Tuesday, October 12. Barcelona Tapas. One-Man Shows. It rained overnight and into the early morning. First rain in weeks. I hope it's not enough to fire off new grass growth.
I called Mary Leigh to see whether we were on for our weekly dinner. She said that she thought we'd skip this week, since we were together so much (once) over the weekend.
Before I was so advised, my mind mulled over the dining possibilities in the neighborhood of Tulane. Not having to cater to ML's narrowly-focused palate opened up my dinner possibilities.
I could give Barcelona Tapas a first try, for example. This is the rebirth of a restaurant operated in Metairie for a decade or so by Xavier Laurentino. He had to shut down there when the old strip mall's owner razed it. At the time, Xavier was already hard at work trying to reopen the former Café Volage. That charming (if ill-fitting) converted cottage in the Riverbend had been empty since the late Chef Felix Gallerani closed it about three years ago.
Xavier is a native of Catalonia, and can give you chapter and verse on classic Spanish cooking, including a lot of "it can only be this way to be truly authentic" dogma. He can also tell you a lot about himself. Can and will. Fortunately, he's lived an interesting life, and as many times as I've dined in his restaurants I've never heard the same stories twice.
Right now, his obsession is the renovation of this restaurant, on which he has spent many months. He's performing all the construction himself on the covered deck in back. Chef Felix (also a do-it-yourself guy) built it during his tenure. Xavier is turning it into a bar. He walked me back there and showed me a construction site, with circular saws and boards and half-finished details. The scene sent a chill down my spine. I remember the years I spent doing this at the Cool Water Ranch as among the most frustrating and side-tracking of my life.
Xavier appears to enjoy making sawdust at least as much as he likes making dinner. He says that after he closes the restaurant at night he stays up for hours--sometimes all night--sawing and nailing.
Indeed, he does almost everything himself. He has a chef, but this night he appeared to be the only server. That's how it usually was in Metairie, too. He has dispensed with banks and their credit cards, slipping back to his early days in business when the place took cash only. I couldn't help but think that the people who weren't sitting at the several empty tables were absent entirely because of this ridiculous policy. The presence of an ATM machine doesn't help those of us who use credit cards to keep track of purchases.
Xavier's specialty at the old restaurant was paella. His walls were hung with paella pans of all sizes, including some big enough to be used as whole-torso shields in battle. The paella (and its pasta equivalent, fideua) is still here, light on the saffron but always good. So too are the lamb chops and a few other main courses.
Most of the menu, however, is as the name implies: tapas. Tapas has evolved so much to suit American tastes that even here a lot of the dishes that go under that name are the size of standard appetizers, or maybe even big ones. This was true of my first main dinner selection. Scallops broiled in a sauce of tomatoes, sherry, and caramelized onions. Six of them.
I remember the garlic soup from the old place as being good, and it still is. A good starting point for the meal. After the scallops came a Spanish tortilla--nothing like the Latin American item of that name, but an omelette with potatoes, cheese and onions. Not bad, but not the equal of a few others I've had around town. Then a variation on insalata Caprese (below), with tomatoes on a bed of basil, topped with fresh-milk mozzarella. What's that doing here? The tomatoes were a bit overripe, and the Melba toast-like bread was strange.
All this food came out in rapid succession. (But never two at one time, thank goodness.) I still had half a glass of a generously-poured Tempranillo. I asked Laurentino for a cheese tapas to match it. He brought out another authentic Spanish Melba toast topped with two triangles of the great Spanish white cheese Manchego, with smaller triangles of membrillo on top. Membrillo? "Quince paste," Xavier said. "This is the authentic way they eat this in Spain. I can't say it's my idea." As if the salad Caprese had been.
What Xavier did indeed invent was the Riverbend's monthly tapas crawl. On the last Wednesday of every month, a number of restaurants in the neighborhood offer an appetizer and a short pour of wine for five dollars. People can move from one restaurant to the next all evening. The restaurants are inviting: Brigtsen's, Dante's Kitchen, Hana, Jazmine, and others. Xavier said that the September crawl brought out at least two hundred people. Both the eaters and the restaurateurs love it.
A fine flan came for dessert. The check was forty-something dollars. (I'd say exactly if I had a credit-card record.) After I left, I thought about how much more successful this place would be if it weren't so much a one-man show. How the paragraph on the menu telling of Xavier's struggle to get and stay open... the reasons he wants cash only... why he hands you a sushi-bar-like checklist instead of standing there taking your order (he spends the time anyway, confirming it)... none of it adds a thing to his customers' satisfaction.
And then I found myself in an embarrassing corner. That's me all over. I do everything myself, myself. I share all the trivia that complicate my life. I make lame excuses for not delivering what my customers tell me they want. (Like, where are those lists of restaurants open on Sunday and Monday, Tom?) I too would serve them better if I'd let go a little, act like a mainstream business, and get some other people involved.
I'd even eaten this meal all alone.
We are much more sensitive to the shortcomings of others when we have the same shortcomings, I guess. I'll give this further thought at Manresa next month.
Barcelona Tapas. Riverbend: 720 Dublin. 504-861-9696.
