Tuesday, October 25, 2011.
Two Sons With Famous Parents. Signing In The Garden District. Snacks At Commander's Palace.
The Round Table radio show was a little sparse. Two guests didn't show up, but I wasn't surprised. Jameel and T.J. Qutob--Jordanian brothers and owners of the excellent Maple Street Cafe--are not especially media-savvy. And they have a big new project on their hands. They've taken over the Bull's Corner in Laplace and reopened it. The serious diners in Laplace--and there must be a few dozen of them--are much relieved. The old Bull's Corner was the only decent white-tablecloth restaurant in the fast-growing exurb, and when its owner Mike Norton closed it a few months ago a big gap opened. I was hoping to find out what the Qutobs have in mind, but I guess I'll just have to go there. My guess: it'll be a lot like the Maple Street Café.
That left the radio show with two sons of famous people. This had the ring of one of Mary Ann's theme shows, but it was a complete coincidence.
Randy Fertel's mother was Ruth Fertel, as in Ruth's Chris Steak House. For many years until she sold the ninety-plus-location restaurant chain, Ruth was the world's most successful female restaurateur. And not by dumb luck, either. She started with essentially nothing and built the outfit brilliantly from there.
That's one of the stories Randy tells in his new book. But there's another, related only by marriage. The title alone alluded to the book's wildly incongruous dichotomy: The Gorilla Man And The Empress Of Steak. Randy's father was Rodney Fertel, who ran for mayor in 1969 with the promise that, if elected, he would donate two gorillas to the Audubon Zoo. He lost badly, but kept his promise anyway--perhaps the only losing political figure ever to do so.
I remember that election well. I told Randy that it seemed to me that his father lost so embarrassingly because he was lumped with another candidate named Dan Dial, who was really a nutjob. Randy nodded, but said that his father had plenty enough of his own eccentricity without needing any more to rub off on him.
I've only begun to read the book. It contains all the anecdotes one would expect under such a title. And no small amount of family pathos. We didn't talk about that a lot, but instead focused on the phenomenon that is Ruth's Chris Steak House. Randy worked there long enough to know what it's all about, and that easily took up the time I would otherwise have given the Qutobs.
Our beverage guest this week was Ron Swoboda. Junior. Son of the big baseball star, who moved to New Orleans from his native Midwest after his pro career ended. Ron Sr. liked N.O. enough that he's still here. I can say that I actually played baseball with Ron Swoboda once, on the same field at the same time. In a charity event at Zephyrs Field, we were both sent to the plate to knock a baseball as far as we could. I got lucky and hit a Texas-league liner between short and third. (I bat left-handed, so that was a little goofy.) Swoboda, of course, parked the ball, making all the rest of us look ridiculous.
Ron Jr. works for a major distributor of Miller and Coors beers. But he also handles a lot of craft beers. He brought a fascinating variety with him, several of which are served in bottles the same size as wine bottles. I had noticed that in restaurants but never made the obvious deduction until now. A big bottle of beer creates the illusion that it's in the same class of beverage as wine. These craft guys are making large strides.
I ran out of the studio as soon as the show ended to get over to Garden District Books, in the Rink on Prytania and Washington. I beat Peggy there by a few seconds, but she took over as spokesman as usual anyway. In the Rink's atrium, some forty people waited for us to get through an utterly unnecessary formal presentation so they could ask questions and get books signed.
We wound up autographing well over a hundred books, and we left a bunch of signed copies behind. Two days later Britton Trice--the city's most congenial bookseller--called to say he was almost out of signed books.
For the past couple of days Ti Martin tried to get in touch with me about something. We kept missing one another. But as she's one of the owners of Commander's Palace (her mother is the redoubtable Ella Brennan), and Commander's is only a block away from the Rink, I thought I'd just walk over there and see if she was in residence.
She was. She invited me to join her for a drink, and told me the news. Chef Chris Lusk, who has been in charge of the kitchen at Café Adelaide for the past couple of years, is moving out of the Brennan Family of Restaurants into the John Folse-Rick Tramonto fold. Those two chefs are opening a new place called R'Evolution in the Royal Sonesta sometime early next year. It's no surprise to me that neither Folse (who has a large operation out of Gonzales selling everything from dairy products and frozen Cajun dishes to his heavy cookbooks) nor Tramonto (who is really a Chicago chef, although he says he will live here some of the time) will be far from R'Evolution's stoves most of the time. What does surprise me is that Lusk will be the guy. His food is original almost to the point of quirkiness. Folse has been telling us all along that R'Evolution will have an unambiguous Louisiana flavor.
Ti added that they were moving one of the top sous chefs from Commander's to Café Adelaide, and that they would do some renovations to open up the bar a bit more into the dining room, the better to let the lively crowd in there infect the diners.
We wound up at table, where chef Tory McPhail sent out a few dishes. The first of them was his foie gras beignets and café au lait. This has become nearly a signature dish, because it's not as odd as it sounds. Two little (the size of big marbles) unsweet beignets prop up a generous slice of seared duck liver of the top grade. (There are categories of foie gras, and Commander's has always served Number One.) A shot glass is full of actual café au lait with foie gras fat emulsified into it. Sounds weird, tastes great. So that's two days in a raw for foie gras at my dinners.
Next we had a grilled shrimp appetizer whose details I don't recall. That was followed by half a soft-shell crab. At that point I asked Tory to stop. I was hoping to get by with a very light supper tonight. It was late and I was bushed. To really eat at Commander's involves more preparedness.
The visit was made most worthwhile for the conversation I had with Ti. She said that the Restaurant Week in September was extraordinarily good for Commander's, whose business doubled over the same period last year. The place was certainly very busy tonight. Not a table was open. At one of the best tables, next to the windows in the upstairs Garden Room, six people dined in their finest jeans and golf shirts. Commander's was one of the last to drop strict dress codes. I don't like it, but one can't fight the universe.
After the book signing, Peggy had told me pro-actively that she would not be able to dine with me tonight, as she did after our first two events. "Errol and I have a business meeting to attend," she said. But then I found them at Commander's Palace! Were they trying to cheap me out by not wanting potentially to pay for my dinner? Or could it be that the presence of the other two owners of New Orleans Magazine (Errol bought in after Katrina) meant that it really was a business meeting? I decided it would be more fun to act as if I were miffed. I stormed off in mock high dudgeon.
Bull's Corner. LaPlace: 1036 W Airline Hwy. 985-359-8888.
Commander's Palace. Garden District: 1403 Washington Ave. 504-899-8221.
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.
