Tuesday, September 6, 2011.
An Eight-Top. Nostalgia For Bud.
What a change in the weather! Yesterday, a tropical storm. Today clear blue skies after we awakened to temperatures in the fifties. Where did that come from? We don't usually see this kind of weather until October or November. Who would guess that it would last through the entire week?
We filled the studio with eight radio guests today. The Louisiana Restaurant Association and the Louisiana Seafood Marketing Board are throwing a couple of big do's. The New Orleans Seafood Festival this weekend, and something called Restaurant Week that looks like a revival of Coolinary. But the Restaurant Association never was especially good at seeing their business through the eyes of their customers.
They sent over a large contingent. Chef Duke Locicero took the main guest chair and talked throughout the show, as we expected he would. Glenn Armantrout came, too. He formerly was operations chief with Acme Oyster House. Now he does the same sort of thing with a string of French Quarter restaurants.
But everybody quieted down when Rachel Leckelt spoke up. She's the chef and proprietor of Catahoula. That's a restaurant in Grand Couteau--an old town in the Cajun country, between Lafayette and Opelousas. I've heard a lot about it--but then I heard that it had closed. Rachel reopened the place about six months ago and upgraded everything. She has a ten-acre farm where she's raising a lot of the vegetables for the restaurant, for example. (How much longer before a restaurant must have it own farm to be taken seriously?)
The men in the room--myself included--paid rapt attention to Rachel. Not just because her restaurant sounded terrific--although she proved that with a crabmeat cheesecake and an onion tart, among other things. But also because we couldn't prevent our eyes from wandering her way.
One way or another, lubricated by wines brought by Cork and Bottle, the show turned into a laff riot. It was such a party that Chef Greg Reggio from Zea felt left out and called in. He had a good excuse. He's high up in the Louisiana Restaurant Association.
The food we had was almost enough to suffice for dinner. But not quite. En route home I stopped at Bud's Broiler--the one a couple blocks from Andrea's on Causeway Boulevard. The motivation was pure whimsy. Yesterday I heard a snippet of the song "Over You"--the last big hit from Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, back around 1969. I thought it was the best song he ever did, not the least because a singer needs a lot of range and power to pull it off. He had both. That's also why hardly anyone else ever recorded the song.
"Over You" was on the jukebox of the now-extinct Bud's Broiler on Pelopidas Street in Gentilly. Bud's was famous for opening in odd locations, but that one was bizarre even for them. It was flanked by cemeteries. (But then Commander's Palace is too, "in the dead center of the Garden District," as Dick Brennan, Sr. often noted.) I went to the Gentilly Bud's often because it was near UNO and the house I lived during my last two years as a student there. Every time, I dropped a quarter in the jukebox and played "Me And Bobby McGee" (Janis Joplin), "No Time" (Guess Who) and "Over You." The songs took up exactly the amount of time for the order to be grilled and for me to eat it.
Hearing just enough of the song yesterday for it to get in my head created the a need to rub that nostalgic synapse. My order tonight was the same as in 1970: Number One with cheese (bringing on the same argument with the order-taker about whether such a thing even existed; they still say no), fries, Dr Pepper. I haven't had a Dr. Pepper or any other kind of bubbly soft drink in two or three years.
The nostalgia failed. The hamburger was terribly overcooked, to the point of being actually tough. What will Bud's Broiler do now that a plethora of hamburger specialists with much higher standards are grabbing away its customers? I was the only customer in the place. Three employees.
I keep saying that an upgraded version of the Bud's Broiler concept could be a runaway hit. Is anyone listening?
Bud's Broiler. Metairie: 2929 N Causeway Blvd. 504-833-3770.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
