Tuesday, October 18, 2011.
Two Different Round Tables.
The guests on the Round Table radio show today were interesting individually, but didn't jell into a party conversation. I want it to be like a dinner table, not a routine of my asking questions and the guests answering them. When that happens, the result is magical. But it's hard to explain to the guests how to do it.
One way is to pour wine for everybody. This is why we try to get people whose business is wine to be part of the show every week. But Mary Ann insists on booking beer people during Oktoberfest. There's only so much that can be said about beer, and we've said it. And the Oktoberfest people (we have had them every week lately, too) also start in on beer, and. . . well. . . Mary Ann's help in producing the show is tremendous, but I've got to talk her out of these theme shows.
The two most interesting guests were Danny Millan, the operating boss at Le Foret, and Chef Dominique Macquet. Danny and Dominique are opening a new restaurant early next year, a few blocks down Magazine Street from Dominique's present station. He says he is breaking away completely from the old place and its owners, and that after a non-compete period will turn up at the new one. I don't quite understand how this will work, but I hope the restaurant Dominique leaves behind keeps going. I quite like it, as do a lot of other people.
The new Dominique's will be across the street from Le Petit Grocery, in one of several nice but somewhat run-down buildings there. "We're renovating it completely," said Danny, who knows how such things happen. Le Foret's building underwent a top-to-bottom rebuilding, and the results were spectacular. Dominique says it will be substantially bigger than his present place. I wonder about that, because the two restaurants where Dominique did his best cooking were the minuscule Bistro at the Maison de Ville and the restaurant he is leaving.
One piece of unambiguously good news came from Danny Millan. He agreed to host the Eat Club's sixteenth annual Reveillon season gala black-tie dinner. That's the one we did every year at Brennan's until Brennan's schedule filled up with other, bigger events. Le Foret served as the 2010 venue, and we loved it.
We had a couple of guys from the Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino in Biloxi on, to talk about their Oktoberfest and their beer. Then Bill Stefany from Deutsches Haus went on to talk about beer and Oktoberfest. We really and truly have exhausted this topic.
I'm glad we didn't have much food, because that meant I wouldn't have to hang around after the show cleaning up the studio. I didn't have the time. At seven, I was to appear at the Round Table Club next to Audubon Park. Peggy Scott Laborde and I were engaged to speak to the Louisiana Landmarks Society about our new book, Lost Restaurants of New Orleans. It's not the premiere--that will be this Saturday at Octavia Books--but it is the first of many events publicizing the tome during the next couple of months.
We need to polish our act. Peggy--a long-time moderator of television shows--does things in a structured way, asking mostly questions to which she already knows the answers. I, on the other hand, am totally ad-lib and stream-of-consciousness in my public speaking. I even do recorded commercials that way. So we're like Meryl Streep and Robin Williams trying to work together. But we got the people laughing and asking a lot of questions about the usual extinct restaurants. And then we sold an autographed a large number of books. I brought a pile of Hungry Town and we sold almost all of those, too.
The star of the show was the Round Table Club itself, a very handsome, well-kept mansion. I wish there were a restaurant with a bar that looked like this and served port and sherry. I'd be in there every night, indulging my image of my self as an old pooperoo with slightly British affectations.
They had a bit of food, but like a newlywed couple at their wedding reception, neither Peggy nor I got anything to eat. Too busy signing books. I'd had nothing since a slice of toast this morning. I thought about stopping at the Camellia Grill or Cowbell, but both were very busy. I wound up going all the way home without finding something to eat. That should cause the loss of a pound or so today.
As I left the radio station after the show, I noticed that the temperature was significantly lower than when I entered three hours before. A brief but intense rain had fallen during the show. Obviously a front came through, and not one of those wimpy early-fall jobs but the kind we get in December and February, with winds making the boughs of live oaks wave and forcing me to really grip the wheel as I crossed the Causeway.
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.
