Tuesday, December 13, 2011.
And Old-Timer, A Fresh Young Face, And A Restaurateur-Rocker.
On today's round table radio show, we could have built the entire program out of Joe Segreto. He's the owner of Eleven 79 now, but he has a long string of vaunted restaurants on his resume. I guess that was Mary Ann's theme: Joe was involved in several restaurants famous enough to have been in our Lost Restaurants book. His restaurant career began at Elmwood Plantation. After that he was the boss at the then-newly-renovated Broussard's, then La Louisiane. He also opened a restaurant called The Shadows in Mandeville during the 1980s, and Eleven 79 in 2000.
I knew all that about Joe, but in the first few minutes of the program a dozen or so other, unknown chapters of his life came tumbling out. I didn't know that he had been Louis Prima's manager, traveling around the country and hanging out in Las Vegas with Prima in the 1950s and 1960s.
Nor was I aware that Joe's father took over the original Bourbon Street location of Turci's when that famous restaurant took a breather during the war. Renamed Tosca's, it was next door to Galatoire's. Segreto senior would sell Tosca's and open yet another place on Bourbon Street called Segreto's. Bourbon Street in the 1940s was the rival of any strip in the world for entertainment and dining, a much dressier, classier place than it is now.
Joe Segreto Jr. watched all of this for a long time. He remembers enough details that he went from one great anecdote to another throughout the radio program. I kept thinking that he ought to write an autobiography or a memoir. He's quite literate and would do a good job of it. He's getting on in years, though, so I hope he gets with it soon.
Next to Joe on today's panel was a complete contrast: the fresh face of Whitney Miller, the winner of the Master Chef television competition a year or so ago, and the author of a new cookbook, Modern Hospitality. I met her last week as we sat at an author's table at McGehee School, autographing our books. Mary Ann was so charmed by Whitney that she invited her to today's show.
Whitney deferred to the old men in the room. But she answered every question we tossed at her. She didn't attempt to start her own string, though. This could have been because both her mother and grandmother were in the studio with us. Her ninety-something-year-old great-grandmother was virtually here, too. Whitney told of a recipe she learned from her ancestor and included in her book. Which is doing very well.
Occupying the last two seats were Frank Bua and Robert Vasquez. They're involved in what they hope will be a major business in gourmet sausages. The name of the outfit is Rad Dogz. So far they have a small operation on LA 22 and a sporadic presence on the lawn next to the Lakehouse on Lakeshore Drive, both in Mandeville. They're making the sausages and dogs in the kitchen of Mande's.
Mande's is a landmark restaurant in Mandeville. It opened in the mid-1970s, and would be the town's oldest restaurant had it not been for closing five years after Katrina. "We had a little damage to the restaurant, but the problem was that almost all our employees had left the area," said owner Frank Bua.
Frank is famous for other reasons. He was the drummer and co-founder of the Radiators, for decades one of New Orleans's most popular rock bands. As we dug into this, we learned that he figured in many other musical acts, including the Palace Guards--a band I remember playing at events in college and even high school. As of a few months ago, The Radiators became officially extinct. But the band has said that before and later reunited. So who knows?
Although Mande's is best known as a breakfast place, with a little recognition for its lunches. It has almost never served dinner, despite it's very high-profile location. (It's the last business you see before you start out on the twenty-four miles of the southbound Causeway bridge.) The premises are striking, with unexpectedly tall ceilings. The place was built from forty-foot pine trees cut down in the immediate area of the restaurant. (This was when pine forest dominated the terrain as you stepped off the Causeway on the North Shore.)
Vasquez and Bua brought some of their sausages for us to taste. One was a crawfish boudin, which made for great eating. But even better was a thick sausage made with chicken and crawfish, then grilled. Far from being the bland thing you get when you eat chicken sausage, this had an effusive flavor and a great texture.
With this food on the counter, I opened the bottle of Chianti Classico that Carmelo brought us last week. That loosened everybody up, as it always does. I checked Whitney's ID to make sure she was old enough to drink. Twenty-somethings have begun looking like teenagers to me. Which is better than thinking that young women are about my own age, a misapprehension I often had when I was in my thirties and forties.
The sausages filled me up enough that I felt no need for dinner. This is a good thing, because tomorrow is the seven-course Eat Club extravagance at Galvez, and Friday is the Eat Club Gala at Le Foret. And who knows what the week before Christmas.
Mande's. Mandeville: 340 N Causeway Blvd . 985-626-9047.
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.
