Tuesday, July 31, 2012.
Grilled By Peggy. Main Actors From The Satchmo Festival.
Peggy Scott Laborde--a producer at Channel 12 and my co-author of Lost Restaurants of New Orleans--asked me to present myself at the station to be interviewed for a new show she's cobbling together called "Made In New Orleans." She had a long list of foods for me to comment on. I don't think I'm the best person for this, because a lot of food icons of which we are most proud cannot stand up to rigorous standards of taste.
Hubig's Pies, for example. The city is in an uproar because the old fried-pie maker burned down a few days ago. The story took over at least half of the Times-Picayune's front page. The front page! Where else would a fire in a bakery get so much ink? Already the benefits are in the planning stages.
Mary Ann was still calling guests for today's roundtable radio show this morning. She has ice in her veins, always running alongside the cliff like that. Never a buffer anywhere. I didn't get her list of guests from her when, on my way into town, I detoured over to La Carreta, where the Marys were lunching. The names (most of them, anyway) were scrawled on a piece of brown paper torn out of a paper bag.
But that was a favor, because the guests and I had a lot of fun with the scrap throughout the show. There were more of them than I had microphones for; three people not on MA's list showed. But it wound up being a good program.
Richard Ellis is a certified sommelier (wine advisor) working at Cork & Bottle, the wine store in the American Can Apartments on bayou St. John. He said he used to be a waiter at Antoine's, and that he served me a couple of times. He began the party well by opening a bottle of Burgans Albarino, a Spanish white made from the produce of hundreds of grape growers. I was very impressed by this. Not as sharply acidic as I expected, but with much more fruit extract. A terrific wine, I thought.
An hour later, Richard opened a bottle of Chateau Larose Trintaudon, a Bordeaux I have not had in years. The color was so dark and purple that I would have called it a California wine twenty years ago. But that is now the word standard. It was good but needed time in the bottle--although, as a 2006, it already had some.
The five o'clock wine was Abstract, the most expensive ($30), a Rhone-grape blend using both Syrah and the unrelated Petite Syrah. mostly-Cabernet from Orin Swift, the man who brought us The Prisoner. This label is much stranger even than that: it's all black, with the printing done in clear raised ink. You have to rock the bottle back and forth under a bright light to see what's on the label, and even that might not be enough. Big wine, not ready to drink.
Next to Richard the wine guy was a chef I've known for decades, but not seen in nearly as long. Cecil Palmer is a native of Kingston, Jamaica who came to New Orleans to work at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. That's the good-taste incubator that gave us Gerard Crozier, Willy Coln, Archie Casbarian, Antoine Camenzuli, Felix Gallerani, and quite a few other lights of the late 1990s. When Willy Coln left to open his own restaurant, Palmer came with him. Willy Coln's restaurant was German, but he included quite a few Caribbean dishes from the hands of Palmer.
Palmer (nobody calls him by his first name) later became well known for a succession of small Jamaican restaurants, whose food became (and still is) a fixture at the major food festivals around town. Aside from that, he said, he spends more time with real estate than cooking. He remains the dean of Jamaican cookery hereabouts.
Palmer will be at the Satchmo Summerfest this weekend. I learned that from Georgia Rhody, who was here from the French Quarter Festival organization. Claude and Donna Black will be there, too. They have owned the Plum Street Sno-Ball Stand for several decades, and seemed to be very happy about that. Plum Street is second only to Hansen's Sno-Bliz in the pantheon of great old sno-ball stands. It opened in the mid-1940s, operating out of an old grocery store and serving at least a million sno-balls there. They brought a few for us to taste.
Claude says that the most popular flavor remains strawberry, followed closely by a dead heat between chocolate and ice cream. (The ice cream flavor, for those reading this who didn't grow up in New Orleans, is a yellow syrup with a decided vanilla flavor but also something else that makes it taste creamy, even when no cream or condensed milk is added.) They said that Plum Street currently lists ninety-two sno-ball flavors, not one of which is licorice--a flavor I had at Plum Street in my twenties, and have never seen since.
Richard Fiske came from the Bombay Club. That suave eatery-drinkery makes much out of summer, with not only a special menu (entrees from $17 to $22, which is a step or two down) but also a weekly lobster dinner for $25. Lobster prices this year are very low, accompanied by great quality, Richard says.
And he still has live music every night, often as not a name local performer.
I had an hour's worth of recording to do after the show, but I didn't like the way I sounded. An off-peak voice is normal after three hours of talking while drinking wine and eating sno-balls. I will re-record this in a few days, mainly for my own vanity. Frequently over the years I have been told by clients and salespeople that a spot that I thought sounded awful was the best one they ever heard.
To dinner at The Quarter View. I haven't eaten there in years, mainly because my dinners there were unimpressive. It's a good-looking place, interestingly designed with a high ceiling and murals that do indeed give what feels like a New Orleans view. It's noisy, but I've heard worse. The food, however, struck me as a lot like Copeland's, but not quite as god. Now, because of a long decline in the food at Copeland's, they seem to be at par not just in terms of style but also execution.
The dinner wasn't terrible, though. It started off well, with a very pleasant waitress who answered my usual long list of questions with patience. The house salad that comes with the entree was generous and well-made with a remoulade dressing on the side. (I wished they'd tossed it, but I've given up on that in casual restaurants.)
The entree reminded me of the most obvious reason the Quarter View is as popular as it is. All the food here is served in gigantic portions for prices in the mid to low teens. Before me was a fried soft-shell crab--on the small side, and something less than vivid in its flavors. Under that was at least a half-pound of angel hair pasta with a spicy orange sauce studded with crawfish tails. It was decidedly spicy, and reasonably good as far as that goes. I ate a third of it before my palate gave out.
My table was next to that of thirty or forty people ranging from age from nine to ninety. They were celebrating someone's birthday. I joined in the singing, and they sent me a slice of birthday cake. A lady stood up and played a medley of old New Orleans jazz numbers on a trumpet.
Mary Ann thought the Quarter View had just reopened after been closed awhile. I don't think she's right about that. They did recently rebuild and expand their parking lot--maybe they shut down for a few days for that purpose. It's a welcome enhancement. Three time out of four that I tried to eat here, I couldn't park.
To the guy who says that I shouldn't put personal stuff in this journal (as I always have since starting it in 1970): my blood pressure wavered between 130 and 140 today. He never misses a word of what I write, and he likes to write a fake-angry letter every time I note something like that.
Quarter View. Metairie: 613 Clearview Pkwy. 504-887-3456.
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.
