Tuesday, June 15. Bistro Daisy. Mary Ann said I ought to ask her brother Tim Connell to join me for dinner tonight. He's home alone while his wife and daughter are on a cruise in Europe. This unfairness to dad resonated with me, so we arranged it.
"What's this Bistro Daisy?" he asked. "I pass in front of it all the time but I've never looked in."
"Let's go there!" I said. "It's been too long since my last time, and it's terrific." Then I wondered whether he would like it. Like Mary Ann and all of her siblings, Tim is not exactly a gourmet. But Bistro Daisy's menu includes enough familiar things that I didn't think it would be a problem.
Mary Ann would say right now, if she were looking over my shoulder (and, in fact, she is), that someone can fail to be a gourmet and yet be a good person. And that my being a gourmet doesn't make me better than anybody else. I hear this kind of thing a lot. It must be the American dream of equality. I'm all for equality, but at the macroscopic level. I'm more of a pursuit of happiness kind of guy.
None of this came into play during our dinner, which was so exquisitely fine that I am on the verge of giving a fifth star to Bistro Daisy. And I don't think chef-owner Anton Schulte was even there that night (although his wife Diane was).
The place was busy for a Tuesday night in summer. I picked up a celebratory buzz. Tim beat me there, and to a glass of Pinot Noir, which I asked to have duplicated to keep the table balanced. As if selected to match the wine, here came a few slices of seared tuna with a cold pesto sauce as an amuse-bouche. So we're off to a great start.
Tim was intrigued by the pasta special, a ravioli stuffed with crawfish, mushrooms, and mascarpone cheese. That sort of thing is always good here, and we split an order of it as an appetizer. It was rich almost to the point of being too rich--my favorite place to find my food. Almost too peppery, almost too salty, almost too fishy, almost too anything--that the point on the ingredient axis where the best flavor often is.
The symmetry continued into the entree, parting company only at the point where beef heads left and lamb heads right. Tim had an arresting, corpulent, overcooked (for me; the entire Connell family eats atrociously well done beef) filet mignon, sitting in a pool of red wine demi-glace and topped with a disk of something I couldn't figure out until I tasted it. Even then, it was like eating a piece of butter. Turned out to be foie gras cooked down into something almost like butter, with the rendered fat from the liver showing up as marbling. Now that's unique. Very good, too.
But I liked mine even better. Lamb sirloin is not a cut we see very often. It's harder to get right than lamb chops, because it doesn't have as much fat. This was about three inches of the sirloin, sliced and fanned out in a magnificent sauce whose gelatin content that made my lips stick together. It had a touch of sweetness and flecks of herbs. The risotto with fresh grape tomatoes and asparagus did what it was supposed to do. This is the best dish I've had here, and one of the best I've had anywhere this year. Eating it triggered my thinking about the fifth star, and another trip here to confirm it.
The dessert was billed as a cheesecake, but with all its physical qualities altered. Not a slice, but a dollop of the cheesecake custard. Not a crust, but a round tuille. And cherries in the sauce. Good enough, but more impressive visually.
Through the evening, we discussed our common interests. The immediate futures of our pampered, eighteen-year-old daughters. Our wives and how they drive us crazy. Mary Ann, who Tim had to endure as a big sister for the first three decades of his life, until I relieved him. The insuperable amount of work we both have. And then our very different occupations. Tim works for the Army Corps of Enigneers, and he had a lot of insights--most of them disdainful--of the oil spill and its cast of characters.
The dinner didn't go on as long as it would have if the girls had been with us, but we both have a lot of work to do at home.
Bistro Daisy. Uptown: 5831 Magazine. 504-899-6987. Contemporary Creole.
