Tuesday, June 21, 2011.
Gloomy End To Spring. Redemption. Nectar Soda Lady. Sycamore House's Chef Couple. Morton's.
The first day of summer day began soberly. It rained hard last night, and the skies were still dark with lightning-emitting clouds at mid-morning. It looked like tornado weather. That is not a paranoid reaction, what with the number and ferocity of twisters this year, including one a couple of weeks ago along the way we were traveling.
We were on our way to the funeral for Lucia Chirico, the daughter of Carmelo and Karen Chirico, the owners of Ristorante Carmelo. Her death was horrible and senseless. The visitation was the saddest I've ever witnessed. Everyone was in tears, and no small number were keening. Carmelo, Karen, and Lucia's sisters were in the deepest pit of grief. Hugging them, we felt at times that we were keeping them from collapsing to the floor. I cannot imagine the sadness they must be bearing.
We remained for a couple of hours. We were just heading out of Slidell when another wave of black, electricity-shooting clouds welled up. I suggested that we wait it out by having breakfast. Quite a few people have touted LA Pines for that meal. I already knew it was a minimal eatery of the kind that the television show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" would love. (In fact, the program did feature the place one week.)
Had the sky not looked ready to fall, I would never have persuaded Mary Ann to enter this place. Cheaply furnished and well worn, its usefulness as a shelter from a tornado seemed less than assured. In look and smell, LA Pines is a greasy spoon. But all its fans told me that, so I wasn't as taken aback as MA was.
She couldn't be persuaded to eat, though. I had the Philly cheese steak omelette. That was a new one on me, but it sounded intriguing. My hopes dipped when it came out with that flat-top-griddled, letter-folded aspect, with two triangular slices of pepperjack cheese semi-melting on the top. Uniformly-shredded hash browns on the side, with a biscuit.
Surprise! All of this was quite good. The omelette was filled with shredded beef, grilled onions and peppers, and more of the peppery cheese. The biscuit was homemade and tender. Even the factory-grated hash browns were above reproach. About the only gustatory matter I could complain about was the coffee, but even that wasn't too bad.
Mary Ann is always calling me a snob for looking down on basic food like this. Unfair! I cry. I only look down on it when it doesn't taste good. But she is put off by shabbiness. Isn't that just as snobby, if the food is good? And would this place do as much business if it were sleek and new? Not as many people would talk about it, that's for sure. Nor would it get on television. It's the Sleazy Chic effect, to use the late writer Don Lee Keith's brilliant expression.
The building did hold up during a very powerful storm, and we left unscathed. We talked all the way home about whether the tragedy we saw earlier would have an effect on the Chiricos' restaurant. It surely will--at the moment, Ristorante Carmelo is closed. But I cannot imagine that they won't go on. Life must continue in the face of everything, no matter how awful. [The restaurant would reopen the very next day, as it turned out, and Carmelo and Karen would host the scheduled wine dinner the following Saturday.]
The Tuesday round-table radio show hosted its usual eclectic mix of guests, and once again I missed the theme that Mary Ann intended. It began with Sister Mary Lou Specha, the Catholic nun who is the executive director of Café Reconcile. She brought one of her students, who has just moved into a job at Lüke. Like the other students at Café Reconcile, he came out of an at-risk family situation, learned his craft, and now will always be able to find a good job in the hospitality business. What impressed me most was his attitude. I'll bet this guy winds up running a restaurant someday.
They had to leave early. Tonight, Café Reconcile is serving the first of seven monthly fundraising dinners, each of them hooked up with one of John Besh's restaurants. It's Domenica night tonight.
Sitting over here were Stella LeGardeur and Michael Eastham. Both are chefs; they are married to one another. Is this a trend? I seem to be running into a lot of couples with that story lately. They operate the Sycamore House in Bay St. Louis, one of the few restaurants in that Mississippi Gulf Coast town to escape destruction by Hurricane Katrina. We had an excellent dinner there a few months ago. The food is New Orleans style with enough twists to call the place avant-garde, at least by Gulf Coast standards.
We had a second restaurateur couple at the other end of the desk. Tommy and Maria DeLaune are the owners of Redemption, which took over the 1914 church that until the hurricane housed the unforgettable Christian's restaurant. The owners of Christian's sold DeLaune the building, but not the name or the recipes. So this is a new restaurant.
Similarities are unavoidable, however. The building is so distinctive that you can't go to Redemption without thinking of Christian's. This may evolve into more than coincidental likeness, though. Tommy said that so many people ask for Christian's smoked soft-shell crab that they're thinking of adding their own version to the menu. Why not? Clancy's has unabashedly served that for years, and restaurants have copied one another's signature dishes for as long as there have been restaurants.
The most encouraging thing I learned from talking with the DeLaunes is that Tommy has been in the wholesale seafood business here for decades. I knew he sold fish, but didn't know how deep he was into that enterprise. This will be good for the restaurant, enriching its menu with lots of fishy variety.
Also with us was Susan Dunham, who I have not seen in many years. About twenty years ago she began bottling nectar syrup made according to the old I.L. Lyons recipe. That's the outfit that made nectar syrup for K&B, for a century the most hallowed vendor of nectar sodas at its drugstore fountains. Talk of nectar--a flavor that is as uniquely the property of New Orleans as the muffuletta, gumbo, and coffee with chicory--always gets people going.
The other person in the studio was me. This was the first round table show I attended in person since my ankle-fracture three and a half months ago. I'm not sure my physical presence made it any better, though. I think the somber first act of the day chilled my humor.
The Marys picked me up afterwards and we went to dinner at Morton's Steakhouse. I can't remember what exactly it was for, but we all agree that I owed that to the girls. I was up for it, myself. I have an unusually acute appetite for steak lately. I will say that it's because the muscles in my injured leg need the protein to rebuild.
Morton's has restructured its lowball summer offering in an appealing way. For a C-note, they used to give each of two people an appetizer, a salad, a small filet, and a dessert, with a side to split. They've added ten bucks to the price for two and transferred a choice of seafood appetizers to the same plate with the steak, for a surf-and-turf deal. But a more important improvement is that they now allow participants in this to upgrade the steak. The petit filet before was too small to cook properly, and not specified as USDA Prime. I would gladly pay a $16 upcharge to get the sirloin strip, guaranteed Prime and the best steak here. You can also include as many people as you like in this deal, even odd numbers.
The management remembered a similar dinner I had with the girls (who love Morton's) a couple of years ago, and that we liked the banquette table in the corner. We slid into that table and went to work on the good, cabbage-size onion bread and butter, I with a glass of wine. Salads: a Caesar for the girls, the chopped salad for me. The latter was better than I remembered.
Then the steaks. Mary Leigh liked hers well enough, but the twenty-ounce sirloin before me was unquestionably the best steak I've had at Morton's, ever. The waiter was unusually responsive to our request for encrusting the steaks Pittsburgh style, and it came out exactly right: thick, very juicy, with some excitement for a chain. For once I didn't miss either the sizzling butter or any other kind of steak. I never would if every steakhouse could bring a steak to this perfect point.
Meanwhile, Mary Ann got the surf parts of both of our entrees--a crab cake and the breadcrumb-crusted giant shrimp Alexander. She also picked at our salads and sides (asparagus and baked potato). So she didn't need to order anything. The total check before tip came to $163, which is just over half what we spent the last time I brought the Marys here. This really is a good deal.
What a busy day! Good thing it was the longest day of the year.
LA Pines Cafe. Slidell: 1061 Robert Blvd. 985-641-6196.
Morton's The Steakhouse. CBD: 365 Canal (Canal Place Mall). 504-566-0221.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
