Tuesday, June 26, 2012.
Ice Cream, Irish Chef, French Vegetarian, And College Inn.
Mary Ann is feeding the next crew of boys from Georgetown Prep tomorrow. She needed me to pick up some Italian bread for sandwiches at Frances's Bakery in Metairie. Frances's has been across from Dorignac's for decades, but it's been off my radar for most of that time. It loomed into view when, after the Jazz Festival this year, a number of people wanted to know where they could get crawfish bread in the off-season.
Crawfish bread is similar to a calzone. It's a half-moon (or Hubig's pie) shape, filled with crawfish in a thick etouffee, with a lot of cheese. It's baked and served hot. Anyone who eats them at the Jazz Festival will store a desire that may pop up at any time. Trouble is, the dish has not made it into widespread distribution. Sounds like something the pizza places ought to jump on.
Frances's has crawfish bread year-round. They make it in a sort of pizza on an open-face long loaf of bread, as well as the turnover style. Mary Ann picked up some and went wild over it, and a bunch of other things Frances's makes. Relatives of the people who own it also operate the little-known but century-old Cartozzo's Bakery, which makes superb Italian bread, mostly for restaurants.
Today's roundtable radio show was dominated by Adrian Simpson, a native of Liverpool, England and the owner of New Orleans Ice Cream Company. He has been on the show before and is very funny. He brought eleven kinds if ice cream, most of them new flavors. Baked Alaska, for one. Peach Melba, for another. Dreamsicle with satsuma stripes. Lemon doberge. On and on we sampled this stuff.
Matt Murphy, the chef and owner of the Irish House, was back-and-forthing with Adrian about things Irish and British. Soccer, for one thing. Guinness, for another. Matt brought about a dozen candy bars found only in Ireland, England or his store in the back of the restaurant. He has the candy shipped in across the pond and sells it, along with shirts and caps and other souvenirs. Most of this stuff was dramatically different from anything available from mars or its competitors. The Brits seem to be fond of candy bars whose centers are loaded with big bubbles. We went through most of the candy between tastes of the ice cream, giving ourselves a good sugar buzz before the first hour was up.
Rich Siegal was running late. He and his family have been involved in the operation of La Crepe Nanou since it opened in 1983. La Crepe (as most of its many regulars call it) is the longest-running of the French bistros currently open in New Orleans. Although it was indeed a crepe shop in its early days, it evolved into a full-menu dinner house, with a very traditional and stable menu. Rich reported that lunch is back for the first time in many years. But only Fridays.
It came out that Rich is a) a vegetarian and 2) in a band. He has the look of both, somehow. Adrian also is a musician. A few times during the show gave his impression of a solo Irish folk musician's incomprehensible singing in a dark corner of the 357th-best pub in Dublin. He must have got it right, because Matt--a native of Dublin--cracked up every time.
Do I even need to add that we had a bottle of wine (a rose from Burgundy) and a few bottles of beer open? This is what the round table shows are all about.
Dinner at Ye Olde College Inn, as I gather more information for a revised review. Preview: it will jump up from one to three stars. The place is giving me an interesting story. Imagine all of these ingredients mixed into the same restaurant, and tell me if you've ever heard of its like:
1. Beef Wellington is a regular special.
2. Video poker machines immediately adjacent to the table where I ate the above.
3. Beef for the filets mignon (and the Wellington) came from a cow raised by the restaurant's own Straight Stick Ranch.
4. The place originally opened as a barbecue joint.
5. The rest of the cow goes into the restaurant's hamburgers.
6. The potatoes alongside the Wellington were in three colors: white, yellow, and purple.
7. The biggest sign on the exterior advertises a whole oyster loaf and a half oyster loaf, as it did in the 1950s.
8. Those multi-colored potatoes came from a garden across the street from the restaurant.
9. Old guys drink beer every night at the bar.
10. You can get a chicken-fried steak poor boy.
I could go on, with no less incongruence.
My dinner began with a creamy, light, elegant eggplant soup that could have been served credibly ay Le Foret. It went on to a salad of shredded lettuce (a la poor boy sandwich) topped with a half-dozen large fried oysters and a chunky blue cheese dressing. It would have been better with remoulade. I have never thought that the College Inn--despite the fame inspired by that old sign--is all that good at frying oysters. And I still don't.
The beef Wellington's pastry wrapper enclosed a beautiful filet mignon, with an under-chopped mushroom duxelles (the only flaw), cut in half to expose the almost-obscene red meat. A red wine demi-glace did its part reasonably well. I would have melted some foie gras into it. But for God's sake, this is the College Inn!
A lot of people have been asking me for beef Wellington lately. It's all but extinct, the feature of the too-fancy French restaurants of the 1970s. But now I know where to send them.
Ye Olde College Inn. Carrollton: 3016 S Carrollton Ave. 504-866-3683.
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.
