Tuesday, May 1, 2012.
Pink Wine, Flaming Torchman, Langenstein Scion. Tomas Bistro.
I tell guests on our round table Tuesday radio shows that they are not there to be interviewed, but to be part of a conversation. But sometimes the guests have so little in common that the parley never gets off the ground. It happened today.
Fortunately, Sara Kavanaugh was there. She manages the dining room and wine cellar at the Windsor Court Grill Room, and she brought some wines for us to sample. All roses--wines that we don't drink often, largely because they have a reputation as not being serious juice. That's actually true of a lot of roses, but there is such a thing as excellent rose--and we had some this afternoon. A Bandol and a Pinot Noir represented France, while a third wine from northeastern Spain completed an agreeable tasting.
That loosened everybody up. But Trey Lanaux--representing the fourth generation of the family that runs the excellent Langenstein's grocery stores--had to leave after an hour. I had to enter interview mode to find out that the store is celebrating ninety years this mont. And that they decided not to lower prices to 1922 levels when they discovered that a loaf of bread then was a nickel.
Trey was replaced later by Sarah Burnette from the Audubon Zoo, here to talk about the Zoo To-Do this Friday. Nothing but good news there: the event has raised over a million dollars a year. We all crossed our fingers that it wouldn't rain.
Hassan Khalegi from the Flaming Torch and Moe Bader from the Old N'Awlins Cookery (now an arm of Oceana Grill) talked about their own restaurants. Hassan cleared up the story behind the restaurant's name. While the Flaming Torch on Magazine Street bears little likeness to the old Flaming Torch in the French Quarter and other places, it is actually a direct descendant. The original Flaming Torch was big-time memorable. It cooked most of its entrees with a gas blowtorch. (I am not kidding.) That might have made the jump to Magazine Street, but the construction of the building made the fire department nix the torches. The original blowtorch chef was a guy named Poori. He cooked mostly French food. He decided in 2004 to leave the restaurant business, and Hassan--who had worked with him for some time--took over.
All nice people. But I was happy when this show ended. And even happier to learn that Mary Ann was agreeable to having dinner with me. I've postponed dining at Tomas Bistro until she could join me. (I show that restraint for every restaurant she really likes--Commander's Palace, for example. Or Ruth's Chris Steak House. Or the Company Burger.)
I liked what owner Tommy Andrade (he of Tommy's across the street) and chef Guy Sockrider were doing at Tomas Bistro when we first went there. But I had one misgiving: the place was mostly unpopulated. Not tonight--or any night lately, they say. In fact, we were asked whether we had a reservation. We almost needed one to get in.
We started with vichyssoise and barbecue oysters. Through most of our history, guessing who got what would have been a no-brainer. But Mary Ann has developed a new taste for oysters, and she beat me to ordering the barbecue bivalves here. They were big (as they have been lately), fried, and set in a sauce that was a greatly-altered version of barbecue shrimp sauce, neither as peppery nor as buttery, but with enough other flavors going on to make an exceedingly good ensemble. MA was wild about the dish. I think the dish needs a different name, but I liked it too.
The vichyssoise was too thick and rich by a factor of two. It did not need my favorite touch: a little crumbled blue cheese on top. (Got the idea from food writer friend Kit Wohl.) I'm always happy to run into the soup, but about a half-cup of vegetable stock would have made it better.
After two well-made salads came a pair of crawfish beignets with fried parsley. That was an appetizer serving as an entree for MA. She holds to a certain ideal for crawfish beignets, one realized only in a couple of places. The rest of them inspire her hope on ordering but disappoint on arrival. These were made in the classic French style ("beignet" in France means almost any fried lump of batter with almost anything in its center), but they didn't hit the ideal for her. I thought they were pretty good, myself, with the lumpy aioli (almost a tartar sauce) that came with it.
My entree was all of $17. Tomas Bistro is as good a bargain as Tommy's. Here was an airline chicken breast--with the first, meatiest section of the wing still attached. That's usually fried or broiled. Here it was grilled. Haven't encountered that before. The sauce was a green peppercorn cream, and all that was atop a drift of vegetable risotto. The rice was a shade undercooked for me, but a lot of people would say it was perfect. The presentation wasn't especially brilliant, but the dish lacked nothing in flavor.
Pears poached in wine is a classic French dessert, but not one that often grabs me. The one they served here tonight may have been the best ever. The pear was sweet and elemental, cooked to just the right smooth firmness, with a very thick chantilly cream running around the small stack. Best dessert I've had in awhile, in fact.
Sometime between the salad and entree Tommy Andrade discovered our presence, and came over for a glass of wine. He said that Tomas Bistro has been so busy that he has had to act as maitre d' some nights. That would place Tomas Bistro in the Number One position on the list of best front-door personnel in New Orleans. Those who were around then remember well Tommy's years as front man at the old Sazerac, dressed to the nines (to the ninth power), with consummate dining room skills. That style of service is gone forever, but the man still has the magic touch.
Tommy has a few other pursuits besides his two restaurants, his large, elegant bar, and his catering facility (right behind Tomas). He has taken up flying airplanes and working out. He says he needs these hobbies to pull him away from his default activity: investigating fine wines. He lives in the immediate neighborhood, and has been doing so since before Emeril arrived. He and his lady are familiar figures on the sidewalks with their four dogs. I wish I still lived around here. What a great part of town Tommyville is!
Tomas Bistro. Warehouse District: 755 Tchoupitoulas. 504-527-0942. (See full review below.)
