Tuesday, November 29, 2011.
The Sisters. At The Library.
Great guests on the Round Table show today. Tory McPhail--the executive chef of Commander's Palace--was so good that he had to leave early to get over to his restaurant. I asked him again why it was that the Chef's Playground menu has come down to $75 from $95. "So more people would order it," he said. I keep searching for the more believable answer that the fewer courses allow the table to be turned, instead of having just one party tying it up all night long. But I take him at his word. Besides, even for the smaller dinner I'd tie up the table all night anyway.
Thanksgiving was huge at Commander's. "It's a lot of the same people every year," Tory said. "And everybody knows everybody else from past years. It's like one big family." That's also true in the sense of exclusivity. Thanksgiving at Commander's is a hard reservation to get, because much of the room is booked out on the Thanksgiving before, as people make reservations on their ways out.
Also with us today was Carmelo Chirico, who owns the restaurant named for him in Mandeville. As many times as I talk to people like him, I always find out something new. I didn't know that Carmelo had a pizza place in New Jersey before coming here. But that figures, given the kind of pizza he's always made, going back to the old Pavone's in the Plaza in Lake Forest in the 1970s. That was the first New York-style pizza place New Orleans ever had.
But the highlight of the show was the visit with Rose Dietrich and Angie Rose. They operated their father's restaurant Delmonico for over thirty years, during what most of their customers consider the restaurant's golden age. They sold it in 1997 to Emeril, who keeps the 116-year-old establishment moving ahead now.
Miss Angie and Miss Rose are among the most welcoming restaurateurs I ever met. Most of their customers were longtime regulars. (Probably some of the same people who go to Commander's on Thanksgiving.) The sisters would greet these diners with a warmth that we almost never see in the restaurant business anymore.
I ate at the old Delmonico often, because during three separate eras I worked nearby. And I loved the menu. The food was homestyle Creole from the hands of old black cooks who'd been at it for many decades. It was the real deal, right down to the turtle bones that sometimes turned up in their memorable soup. Just delicious, never self-conscious.
Miss Angie and Miss Rose (that's what everybody called then, including customers older than they were) look exactly the same as I remember. They are in their eighties and nineties. I'd write a book about them and their restaurant if Emeril and Marcelle Bienvenu hadn't beat me to it.
The ladies had come to the studio by taxi. Mary Ann said that since the show ended after dark, I absolutely must give them a ride home. This required having my car cleaned out first--a big, long-neglected task that Mary Ann insisted on doing herself. What a helpmeet she is! I don't appreciate her enough.
My chauffeur duties done, it was off to the Jefferson Parish Library to give a talk with Peggy about our book. Usual stories. I don't know why Peggy is so high on the 1984 World's Fair, but she insisted on putting a chapter about it in the book and on talking about it at every gathering. We all have our over-enthusiasms, I guess. I like train travel inordinately.
This appearance--which I'd forgotten about until a couple of days ago--forced me to disappoint Jude on this, his last night in town before heading back to the coast tomorrow. He has been talking about our having a big formal dinner together at Arnaud's. He even packed a suit for the occasion. But we just couldn't squeeze it in.
Instead, he and the Marys went to Impastato's, with the idea that I would join them after the library lecture. But far more people than we expected wanted to talk to Peggy and me and get our autographs. By the time I got out of there my brood had not only finished dinner but were back home. Oh, well. It's a good thing I'm not a real celebrity.
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.
