Tuesday, June 7, 2011.
Louisiana Rambles. Mississippi's Bill Vrazel. K of K Gee's. Sno-Man.
The Tuesday Round Table radio show was more mixed than usual. Or so I thought. Turns out that Mary Ann had a theme in mind, and after the show she chewed me out for not enunciating it. It was supposed to be about traveling to nearby places for eating and drinking. I didn't pick up on that.
Kathy Williams of K Gee's in Mandeville said that her little seafood restaurant is doing fine after one year, thank you. But that opening a new oyster bar just as the BP oil spill occurred was kind of tough. No oysters, to name one problem. But that has been remedied--I ate raw oysters in both of two recent lunches there, and they were very good.
She also gladdened my heart by saying they only serve wild-caught catfish--a rarity hereabouts. Bozo's is the only other place I know that does that this side of Des Allemands.
Elsewhere at the Round Table was Ian McNulty, who has a new book out called Louisiana Rambles. Good idea: instead of writing about the food, music, and other diversions he found while traveling around the state, he writes about the process of doing so. I'm in the middle of reading the book, and it has me wanting to kick myself. When I was Ian's age, I drove all over the place eating, too. But I never wrote about any of those trips. What a lost opportunity!
I knew Ian was doing some radio stuff, because he's on WWNO, about the only radio station I ever listen to. I didn't know that he's a member of the New Orleans Rugby Club, nor that the team recently won the national championship. We had a little fun talking about the leather balls you need to play rugby, and the hooker position on the field.
I knew but had forgotten that Ian is the restaurant critic for Gambit. That came out at the very end of the show. If I'd thought of that, I would have needled him (although it's not his fault) for not giving ratings to restaurant reviews in Gambit.
Chef Bill Vrazel, of the Gulfport restaurant of the same name, was the other half of Mary Ann's take-a-drive theme. I've long liked Vrazel's, and confirmed why a few months ago when MA and I had a great dinner there. It's an interesting place, on the site of the former Angelo's--a restaurant most famous for having a live oak tree growing right through the ceiling of its main dining room. The restaurant has been nearly destroyed by both Hurricanes Camille and Katrina, but came back as quickly as possible afterwards.
The most talkative of our guests today was Ronnie Sciortino. He has many stories to tell, because he's the owner of the Sno-Wizard Company. His uncle George Ortolano created the sno-ball machine as we know it. The term sno-ball, too. Ortolano didn't protect either of those idea very well with patents, and so there are many brands of ice-shaving machines out there made more or less the same way. And around New Orleans, "sno-ball" is the generic term for what everybody else in America calls a "sno-cone." (Except Hawaii, which makes the same thing with a totally different machine and calls the product "shave ice."
Sno-balls are an item of intense interest around New Orleans, and Ronnie spent all his time on that. But we could talk about cheffing, too. He was a chef for quite a few years, and was present at the birth of the original gourmet Creole bistro: the second Stephen and Martin's, in 1976. Ronnie demonstrated his cooking skills by preparing a baked oyster dish right there in the studio. He even brought his own toaster oven to cook it. Wish I'd been there to take a taste. (I'm still hosting the shows from home.)
Even though all the guests stayed for the whole three hours, I think we could have kept going with this show for another one or two more.
I didn't really eat anything today, to make up for the red beans and bread pudding yesterday and the big pile of food they'll put in front of me tomorrow at the Impastato's Eat Club.
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.
