Wednesday, August 19, 2009.
Eat Club At NOLA.
The dog Mac is back from the animal hospital, with a nasty-looking incision down his left rear leg. The vet says that Mac must remain indoors for six weeks, and that we must give him physical therapy. He also has three different pills to take--one for pain. If Mac is to be quiet and inactive, he will probably need a sedative. He is acting as if he were in the pink, ready to run back out into the woods again. Every time Mary Ann gets up to do anything, Mac follows her, tail wagging. He clearly isn't perturbed by what he's just been through. Then again, dogs know nothing about vet bills.
Today is our Eat Club dinner at NOLA. Emeril's people are concerned that we didn't blow the doors down for this dinner, as we did for the ones at Delmonico and Emeril's a few months back. I keep telling everybody that the market is very soft during the back-to-school weeks, and almost nothing one does can change that. We wound up with just under fifty people, which isn't bad. We couldn't have fit many more in the third-floor dining room anyway.
It's hard to imagine a $75 dinner much better than the one NOLA served us tonight. Six courses long, it was constructed along the lines of Emeril's new small-plates concept, and hit every appetite that we may have had during the evening.
It began with an oddity from NOLA's current entry in the "Around The World" summer program at all of Emeril's restaurants. At NOLA, the trip started a few weeks ago in virtual France, and next week will be in make-believe Vietnam. Now we're in Greece. They're not just running classics from those cuisines, but developing new takes--which is what we expect from the Emeril restaurant machine.
Anyway, the dish was grape-leaf-wrapped seared tuna (above). This was essentially sashimi; about ninety percent of the tuna was raw, which was fine with me. The main flavoring came from a mint-tinged vinaigrette. Four nice cool bites to get things moving.
Next, a NOLA classic: the Vietnamese-style stuffed chicken wings made by Miss Hay, who has been in the kitchen at NOLA since nearly day one. Stuffed with a spicy pork concoction, these things are irresistible. If I were served a dozen of them, I'd happily eat them all, even though they don't look like much on the plate.
After that, a good little crab cake, atop a cream sauce studded with corn and seasoning vegetables, a shade on the spicy side. Beyond reproach. And another familiar dish in this era: shrimp and grits, a trio of very pretty, plump, excellent white shrimp in a sauce almost peppery enough to qualify as barbecue shrimp. The grits beneath were, for a change, not the stone-ground kind, but the basic--with cream, I think. Again, no possibility for complaint here, unless you don't like shrimp.
As fine as all this was, the dish of the night was the duck. It was a breast quarter, brined and smoked, crisp at the skin, luridly tender at the bone, sweetened a little with a whiskey and caramel glaze, wet down with a reduced duck stock. This, or something like it, has been a major specialty at NOLA for a long time, and tonight it was at a hundred percent. Fabulous--especially if you were still hungry, which by this time not everyone was.
We finished off with half a fresh Alabama peach, roasted in the oven with this and that, served with a sabayon. Just right.
This made two memorable meals in a month for us. It matched in goodness the dinner at Gautreau's, and I expect to keep hearing about that one for years. I wonder why NOLA isn't talked about more. It's long been every bit as good as this, every night.
During the radio show, I talked for awhile with Averriel Thomas, the general manager of the restaurant. Averriel commands your attention: he's a large guy who, when you begin talking to him, displays a gentleness and sophistication that you don't expect. I suspect he's largely responsible for the goodness of Smith and Wollensky in the years right before it closed due to the storm; he was the GM there, too. He left town (to run another S&W) before coming back a few months ago to take the reins at NOLA. Glad of that.
Nola. French Quarter: 534 St. Louis 504-522-6652. Contemporary Creole.
