbit gumbo, and ML couldn't get her head around that. Bunnies, you know. But when the server came for the order, my daughter took my breath away by leaping into space and asking for the rabbit gumbo anyway. And she actually ate it--even though she didn't think it was especially good. (Neither did I. The roux was overwhelming.)
For the first time in all my visits here, we dined at a table instead of at the food bar. Chef/co-owner Scott Snodgrass said, "I almost didn't recognize you sitting over there!" The table was next to a window. Mary Leigh told me a story about one of her classes that she would not want me to share. I told her she could get the outcome she wanted by standing outside a window into the classroom and looking in. To illustrate, I walked outside the restaurant and stood in front of our table's window. All she could see was my head. I gave a lame smile and a fey wave. ML punched up something on her iPhone and turned it around for me to see. It said, "911." The button underneath said "Call." She is wickedly funny. I am embarrassingly goofy, but she is more tolerant of that lately.
A few days ago ML shifted her major from ceramic arts to architecture. I love the idea, but am a little concerned. Although she did reasonably well in advanced-placement math at McGehee, she hates the subject. She'd really hate physics. And you can't be an architect without physics. But she attended a few architecture courses, and is intrigued. I restated my viewpoint, one I've held since our kids first began facing decisions: You can whatever you want, and I won't say anything unless it seems really stupid to me. They've followed some wild paths, but nothing stupid ever. And it's all worked out fine.
The most appealing dinner plan for me this night was three appetizers. First, an exquisite and lustily delicious crabmeat au gratin, with an underlayer of still-crisp mirliton and Vidalia onions. The sauce matrix was almost fluffy, and just lightly encrusted on top, without the rubbery top layer of melted-then-hardened Cheddar that ruins crabmeat au gratin in most places. Then escargots served atop fried green tomatoes, with a red wine bordelaise sauce and some shredded celery root for contrast.
Finally, a cylinder of raw tuna on top of cucumbers and avocados. It's convergent evolution I'm sure, but almost exactly this dish is on the summer menu at Zea. I have to say that Zea does it a lot better. The tuna part was good enough, but the overripe avocados tonight really shouldn't have been served. That's the first disappointing dish I've ever had in this restaurant.
Mary Leigh's filet was beautiful. It rested on rillettes (wasn't that called debris last time?) and topped with a thin layer of encrusted blue cheese. Dauphinoise potatoes? Money in the bank. She said it was all more than decent, but she wasn't all that hungry. She'll nuke it in her dorm room for a snack on a day when the food in the Commons didn't look good.
Another surge of energy came from driving her car back to school. We swapped seats, exchanged hugs, and she went back to the low-level party that always obtains in college dormitories.
When I got home, Mary Ann was in full attack mode on the dishevelment of the house. The real estate appraiser comes tomorrow, part of the process of refinancing our mortgage and borrowing tuition money. I know better than to get in her way ("Don't come in here now!") or attempting to help ("I don't like the way you clean!"). So I just went to bed.
One. Riverbend: 8132 Hampson. 504-301-9061. Contemporary Creole.
