Tuesday, April 2, 2013.
A Full Round Table. A Great Roast Beef Poor Boy At Sammy's.
It happened again. Instead of a Round Table show with lots of different people doing different things in different venues, we had two groups talking about two events, never quite gelling into a conversation.
The contingent from the American Culinary Federation--the most important chef's group around New Orleans--was in to talk about the big event they're staging this coming Monday (today, if you're reading this the day I'm writing it). It's a competition among chefs for the title"Best Chefs In Louisiana." How they are chosen hard to figure, but it seems to me that if a chef is well liked by his fellows, he will one day win this award. The whole thing seems more like an excuse to have a big party for the chefs themselves, who get to hang out with one another while some of them try to impress each other with their grazing food.
Among the ACF chefs with us was Ron Iafronte, who has a neighborhood-style restaurant called Chef Ron's Gumbo Stop. It's on the service road in the river-city quadrant of the I-10 at Causeway Boulevard, a very visible location but one that's so hard to get to that I haven't gotten to it yet. That left me ignorant about the Gumbo Stop. I thought it was just take-out. Chef Ron said it's full-service New Orleans neighborhood food.
Also there was Chris Montero, who wears several different chef's hats for Ralph Brennan. He's the chef of NOMA Café at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and both chef and general manager of Café B. He has done much better work there than he did at his previous post, Bacco. But he got to invent the menu from scratch at Café B.
The other Round Table contingent was here to tout A Taste Of Covington, the second go-round of an event a lot like the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience, but smaller. Cliff Bergeron is the chairman of the event. He brought with him Adam Aquistapace of the supermarket of the same name. The big wine tasting event would be at his store. Steve Ahrons, who runs both the Columbia Street Taproom and the newish Seiler Bar, will be doing both a vintner's dinner and a brunch.
I was in the mood for a roast beef poor boy, and went to a new place (to me). It was one of two unrelated shops named Sammy's. One of these is a major phenom on Elysian Fields that's never open at a time when I can go there. The one I visited tonight is descended from an old grocery store in Bucktown that moved to a tiny strip-mall space after Katrina. I've heard good and not-so-good about it, but that means little.
"Do you want a half or a whole?" asked the waitress. (They have full table service. You don't even have to order at the counter.)
"What's the difference?" I asked.
"The whole is eleven inches long. The half is six, six and a half inches."
So it's a place for people who don't like math. Give me the half, I said. It proved to be so large that the mind reeled to imagine who could possibly eat the whole. After I got over that, I enjoyed a poor boy that had all the important qualities covered. Fresh-tasting, hot, juicy (but not too) beef, roughly chopped into neither slices, chunks, or debris, but a hybrid of those textures. On hot, toasted French bread. Good fresh dressings, not too much of anything except pickles, for which I requested a large fistful. Excellent! Just what I wanted! I will have to return to try other parts of the menu.
Interesting place. The kitchen appears to be bigger than the dining room--a very rare state of affairs. They must do a good bit of take-out and catering. And in the corner was a video poker machine, the only sour note.
Sammy's Po-Boys. Metairie: 901 Veterans Blvd. 504-835-0916.
