Tuesday, December 22, 2009. A Great Dinner In A Stark Restaurant. The Marriott Hotel on Canal Street is one of the busiest hotels in the city, with a great location adjacent to the French Quarter. But it only sporadically has cooked food worth talking about. Just before the hurricane, and for the first time in its history, its RiverView restaurant on the forty-first floor had become a good place for dinner. But even with the best view in town, it failed to take off, except for the Sunday brunch boofay it always offered. The RiverView shut down after the storm, and is now used only for banquets. In its place, two years ago the Marriott converted its ground-floor breakfast café into a new bistro called 5Fifty5. They pitched it to the locals, who responded with the usual reluctance to dine in a hotel. And the usual confusion attending any restaurant using a number as a name.
5Fifty5 was good enough when I first tried it a year ago that it's been on my list of places to review. I didn't follow through until a radio show caller a few days ago told me he thought the Reveillon menu was outstanding. I wasn't surprised. When I typed it up for my annual guide, it struck me as not only appetizing but a remarkable bargain: $45 for six courses. With only two more days left for the Reveillon, I thought I'd better get over there.
The initial impression was chilly, starting with the Marriott's enormous, wind-tunnel-like parking entrance and continuing when I reached 5Fifty5's unattended hostess stand. A woman carrying a tray of food waved at me and said she'd be right over. While waiting, I noticed that the restaurant didn't look like what I remembered. No tablecloths; utensils wrapped in napkins. Many tables set up for breakfast service. In other words, the bistro environment has reverted to coffeeshop style.
That continued in the style of the service. The waitress was pleasant enough, and didn't even bat an eye when I asked for the Reveillon menu. (The fact that she hadn't brought it with the regular menu added to my wariness.) After the first course, she asked me to keep the fork from the first course, coffeeshop style. I told her I wanted fresh silverware with each course, as a dinner like this demands.
But, after all that, from this point everything was fantastic. The Reveillon dinner was even better than it sounded, its concepts creative and its realities beautiful and delicious.
It began with a single plump grilled oyster on the shell with a unique, spicy sauce on top, an interesting tomato ragout next to it, and a fried green tomato slice topped with goat cheese on the right. Next came a cast-iron crock of butternut squash soup, creamy and very interestingly seasoned with a currylike admixture, and roasted pumpkin seeds floating on top. It was the perfect hot, comforting contrast to the chill outside. My only possible complaint would be that this was the fifth or sixth butternut squash soup I've had in the last two weeks. (Why?)
Next came a classic fish course: pan-seared speckled trout, topped with wilted arugula and mache leaves, a little tomato, and a light coating of brown butter. What tasted like a reduced balsamic vinegar gastrique encircled it. Pretty, and tasty. Next in line: an oversize salad of greens, apples, and andouille cracklings. It wasn't until I was nearly finished that I discovered how good those cracklings were. Then I started picking them out with my fingers.
I accord an extra ten points to any dinner in which the subsidiary courses are good, but the entree is best. The lamb chop was just thick enough, very juicy, encrusted with a bit of char, convincingly seasoned with a lot of black pepper. Grilled asparagus, some roasted fingerling potatoes, and a natural jus rounded out the plate. It left nothing to be desired--not even in terms of portion. Like all the previous dishes, if anything it was too generous.
The dinner ended with an architectural dessert that looked like a sandwich wedge. In the center was hazelnut and chocolate, with the "bread" two slices of yellow cake. A shiny bar of chocolate anchored in a pile of spiced apples held the wedge up. Someone had fun thinking this up, and I had fun eating it.
Around this time I was visited by some people from down the banquette. "I always wondered whether you get better service than normal customers," the young woman said. "Now I know that you do!"
I told her that I was quite sure nobody here knew who I was, and asked her what she saw at my table that seemed so much better than at hers. "The waitress brought you fresh silverware after each course," she said. "We had to use the same fork for the whole thing. But the food was good." I told her that I'd almost been victimized by the fork-recycling program myself, but averted it by merely asking. That seemed to satisfy her. "I read somewhere that this place was as good as Vizard's or Clancy's or a place like that," she said. "I would say that is absolutely not true!" I agreed with her, but I could see how a food writer with minimal experience (we have unusually many of those right now) would say something like that.
Judging by the reaction of the waitress to my compliments on this superior dinner, she had no idea what an outstanding buy this Reveillon was. So we have a brilliant bistro chef in a humdrum hotel dining room. They need to tweak this place a little. It would be great for an Eat Club.
5Fifty5. CBD: Marriott Hotel, 555 Canal 504-553-5638. Contemporary Creole.
