Tuesday, December 15, 2009. Black Tie Dinner At Arnaud's. It's still raining, although not as much as it yesterday. Good thing: I showed up for the radio show in a tuxedo. I'm hard to embarrass, but I know that it's inappropriate to wear a tux before six, and I felt funny enough to make it into a joke. "I'm Tom, and I'll be your waiter today," I told everyone I saw. Isn't it peculiar that the best-dressed person in the room looks like a servant?
The reason for the formal wear was our annual Eat Club gala. We usually hold it at Brennan's, but this year they couldn't fit us into the schedule. We moved to Arnaud's, which was so pleased that we did that they gave us too low a price on the dinner. I think we would have had more people if it had been our usual $75 instead of the $65 they asked. Lisa Sins and Katie Casbarian pooh-poohed that. "Having all these dressed-up people in here makes it a special night for us!" Katie said.
Our forty-odd number were served Arnaud's Reveillon menu, with some add-ons. Oysters en brochette, soufflee potatoes with bearnaise, and some nice bubbly made a very generous amuse-bouche. I was barely done going around greeting everyone when the next course arrived. It was advertised as beef daube glace--a neglected holiday Creole tradition. Also on the plate, though, were shrimp remoulade and deviled eggs. A zippy start.
Next came a grand presentation of onion soup, the cup topped with a puff pastry dome. The soup itself was unambiguously old Creole in style, made with a dark roux instead of the intense demi-glace-like broth on which the French version would be built. Here is an example that not everything authentically Creole gives the best possible flavor. Far from bad, though.
I didn't get a good look or taste of the redfish courtbouillon or the veal with wild mushrooms. That's because the third entree choice was one of my favorite Arnaud's dishes. It carries the magnificent name "Rock Cornish game hen flambee a la Twelfth Night." This dish and I have a history. The first time I dined at Arnaud's, for a review in 1977, the restaurant was on its last legs. The waiters were wobbly drunks, the dining room smelled funny, and most of the half-block-long facility was shut down. The kitchen was barely capable of cooking a few basics. Yet Germaine Wells--the daughter of Count Arnaud--still maintained the illusion (mostly in her own mind) that this was still the superlative restaurant her father assembled in the 1920s and 1930s. The enormous menu listed hundreds of dishes, noting in red the ones Arnaud's created.
And there, on that long-ago December night, in red, was this Cornish hen. I didn't get it. Instead, I ordered what the staff now calls privately the "Arnaud's happy meal": shrimp remoulade, trout meuniere, and caramel custard. It wasn't bad at all. But I made a mental note to return on January 6 to order that Cornish hen.
When I did, the waiter looked at me with amazement. "We don't have that here, mister," he said. Yes you do, I said, and pointed to the red line of type on the big, worn menu. Not only that, I went on, but tonight is Twelfth Night! He shook his head. "Maybe so, but we still don't have it. Now how about a nice shrimp remoulade and trout meuniere?"
When Archie Casbarian bought Arnaud's two years later, the old menu and its fantasies disappeared. But somehow the Cornish hen made onto the new menu. I ordered it for the first time in 1980, and the illusion was fulfilled. This is a terrific dish. I began coming every January 6 for it, a habit that lasted for well over a decade. Then, one day, it was gone, to return only occasionally as a special.
As it did tonight. They served half a bird, which is really enough. (Cornish hens are at least half again as large as they used to be.) Its' stuffed with a dense pate made with pork and a few other things. Around the bird is a thick, dark-brown Creole sauce (roux, the trinity) with mushrooms. It was as delicious this night as I was hoping it would be.
Yet the best dish was yet to come. The dessert was a profiterole, made with a puff pastry instead of the standard chou paste, filled with a ball of praline-flavored ice cream, surrounded with blueberries and strawberries in a light sauce. Mary Ann's reaction tells how good this was. "I don't eat dessert," she said. (She really doesn't.) "And I was talking with somebody and wasn't paying attention. I took a bite, not realizing it was a dessert. It was delicious! I ate it all!" It really was that good.
Chris Hannah--Arnaud's chief bartender and mixologist--brought a coffee cup of what he said is a very old Yuletide cocktail. "It's a Tom and Jerry, and it goes back over a hundred years," he said. "The cartoon was named after the drink." It certainly tasted Christmasy, reminiscent of hot eggnog, with a good shot of rum. Suddenly, everybody at the table wanted one. Chris came back with his "Reveillon cocktail," which I remember enjoying last year. It's made with apple brandy, pear eau de vie, sweet vermouth, and bitters, with a star anise pod floating on top. I love this!
When the dinner broke up at around nine-thirty, I dearly wished I still lived in the French Quarter. Then I would have gone to the bar with the six or so other guys in tuxedos and had a nightcap. But I have to drive to Abita Springs, and that reduces my drinking to tasting. Dammit! And Mary Ann here in her own car, eager to leave early!
I will raise Arnaud's Reveillon rating to three snowflakes--the top rating--tomorrow. This was everything a Reveillon dinner should be: delicious, festive, in a room fully decked out for the season.
Arnaud’s. French Quarter: 813 Bienville 504-523-5433. Classic Creole.
