Tuesday, January 8, 2013.
General Pakenham Visits. Eleven King Cakes. WalkOns.
Cold and wet. With the exception of hurricanes and tornados, that's New Orleans weather at its worst. As I walked through a forty-five-degree drizzle to the radio station, I tried to remember a less comfortable day. I thought of one immediately. February 7, 1978, I had a Mardi Gras party at my apartment a block off St. Charles Avenue at Girod. I thought lots of people would show up. Few did, but for good reason: temperatures in the thirties. And a rain too light to keep people off the streets, but too heavy for anybody with sense. It got colder all day, bottoming out at 30 degrees. Comus, for the first time in its 122-year history, canceled its parade.
Remembering that day made today seem warm and sunny.
On another miserable day, in 1815, the Battle of New Orleans was fought. The New Orleans Hotel Collection, in whose employ is the superb French chef Agnes Bellet, is celebrating the anniversary. They'll stage a dinner two nights hence featuring the food that might have been eaten by the British general, Edward Pakenham, who would die in the battle. Chef Agnes and General Pakenham himself (portrayed by a man named Pickles) visited the radio show to run though the battle and the dinner.
That was amusing. When those guests left, they were followed by Greg Sorenson, the scion of the family that makes Creole Royale fruitcakes. Those are the ones actually worth eating, in cans whose tops depict Charles Reinecke's watercolor of St. Louis Cathedral. I usually buy a few of them, but failed to do so this year. No problem, Greg said. The demand is so great that they sell a lot of off-season fruitcakes.
And even more of their on-season product. Greg carried a stack of king cakes, among which was one made expressly for the Krewe of Zulu. It departs from the standard purple-green-gold king cake color scheme, decorated instead with the black and yellow of Zulu.
And what's the first thing you think of when you hear the name Zulu? Coconut, of course. And what did they fill this cake with? Coconut creme! The flavor was good, but the cake was a little heavy. So were the rest of the king cakes from Baker Maid, the local outfit that bakes all this) took a page from its fruitcake marketing and is selling king cake by the individually-wrapped slice. Every slice has a baby.
After Greg departed, in walked Chef Brian Landry from Borgne. We talked about that restaurant for awhile, and the program John Besh has organized and backed to make it possible for a young local person to go to culinary school in New York.
All of these were interesting gusts, but the Round Table magic wasn't there. Mary Ann and I need to have a talk about this.
Then I had to figure out what to do with eleven king cakes, without bringing any home.
Mary Leigh called at the end of the show wondering if I would be interested in dinner. What's the matter with The Boy? I asked. He has a nine o'clock class, she explained. Yep, non-availability would be about the only thing that would result in her having me as a date instead of The Boy. But that's perfectly right.
She suggested we go to WalkOns, the big new sports bar on Poydras at South Rampart. I have been thinking of trying the place for awhile, but knew that some day the Marys would want to accompany me there.
Esquire named WalkOns one of the best sports bars in America. It has a great location--easy walking distance to the Superdome. It looks good, and has television screens every couple of feet. Big bar. Cute waitresses. And Mary Leigh says that they have the best cheese fries in town. As we discussed in this space a couple of days ago, that datum would not be a draw for me, but whatever my daughter wants, she gets.
I had time to look over the menu before ML arrived. It was more abbreviated than I expected, although it had all the basics and a suggestion of Louisiana. One item that caught my eye was a two-foot-long seafood poor boy for thirty-something dollars. If you eat the whole thing--and a full order of cheese fries, and a couple of other sides--you get it for free. The waitress said that people try to eat it all the time, but so far none of her customers had succeeded.
Mary Leigh emerged out of the cold drizzle. Cheese fries, please. They were waffle-cut fries, with fried hot peppers and green onions on top of the cheese. Not bad, not enough to bring me in here.
The same could be said about everything else that came to the table. The perky waitress said that the soup of the day was her personal favorite: crab and shrimp bisque. The cup was only two-thirds full, and the soup was less than hot, but tasted okay. The waitress told me that I had gotten the last order, and the soup du jour was now tortilla and chili pepper or something like that. Yeah, it's always satisfying to get the last dregs from the pot.
ML had a hamburger, of course. It was dense and overworked, and had the look of a machine-punched job. On my plate was a smallish fillet of blackened redfish, some overcooked broccoli, and a salad that had not been tossed but looked as if it had been thrown. And a rectangular biscuit of the dreariest, driest kind.
None of the specialties of a sports bar appeal much to me. I don't like sports. I'm lukewarm about beer. I can only eat one hamburger a month. Beautiful young women look upon me as avuncular at best. I really don't belong. On the other hand, I have enjoyed most of what I've eaten at The Chimes. WalkOns's food makes eating at The Chimes seem like Commander's Palace.
I'm not strong on the giant portions served in sports bars. Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with that here. I'm happy to say that even after eating everything before me in three courses, my diet is preserved.
I kept all this to myself. I hate to disdain one of my daughter's favorite places. But knowing what she likes, I can't figure out why she thinks WalkOns is anything more than ordinary.
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