Wednesday, April 14. Car Wreck. Eat Club At Catch. For the first time in what seems like a year, it's been two weeks since it last rained. Beautiful mornings, oddly cool (in the fifties). The crawfish are coming in, but remain expensive. The oysters, on the other hand, remain big and firm. I suppose I have nothing, really, to complain about.
I collected my PT Cruiser from the dealer, who said that the break in the timing belt had caused no complications, so the bill was a mere $1140. Repairs like this give no satisfaction. The car runs no better or worse than it did before the problem cropped up.
We are broadcasting today (and Eat Clubbing tonight) at Catch. That's the new seafood restaurant on Magazine Street, owned by the three Beirut-born guys who own Byblos. I parked in front, figuring that one cycle of the meter would take me to the end of the pay-parking time of day. I'd like these new meters that take credit cards if they worked. The one in front of Catch declined both of my cards. I had to go across the street to another machine to get a ticket. A sign above the malfunctioning meter said that you can pay for parking with your cellphone. I tried to make that happen until it was time for the show to begin. No dice. Where is Jude when I need him?
Tarek Tay and Gabriel Saliba beat up on me for dropping Byblos off the ten-best racks of lamb list. They were not mollified by my telling them (truthfully) that they're Number Eleven. Or that the reason for the drop was not that they were any less good than before--indeed, their lamb chops are terrific--but that a number of restaurants at the high end have installed lamb rack chops much better than those places once had. Antoine's and Emeril's are two examples.
When I put Tarek on the air, he corrected my pronunciation of his name. He said it rhymed with "car wreck." I will probably think of Car Wreck every time I see him from now on. I asked whether there were any sleeper dishes on his menu. The answer was a surprise. "Spaghetti and meatballs," he said. Hunh? Catch is a straight seafood restaurant. "We put a lot of work into it," he said, and motioned to a waiter to bring a sample. Indeed, it was excellent. I said I'd come back with Mary Leigh--my resident expert on spaghetti with red sauce--to give it the acid test. The Marys happened to be tuned in and not far away. They drove straight to the restaurant, grabbed one of the sidewalk tables and tried the spaghetti. Plus a wedge salad with blue cheese. Thumbs up on both from ML.
Tonight's dinner was an experiment. I've long had the feeling that a lot of people could not be enticed to our standard Eat Club dinners because they served too much food and wine, took too long, and were too expensive. When Car Wreck and company asked to do a dinner, I thought Catch would be the perfect place to try Eat Club Light. Four courses instead of five or six, two wines instead of four, $45 instead of $75, and two hours tops instead of three.
This drew our standard complement of fifty diners, many of whom told me they liked the idea. Most of those were regulars at Eat Club Heavy, and said they'd keep coming to those, too. We had many new faces, but we always do. But I think it's worth doing again, maybe once a month.
We started with an amuse-bouche of ceviche-marinated salmon on a tortilla chip, which tasted much better than it looked. Then the basket of hush puppies stuffed with crawfish and squirted with a spicy, sweet glaze they make in house. (I want to get that recipe.)
The next course was dually appetizer and salad. Celery root--which in France is used as the base for remoulade sauce much more often than shrimp are--was tossed with lump crabmeat and a light ravigote sauce. Panneed green tomatoes gave a warm top and bottom to this otherwise cool dish. Light wines from Spain came out. So did draft beer, which delighted a number of diners.
The entree was one I had two visits ago and liked: redfish on the half-shell (meaning with the skin and scales still on), with saffron rice and beans. I learned that this is not grilled is it usually is in other restaurants, but run under the broiler. It was also topped with a bread-crumb concoction something like you'd bake over Italian oysters. This was much more adventuresome than the fried side of the menu, and was much liked by most who ate it.
And it was much better than the food ordered by a man who was not part of our group tonight. He had a fried platter before him and said he was there because he heard me talking about it. But the platter was terrible, he said. I hate hearing this. I almost told him he should avoid dining in restaurants where the Eat Club will be that night, but that wouldn't have helped.
For dessert, a frozen lemon mousse pie with blueberry sauce. little thing, but nice enough. Most of the attendees were heading for the door by nine--two hours. A few lingered, as did I. Hicham Khodr--one of the three owners of Catch as well as the owner of the Camellia Grill, the Gumbo Shop, and a big piece of NOLA--had some news to impart. It's common knowledge that a branch Camellia Grill will open soon in the French Quarter on the corner of Chartres and Toulouse. What I hadn't heard is that Hicham is on the verge of buying a famous old poor boy shop. He also wanted to get with me to talk about writing a new Gumbo Shop cookbook. Hicham is always on the move.
Catch. Uptown: 3226 Magazine 504-371-5809. Seafood.
