Tuesday, July 24, 2012.
Guillermo, Frostop, Young Cocktail Experts, And Tom Wolfe.
I permitted myself the luxury of driving Mary Leigh's Audi into town, what her being out of town and my car's being in the shop. It's a fine car to drive, although it's a little too sleek for a guy like me to be driving.
The roundtable radio show today was one of the good ones, complete with unexpected pop-in guests. The main players were:
Guillermo Peters, the city's best Mexican chef, now managing the Canal Street Bistro. He's cooking his matchless Mexican food four dinners a week, and operating a busy breakfast and lunch café every day. Some of the latter is Mexican, but most of it is basic New Orleans neighborhood-style eats.
Cole Newton, proprietor and chief mixologist of the 12 Mile Limit Bar on the corner of Telemachus and Baudin, in the part of Mid-City where I used to live (and wish I still did). The bar's name is a reference to a Prohibition-era law that required boats to be a dozen miles from shore before a bottle of booze could be in one's possession. I never heard of the place, but Mary Ann saw his name in the Times-Picayune, and booked him. Cole does not look old enough to be drinking, let alone owning a bar. (He's really 28.) He also is much more articulate and better versed than most bartenders I know.
Tom Wolfe, the proprietor of (going backward's): Wolfe's Beachside Bistro (or something like that) in Pass Christian; Wolfe's on Rampart and Dumaine (the former Peristyle); Wolfe's in the Warehouse District Marriott Hotel; and Wolfe's of New Orleans, his first restaurant, near the Marina. Before that, he worked for Emeril and a few other majors.
Keil Moss, whose family owns both Keil's and Moss Antiques on Royal Street. For our purposes, he's the owner of the reopened Ted's Frostop on South Claiborne, near the Tulane baseball field. He brought me a Frostop bowling shirt that I will treasure but never wear in public. We revealed the secret sauce of the famous Frostop Lot-O-Burger: a mixture of mayonnaise and yellow mustard. We also learned that Frostop goes back to the 1920s in Ohio, and that the franchiser no longer exists. Which sounds to me like anyone can open a Frostop. "But not a Ted's Frostop!" Keil insisted. Ted Sternberg is retired now, but he did much with the Frostop franchise around New Orleans.
The first pop-in guest was Matt Murphy, from the Irish House. All he wanted was for me to sign a copy of Hungry Town for a friend. Long as he was there, he joked around in his Irish way for a few minutes. This is so much fun that I encourage all chefs, restaurateurs, wine guys, and others in the food-and-drink biz to come in for our Tuesday shows, impromptu, whenever they want. (I'm thinking of the Johnny Carson Tonight Show, where Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, or Charles Nelson Reilly would suddenly walk on and set the show on fire.)
The second pop-up was a guy who edits a magazine about cocktails. He wore the same kind of glasses that Cole Newton does, and is about the same age. (Coincidence: Guillermo and I wear the same kind of glasses, and are contemporaries.) Since I wasn't expecting him, I never did catch his name, but he knew a lot about cocktails, and joined in our assessment of the unusual concoctions that Cole mixed for us.
Now that was a radio show.
I have been eating entirely too much lately, and I decided to eat light tonight. By my standards, anyway. I attempted to do this at Mr. Gyros, whose new location on Severn I had not yet visited. I began with a small Greek salad, which here is covered with a generous amount of tzatziki--a delicious but harmless cold sauce made mostly of yogurt.
Then moussaka. Big brick of the stuff, with thick chunks of eggplant and zucchini and a well-made bechamel separating the layers of ground beef. Delicious, but I could only finish about two-thirds of it.
Dessert was galaktoboureko, a wonderful Greek dessert of phyllo wrapped around a very fluffy custard. I would not give Mr. Gyros's version a high mark, but I am spoiled by the galaktoboureko made by my recently deceased, dear friend Julia Newsham. Hers will never be surpassed.
Mr. Gyros. Metairie: 3363 Severn Ave. 504-833-9228.
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.
