Tuesday, November 13, 2012.
Po-Boy Festival And Beaujolais Nouveau Previews. Maple Street Café News.
The radio show offered good guests to talk about two good events coming up this weekend, but nevertheless the absence of three people Mary Ann said were coming had the show below critical mass for a good conversation to get rolling.
Fortunately, Jay Nix and Justin Kennedy are almost a show unto themselves. Jay owns Parkway Poor Boys, and Justin is more or less the chef and day-to-day boss. Jay is full of stories, but Justin is out-and-out funny. So at least the show was entertaining.
They were there to tout the Po-Boy Festival this weekend. So was Kari Shisler, the festival's director. The Festival is very much worthy of all this conversational manpower, but it's really a very simple proposition: the last eight blocks of Oak Street jams from curb to curb, as almost forty poor boy sandwich vendors sell their wares for something like 40,000 attendees. It's is without question to greatest immediate success in the annals of New Orleans food events.
Also here was Frank Stansbury, the publisher of a newsletter about events around town, and a p.r. representative for the French-American Chamber of Commerce. That outfit will stage its annual Beaujolais Nouveau soiree this Thursday--a week before Thanksgiving, as always. Frank brought two bottles of the freshly-made wine. It's the first of the 2012 French vintage, and that's the only thing special about it. I realized after half a glass that we were jumping the gun by two days. I preferred the Georges du Boeuf to the Bouchard, but I can't say that either of them impressed me a lot. The Beaujolais Nouveau craze of twenty years ago continues to fade.
To dinner at the Maple Street Café, where I have not been in quite awhile. They started running commercials on my show again after a similar break, so I thought I'd better refresh my impressions.
I was thrilled by the first course, a portobello mushroom and tomato bisque with little if any cream (a good thing) and a flavor so enjoyable I thought about getting another cup of it. But then the Caesar salad showed up, so I plunged ahead.
The entree was an enormous (had to be at least sixteen ounces) sirloin strip steak, served with a pair of grilled shrimp on top (adding nothing) and a brown sauce with peppercorns (pretty good). The steak was not much trimmed, and required some slicing away of fatty and gristly parts before the main eating could commence. It would be wrong to get upset about that, because for the $25 price even a severe trimming would have left a very large steak. And those fat-and-collagen-heavy parts add flavor to the meat.
All that is forgiven, then. But this I must complain about. The Maple Street's tables are covered with tablecloths, but those are topped with plate glass. Problem: when you have to put some oomph into trimming a firm steak like the one in front of me, the plate slides all over the table.
Owner Jameel Qutob showed up near the end of the meal with some news. I knew that he and his brother T.J. have taken over the old Bull's Corner in Laplace. I didn't know that they have named it Petra--the original name of this restaurant's original location in Metairie, long gone but well remembered.
And I didn't know that the Qutob brothers have acquired the former Ground Pat'i near the marina, and will be opening it as another Maple Street Café after the first of the year. This was the site of an almost-good Mexican place called Salsas Del Lago. So I guess they're gone now.
A very light bread pudding showed up for dessert. These Qutob guys are good at custardy desserts.
Maple Street Cafe. Riverbend: 7623 Maple. 504-314-9003.
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