Tuesday, October 11, 2011.
Round Table Imbalance. Heiner And Astrid. Fifteen Snails At Ste. Marie.
I guess it had to happen. Two people who were supposed to be on the radio show weren't. They had the dates wrong. This left us with two guests. Both were worthwhile interviews, but two is not enough for the Round Table chemistry. Certainly not if it has to bubble with life for three hours.
Nobody else at all was in the studio when I went on the air. Then Henryk "Heiner" Orlik turned up. He not only is the owner and brewmaster of Heiner Brau, but also organizes his own Oktoberfest in Covington every year for the past four. We talked about that and about beer and brewing, but we were about finished with the topic after about a half hour.
By then Astrid Lavenia was in the room. She is the co-proprietor and manager of the newish restaurant Meson 923. Her mere presence couldn't help but brighten the prospects. She has a striking look and personal style, and no doubt is largely responsible for the sophistication perceived by Meson 923's customers.
She wanted to talk about the restaurant, of course, and she did. She has some offbeat beers at the restaurant, but cocktails and wine looms larger on the beverage menu. She and Heiner didn't have many points of intersection. Nor did the conversation blossom into the party-like banter I'm aiming for with these Tuesday shows. I wish she had brought her chef. Not their fault, though.
After the show Mary Ann wanted to have dinner. In a repeat of last night's dinner decision, she found my first idea--Capdeville, a block away from the radio station, and as yet unvisited by me--too much like a bar and with a grating musical background. The place is clearly designed for a crowd younger than we are. The menu looked good, though, and I will return another night.
In her turn MA suggested Ste. Marie. That's one of the important restaurant openings this year, and has stirred up a good deal of talk about its lively bar scene. It's been most of the year since it opened, however, and the dynamics of the place have evolved typically. Which is to say that the bar was fully seated, but few if any standees backed them up. About half of the dining room's tables were occupied. A second, unused dining room could be seen behind curtains.
The logical table for us was one of the deuces along the front window looking out onto Poydras Street. These are arranged New York style: close enough to one another that if a conversation were to break out with the people at the adjacent tables, you wouldn't have to speak up or edge closer to be heard. This was unfortunate, because MA wanted to explore her plans for the week with me. She is wracked with indecision as to whether to go to New York and force the kids to join her, or just to forget about it. The only advice I could offer is that neither scenario was what you could call bad.
Ste. Marie's food wasn't brilliant but it was interesting. My first course set a record for the greatest number of escargots ever presented to me in a normal appetizer. Fifteen, breaking the previous record at Galatoire's, where for a long time they served snails by the dozen. The preparation was also noteworthy in that it was dominated not with garlic but a tan sauce enriched with bone marrow. A fine little casserole.
Mary Ann had French onion soup. I thought it was well made, but she objected to the sweetness of it. It gets sweet through the caramelization of onions and the addition of port or sherry. But not everybody likes a sweet flavor under the melted Gruyere cheese, and Mary Ann doesn't.
My entree was a dozen or so mussels, designed as an appetizer for two. The broth was unusual in being a) brown and very winy and 2) quite spicy with chorizo. The sausage packed enough pepper to steam my scalp, but that's an effect I like.
I asked them to bring the French fries on the side. The traditional French bistro service is to put the fries atop the mussels, but this steams all the crispness out. That request resulted in our getting twice the normal amount of fries. But the strategy failed to prevent their limpness. I think they need to rework their potato-frying technique.
Mary Ann had the fish of the night--drum, I think it was--prepared in her preferred straightforward way. She ate all of it--a good sign, I guess. She then broke out of her usual opposition to dessert by having a dense chocolate cake. I read once that there comes a time in every woman's life when nothing will help but chocolate. I think this time came tonight for my wife. Dessert for me was a honey-flavored panna cotta sort of thing, which I thought was very good.
Three glasses of wine. Tax and tip brought it up to $140. Hmm.
Ste. Marie. CBD: 930 Poydras St. 504-304-6988.
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.
