Tuesday, March 6, 2012.
Wild Time At The Round Table. El Gato Negro.
If all goes well, the Tuesday round-table radio show turns into what sounds more like a big table of friends having dinner than a radio interview. It usually takes half the show for the happy gas to start working. Today we were there in about ten minutes.
Most of the guests have been on the radio before and felt no reluctance to speak up. Chef Duke Locicero (below left, right) came ready to tout his upcoming Duke's On The Basin. That's a big new seafood restaurant and market he says will be open by the Fourth of July.
That will be only the second restaurant with a lake view to open in West End. Behind the not-so-good chain Landry's, the restaurant will front the New Basin Canal with a pier big enough for boats to slide into place and dine aboard. He says it will be a casual restaurant with traditional New Orleans flavors. He also said that it will not focus on enormous piles of fried food. I'm glad to hear that, but I'll bet that more than a few Orleanians will have different expectations. If he doesn't open with a massive seafood platter, he'll add it soon after.
Most of the restaurant will be on the second floor, built to stand up to another Katrina or worse. (Since the restaurant is outside levee protection, it will need that configuration someday.) The are down below will have a retail market for fresh seafood, as well as an oyster bar and boiled seafood.
A contingent from Broussard's was with us, their proximate cause being the release of the restaurant's new cookbook this week. The writer Ann Benoit accompanied Chef Gunter Preuss (above left, left) and his wife Evelyn. What more do you need to know other than that it's big, beautiful, full of photos, has recipes for the best current dishes, and includes an illustrated history of the ninety-year-old classic Creole restaurant?
So we were soon off and running about restaurants, New Orleans, food, the French Quarter, and everything else. That never stopped for the rest of the show. One issue in particular got us going: does a wall full of awards mean that a restaurant is better or worse than one that doesn't. Duke says better. I say worse. He also got on my about my statement that meatballs and spaghetti is kid food. Gunter said he thought French Quarter restaurants don't get enough attention from the press. I think he's right about that.
Paige Saleun--who with her chef husband Jacques operated Chateau Du Lac in old Metairie--had an agenda item. She is involved in Lycee Francais de la Nouvelle-Orleans--a new public charter school Uptown. This Sunday is its annual fundraising event, Fete de la Musique. There will indeed be a good deal of music there from name local bands. And food, with an emphasis on the French restaurants around town, whose chefs are always there when anything promoting French culture needs a hand. In this case, the school teaches everything except English in French. That's an old tradition here in New Orleans.
But we talked about Chateau du Lac, too. The chef called in to tell us he was working on a batch of his unique foie gras gumbo. He's always working, which is why he wasn't in the studio. Filling his chair was Jeff Hirstius, who runs the dining room and wine departments. He brought four bottles of wines and some beautiful glassware. And his sparkling sense of humor.
With all these talkative people and the wines, the lid blew off the show at around a quarter to five. Sometimes people tell me they are listening to these shows with enjoyment, but can't make out who's talking. It was a little easier today, what with the Preusses' unmistakable German accents, and Duke's obvious East Jefferson Warrior lilt.
I actually had to sit still for fifteen minutes in the empty studio after the show to calm down enough to go to dinner.
The venue tonight was the new Lakeview edition of El Gato Negro, a two-location Mexican restaurant operated by Juan Contreras. (The other one is in the French Market.) He took over the former Madrid on the corner of Harrison Avenue and Milne Boulevard some six months ago. (Backstory: the owner of Madrid was Juan Hernandez, who used to partner with Contreras on a combination Spanish-Mexican restaurant in Kenner.)
El Gato Negro was already on my map because it's one of an injured handful of restaurants serving molé poblano, the superb chocolate-based, spicy, savory Mexican sauce. I was tempted to get it tonight--it's one of my favorite flavors--but that's what I had last time. The pork chops looked interesting, with two sauces: one a house-smoked chilpotle pepper sauce with butter, the other a green chili sauce. They were marinated in something that made them red, and grilled on so hot an open grill that one could have played tic-tac-toe on the crosshatched grill marks. Beans and rice, flour tortillas.
That meal began with a crock of the house dip, combining queso, chorizo, beans, and peppers. I should never order anything like this, because I eat it all, and that's a fat bomb. Good, though.
I bumped into Juan Contreras on the way out. He said that he had been listening to me on the radio since he was a boy. Today, his own son, a wrestler at Brother Martin, is semi-responsible for Juan's having to get around on crutches. They were funning around and Juan popped his Achilles tendon. I can sympathize: this is where I was last year at this time. Same foot, too.
The restaurant was busy and loud, more from the music than the crowd. I like the way they display their collection of tequilas. A shelf made out of crown molding runs along the tops of all the walls. If there are not a hundred different tequilas here, then there are two hundred.
El Gato Negro. Lakeview: 300 Harrison Ave. 504-488-0107.
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.
