Tuesday, March 9. Half-Sandwich Miracle. Mediterranean Mistake. I made an interesting lunch-snack today. It started with toasting a slice of Pepperidge Farm 15-Grain bread. (Spread with some kind of locally-made preserves, that's in the rotation among my home breakfasts.) Sliced some Maytag white cheddar from a wheel that Graham Kreicker sent me a couple of months ago after his visit to New Orleans. (He also sent us a wheel of Maytag's more famous blue cheese.) Cut the bread in half and covered one side with the cheese. Added three dill pickle chips, covered it all with the other half-slice of bread, and put it into the toaster oven until the cheese softened.
The way was pointed by a Catholic grammar school cafeteria Friday standby. The cafeteria ladies, tired from a week of making shepherd's pie, roast chicken, and that red-brown shredded mystery meat they glopped onto mashed potatoes, dealt a slice of American cheese between the halves of a hamburger bun. They toasted fifty of them at a time in the oven. The only further service was topping the bun with a single dill pickle chip. Wuffo dat? I don't know, but the memory of it is so vivid that I expect it will still cross my mind during my last days.
Today's version was an upgrade of the bread and cheese. (Probably the same pickle, though.) The first bite told me I will make many more of these. As simple as this half-sandwich was, it hit the spot exactly. I would now be able to make it the eight hours until dinner without hunger pangs. The pickles were the magic.
The weather turned to muggy and misty after the radio show. Muggy and misty don't deter me the way cold and windy do. I walked the few blocks to Attiki, a restaurant I've wanted to try for some time. It's a Middle-Eastern café on Decatur Street that a few people have commented favorably about. If you didn't take a good look at the sign outside as you walked by, you'd probably take it for a bar. The handsome, old-style bar just inside certainly gives that impression. Tonight its stools were almost all occupied, some of them with smokers. Unclothed tables filled a small, dark, L-shaped dining room.
The waitress was eager to serve, and quickly fetched a bottle of Pilsner Urquell for me. She asked whether I wanted a glass. I've been asked this question much more frequently in restaurants all over town lately. Apparently a lot of beer drinkers are taking it straight from the bottle. I remember a time when, even in the city's seediest dives, beer was always served with some kind of glass, ranging from those little "pony" glasses with the Falstaff logo printed on the sides to the big frozen schooners like those at Liuzza's. Anyway, when I said I did want a glass, it was there immediately.
The menu seemed shorter than those of most Middle Eastern restaurants. Where I thought I'd find more Lebanese dishes, the menu listed hamburgers and hookahs. The hookah trend mystifies me, but I've never been a smoker. Who would place a hookah order? I wondered. Then somebody did. It was a couple in their thirties (I'm guessing), better dressed than most people in the room. Not what I imagined.
I started with hummus. It was so loose as to be runny. Tasted okay (just okay), but the texture was a problem, because the pita bread (warm, spongy, untoasted) wouldn't pick it up well. I've never encountered anything like this.
Rack of lamb for the entree. Four chops--fair enough, and certainly enough food. Or it would have been, if I'd been able to chew my way through them. The menu claimed a long marination in some miraculous garlic and herb concoction. I detected no trace of that either in the flavor or tenderness. By cutting the things into thin slices, I was able to get the equivalent of a chop and half down, but I gave up after that. Too much work and not enough pleasure. The saffron rice side dish option was way below the local Lebanese rice standard, which usually involves basmati rice. If this was that, then Uncle Ben must be making basmati now.
Forty-two dollars is more than I'm used to spending in a Middle Eastern place, too. Very disappointing. However, it did reduce the overabundance of food I would have eaten had it been good, and I guess that's something.
Attiki. French Quarter: 230 Decatur 504-587-3756. Mediterranean.
