Tuesday, August 7, 2012.
The British Came. Giorlando's.
Mary Ann was so excited by her trip to London that she booked a British theme show for today's roundtable radio program. Four of the five people had businesses with English connections, and the fifth was thoroughly British. (Despite the round table, we had no knights or anyone named Arthur. Maybe next time.)
Kerri Blache is the owner of Vianne's Tea House in Mandeville. She's been with us before, and I knew we would learn from her more about tea in fifteen minutes than we previously knew. To call Kerri an enthusiast for tea is like saying Drago likes oysters a little. Kerri had much of the round table covered with dozens of little jars of different teas. She brewed a few of them for us to taste, and sent around others for us to take a whiff of.
Frankie Sobol welcomed the tea especially. She's the real Englishwoman, with a charming accent that makes her incessant humor seem even funnier. She has opinions on everything. Just what I like in a radio guest. Her first one restated an item of faith held by all Brits: that there's nothing as refreshing on a sweltering hot summer day (like the one we were in) than a cup of hot tea.
Sean Thibodeaux represented Beefeater Gin, which I suppose is the other end of the spectrum of much-lobed British beverages. He had with him the familiar Beefeater we gin drinkers have always loves, as well as a new gin called Beefeater 24. The idea, he said, was that three new botanicals have been added to the flavor complement, and allowed to marinate in the stuff for twenty-four hours. He explained something I didn't know: most of the herbs used to flavor gin go into the potion before it's distilled, not after. That would explain the subtlety of gin's flavors. Juniper berries--whose flavor is quite strong--should by rights be more up front in the gin taste, but it isn't.
Sean made martinis for us first, with an offbeat kind of bitters and a three-to-one mix of gin and vermouth. He felt strongly that this was the right blend, and I'm with him on that. The dry martini preference never made much sense to me.
Sean's second round of drinks was what I consider the classic gentleman's drink, as well as the perfect summer cocktail: gin and tonic. His rendition was so good that everyone wanted to know his formula. Two parts gin, one part tonic water.
Richard Sutton is not from England, but he worked in a very old cheese shop in London before winding up in New Orleans and opening St. James Cheese Shop. I thought this was a laudable endeavor, but I thought he would have a rough time staying afloat. New Orleans is not a cheese town, for weather and other reasons. However, Richard's offerings were too good to ignore. He brings in cheese few of us have ever tried, and sells them at the peak of ripeness.
The Stilton he brought today was certainly that. In fact, I think it was the best Stilton I ever tasted, rich and full in flavor without going over the top, as blue cheeses can do. Also good was a crumbly, hard red Leicester, whose texture suggested longer aging than it in fact had, and a sharper flavor. A pleasant surprise. That was also true of a real Cheddar from a small British farm, although the effect was the opposite: it tasted like a younger cheese than the Leicester, but in fact was three times as old. Cheese! There's no end to its complexities.
Not on Mary Ann's list of guests was Arvinder Vilkhu. His British connection is that he is Indian, and operates a small but very popular Indian restaurant in Gretna called Saffron Nola. It's typically open only one night a week--Friday. But he said that they'll be doing brunches on the weekend in the coming months. In London are more Indian restaurants than can be found in India, Arvinder said. I can believe it. I also believe that none of my current emissaries in London will so much as taste Indian food while they are there.
The gin drinks had everybody nicely mellow by the third hour, and the round table magic took over the show. If these programs are as much fun to listen to as they are to host, they qualify as the best thing I've ever done on the radio.
But I'm never sure what exactly makes people listen.
The cheese and tea and drinks put enough of a dent in my appetite that, even though I skipped lunch, I didn't want a big supper. It occurred to me to try Giorlando's, a restaurant I haven't visited in a long time. I remember discovering it a couple of decades ago, when most people went there for the first-class roast beef poor boys. A few years ago (after the hurricane, I think) they expanded the operation to give it a nice-looking, neighborhood-style dining room. The menu was stretched to about the breadth of Mandina's. And they began opening for dinner as well as lunch.
I was tempted to have a roast beef poor boy. It was uniquely good, with a bit more black pepper than average. But I put my shoulder to the wheel and had an untried Italian dish instead. Eggplant parmesan involved discs of the vegetable that could have been sliced thinner and cooked hotter to get a more emphatic flavor in the crust. The red sauce didn't blend in with the pasta especially well, either. But these are minor complaints. And now I know about the Italian side of the menu.
Mary Ann texted to say that she and her brood had not been able to penetrate any Olympic events in London, but that they have a good time running around. "You made the right decision not coming with us," she admitted. "It would have driven you crazy." Of that I have no doubt. She didn't say anything about the hotel, but I assume they found one.
Vianne's Tea Salon and Cafe. Mandeville: 544 Girod. 985-624-5683.
Saffron Nola. Gretna: 505 Gretna Blvd.. 504-363-2174.
St. James Cheese Company. Uptown: 5004 Prytania. 504-899-4737.
