Tuesday, April 24, 2012.
Three Guys From The Zurich Golf Classic. Big Sis And Café B.
Can this be right? Forty-three degrees this morning? I'm glad I turned on the little heater in the bedroom.
My father--an avid golfer--was very proud of the New Orleans Open, and how Bo Wininger won it two years in a row. He would be ecstatic about the tournament now. It even has a small but very classy food festival attached to it these days, which has people paying $175-$225 for the package ticket.
I'll bet that the reason Mr. B's will be out there this year has something to do with the fact that Tommy Brennan--B's owner Cindy Brennan Davis's brother--was a professional golfer at one time.
The Zurich Classic (that's what they call the New Orleans Open now, for the insurance company that sponsors it) struck Mary Ann as a good hook for today's round table radio show. Especially since all the money goes to an assortment of local charities for young people.
The Acme Oyster House has its own three-hole operation at the tournament, with an oyster bar and a lot of its other food. It's already sold out for the weekend. Its chief operations guy Lucien Gunter told me that. He had a lot to say about the state of the oyster business (great oysters this year; a threat of federal over-regulation). And even more puns and jokes as bad as my own. So he fit right in.
Also at the bean-shaped studio table was Bruce Attinger, one of the partners in the local collection of Outback Steakhouses. They will be serving their seared ahi tuna at the Zurich Classic. But what about the alleged worldwide shortage of tuna! "Well, we have all we need," he said. Must be one of those shortages caused by the worry that there might be a shortage.
One of the original partners in Outback is Tim Gannon, a New Orleans guy who was a key figure in the gourmet Creole bistro boom in the early 1980s. He was one of the inventors of that new style, first at Stephen and Martin, then at Bouligny, the restaurant that ignited the craze.
Bruce told me something I didn't know about Gannon: that he managed the Steak & Ale restaurant on the West Bank before any of the above. I remember Steak & Ale as being the best of the low-end steak chains during the prime years of such operations in the 1970s. So he came into Outback with some actual steakhouse experience.
The guest who got the most attention today was Charlie Rareshide, a partner in the local Jamba Juice franchise. Jamba is a West Coast outfit that has been wildly successful selling smoothies and the like. (Jude almost expired with delight when he saw that a Jamba location was opening here.)
Jamba's product is made almost entirely of juice, most of it freshly extracted to order, some of it very unusual. The Round Table held court on the merits of wheatgrass juice, a brilliant green liquid that is supposed to have tremendous salutary effects on one's health. It's squeezed from the sprouts of actual wheat plants. Our question was: what does it taste like? It doesn't have a good reputation in that department, but the kind of person who would seek out such a product would not likely pay a lot of attention to flavor. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was a little sweet--that's all from the grass itself, Charlie said. A subtle anise flavor revealed itself. I will not be a good customer for wheatgrass juice, which is sold by the shot (actually, the serving looks more like a tablespoon).
We also tasted a smoothie made half from beet juice, the rest from strawberries and blueberries. I liked that fine. Another concoction of carrot juice and orange juice was also acceptable. A third made of chocolate, soy milk, and yogurt was clearly the most delicious--but also the one with the most sugar. That's the way it goes.
Dinner with my big sister Judy and her husband Walter Howat at Café B. Judy claims--rightly--that she has known me longer than anyone else has. She was a teenager by the time I was old enough to know what was going on. So she was like a second, very benign mother to me and my two little sisters. Judy avidly listened to rock 'n' roll in its earliest years, which gave me a clear memory of Fifties music. (And of Johnny Mathis, her favorite singer.)
It's hard to believe that I have a sister who has been married for over fifty years. But then I'm also older than Rex.
We started with an order of crab dip, made with claw crabmeat (perfect for such a dish, because of its most assertive flavor) and an assortment of cheeses that gave it a very agreeable tang. Like a loose crabmeat au gratin, it was. A dish of this stuff was a generous serving even when the three of us split it, and very good.
Next came a couple of wedge salads, different from most in having a buttermilk dressing, with crumbles of blue cheese over the whole thing. This too was big enough to split, but Walter and I each ate a whole one. Walter, who is very fit for a guy in his seventies, has always been a chowhound. In fact, I picked up a few eating habits from him--like eating baked potatoes skin and all. Nobody in my family did that, and we thought it was weird. But a husband is always weird to his bride's family, even when his family is much more conventional than hers. (As was certainly true in our case.)
Everybody had pasta for the main. Mine (and Walter's too) was panneed veal with cappellini marinara. The pasta was a lot like Joe Impastato's angel hair asciutta, including in its deliciousness. Manager Steve Jeansonne said that it was a derivation of the stracci with spinach and tomato sauce at the old Bacco, which makes sense: Café B's chef Chris Montero had been the chef at Bacco. (Which Ralph Brennan insists is still just in limbo, not gone forever, although I'll be surprised if we ever see it again.)
The veal part of this dish veered off into the realm of Japanese cooking, with a breading made with panko, and the veal cut so thin that it cooked out as dry as the Japanese version called katsu--not one of my favorite dishes. I think the old New Orleans-Italian pannee meat is much better.
Judy was so pleased with a plate of shrimp and artichokes in a light olive-oil sauce over rotini pasta that she was calculating how to make it at home. She's certainly good enough a cook to pull it off.
For once, everybody at my table had dessert. Growing up, my family always did. Mary Ann never touches the stuff, a trait she has passed to our children. (She also makes fun of my family's apparently genetic sweet tooth. But then, the husband's family is always weird.)
Judy liked the bruleed bread pudding as much as I did last time. Walter had a beautiful key lime pie, scattered with fresh fruit. For me, a highly unconventional panna cotta, served in a little cream pitcher with a layer of gelled strawberry juice on top, and a couple of scones. Whoever is doing the desserts at Café B is working at a very high level of skill, taste and imagination.
I will have to invite Judy and Walter to dinner more often.
Café B. Old Metairie: 2700 Metairie Road. 504-934-4700.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
