Tuesday, August 13, 2013.
A Good Mixer. Sampling The Maple Café.
The three guests at the Round table today were a fine mix. Brad Hollingsworth, the owner of Clancy's and--less famously but more important--a former waiter whose tour of duty included LeRuth's, Galatoire's, and the Caribbean Room.
Next to him was Ben Doolittle, the owner and chef of the Blue Hickory barbecue place in Covington. Mary Ann has a soft spot for that place and for Ben. Who also has an interesting resume. Although he's a native Northshorinian and worked for a lot of the big local chefs, he also turned up as the chef at Keswick Hall in northern Virginia--a marvelous country resort in the wooded hills near where Thomas Jefferson's house was. We were there a couple of years ago and had a fantastic dinner in Keswick Hall's dining room.
The only guest in a chef's getup was Andrew Jaeger. I'd lost track of him, and with good reason: he was out of town for quite a few years after he closed his most recent local restaurant. That one was in Mandeville, three restaurants ago in a strip-mall suite near Mandina's. That spot has not done very well for anybody, even when the food was good (as it was when it was Vincent's and Andrew Jaeger's).
Andrew has not one by two new gigs. One is Jaeger Burger, on Harrison Avenue a block or two from Canal Boulevard. His description of his no-frills, very fresh approach to burgers and fries had Mary Ann drooling. (Or so she told me.)
The other of Andrew's new spots is Bucktown Burgers and Seafood, on the corner of Hammond Highway and Lake Avenue. Same burgers, plus seafood. Because if you're in Bucktown, seafood offerings are essential.
Andrew's family owned Jaeger's, the famous old seafood house on Elysian Fields a long time ago. Both he and his brother Alan (who owns Jaeger's on Clearview Parkway) worked there when growing up. Andrew also ran Fitzgerald's at West End Park for a time. He's full of stories from all those days.
Brad brought the wine: two big Rhones, including the sainted Chateau de Beaucastel, and its little brother. Both terrific wines. Brad is a man of few words but strongly held feelings about New Orleans restaurants. He's the perfect guy to run Clancy's. He knows better than to make any major changes, except those that can be accomplished a little at a time.
To dinner I went, at the new Maple Café. Jameel and T.J. Qutob have extended their brother act from the long-running Maple Street Café (where they're still in place) to what had been an empty restaurant in West End. It was a burger place--a Ground Pat'i, I think. After the storm it became Salsas Por Es Lago, a Mexican café whose menu sounded better than its kitchen was. The building had been hit hard by Katrina; the last tenants sort of worked around the damage, or so it seemed. T.J and Jameel actually performed a renovation, resulting in a restaurant that will need some further decoration and adjustments as time goes on. (Every small restaurant that went through Katrina gets a pass on the fine points of decor.)
We are doing an Eat Club dinner here in about a month, and I wanted to reassure myself that all was okay. It is. I started with an offbeat soup: artichoke and sausage, which was better than it sounds. Then a chicken dish with a demi-glace, Marsala and mushroom sauce. It was originally made with veal, but I feel a twinge of gout coming on, and veal isn't the right thing to eat in that circumstance. Nevertheless, this was a delicious plate of food, sent out with a nice assortment of vegetables.
On the other hand, the maker of the caramel custard cooked it a little too long at too low a temperature. It tasted okay, but the caramel aspect was a little out of control. That's a bitterness--necessary, but it can be taken too far.
Neither T.J. nor Jameel were there. Their restaurants outnumber them now, since they bought the old Bull's Corner in Laplace a few months ago.
Maple Cafe. West End & Bucktown: 124 Lake Marina Drive. 504-304-0811.
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