Tuesday, February 23, 2010. Catch. After shooting with it for the past few days, I'm convinced that my new Olympus is a better camera than the more expensive Nikon robbed from me in Belize. It's smaller and lighter--an Olympus hallmark. If it's missing a feature that the Nikon had, I haven't found it yet. If it weren't for the unexpected expense of having to buy it so far ahead of schedule, I'd be ecstatic.
Today it took pictures of the food I found during my first visit to the new seafood restaurant Catch. That's in the former Magazine Street location of Semolina--as well as many other restaurants over the years, stretching back to Flagons in the 1980s. Catch is owned by the Beirut-born trio of Hicham Khodr, Tarek Tay, and Gabriel Saliba. They own the Byblos restaurants; Hicham is also the recent-times proprietor of the Camellia Grill and the Gumbo Shop.
It's a good idea, opening a casual seafood restaurant Uptown. Except for Casamento's and Frankie and Johnny's--both of which have their limitations--no such places exist in those precincts. No Drago's, no Bozo's, no Sid-Mar's. Catch might do very well, if it catches on.
After a bit of renovation (the Semolina look was a little goofy), the restaurant came out handsome. It's one big dining room with big windows and a lofty ceiling. What looks like an oyster bar just inside the entrance is actually a standard drinking bar. They do, however, shuck oysters to order in the kitchen. Many of these wind up on the grill for the making of oysters a la Drago, a dish that has become essential in any restaurant purporting to serve fresh local seafood.
I had some of those. The oysters were large, the garlic component at the extreme I enjoy, and the butter was sizzling on the hot shells. Less good was the oysters Rockefeller soup, which needs to be refined a bit. (Note to anyone trying to make this potentially excellent soup: forget the spinach, and use celery, parsley, green onions, and fennel for the greens.)
Somewhere along the way I was brought some hush puppies, which were original and good for two reasons. First of all, they were made with a bit of crabmeat and shrimp in the batter. Second, they were squirted with a very peppery sauce--might have been Sriracha. At long last, a few restaurants are making the improvements that hush puppies have needed for decades.
Then a crabmeat pizza. Pizza isn't a major specialty here, what with Rocky's next door. Nevertheless, I've had much worse. (At Rocky's, to name one.) On the other hand, cheese and crabmeat are an iffy combination, and with all the cheese here the crabmeat was lost. It wound up as a good tomato-free cheese pizza.
All this food appeared without my asking for it. Tarek Tay was in the house and kept wanting me to try things. Even after eating halves of everything (except the oysters; I don't leave oyster behind) I was stuffed. I couldn't leave, however, without at least a taste of the fried goods. I asked for a half-order of catfish. The crust was thick--too thick, I thought. And the seasoning was offbeat. The chef explained this: it's Old Bay seasoning. It and he are from the Northeast. Ah. Also on the menu is fish and chips, whose soft batter's propensity for taking up oil makes it one of the worst widely-consumed dishes on earth.
I think this deviation is ill-advised. If Catch is going after the Uptown casual fried seafood house customer, why do it with off-standard recipes? It is known how to fry perfect seafood. If one deviates from that, and it's like leaving a mountaintop. The only direction is down. This place should be packed, particularly at this early time in its history. It wasn't.
On the other hand, it's still on the new side, and the owners are adept restaurateurs. The service, wine, prices and environment are right. Parking's a little rough, but not too bad.
I headed home via Magazine Street to River Road. There is no major street in New Orleans in worse shape than Magazine Street. It's such a great part of town it ought to move up the priority list for repair. Maybe they can scrape the asphalt off the old streetcar tracks that are still there, and put in a new streetcar line.
