Wednesday, December 21, 2011.
Steppin' Out Again. Dinner With Dr. Bob And Allen Toussaint.
I was one of the original panelists on Peggy Scott Laborde's long-running, arts-and-entertainment, talking-heads show Steppin' Out. I had to quit in 1996, when my radio show moved to afternoons and kept me from making the Friday tapings. That resulted in the first inkling I ever had that not everybody likes my personality. Peggy said she got a lot of letters expressing relief that I was no longer on the show. I always brushed that off as being due strictly to my looks. (I have a face for radio.) Mary Ann cites what she says is a more obvious cause: that I can be a real idiot at times.
Well, I was back on Steppin' Out today, for the same reason that Peggy was on the radio with me yesterday: to tout Lost Restaurants. The shameless self-promotion continues!
Except for Peggy, the entire panel of experts on Steppin' Out has changed. Film critic Rick Barton is now too busy with his lofty academic position at UNO. Theater critic Al Shea has left our world. Poppy Tooker is sitting in my old chair now. Former disk jockey and record store owner Alan Smason is covering music.
My own entertainment program for the evening would beat any of the stuff on Steppin' Out. Dermatologist, wine collector, birder, and groomsman at my wedding Bob DeBellevue is celebrating his sixty-fifth tonight with a party at Le Foret. The food was a classy but modest buffet in the main dining room. The wines were brought by many of Bob's oenophile friends, so there were interesting things to sample all night long. Included among them was a large number of Burgundies, both red and white, some with twenty or so years of bottle age.
One of the bringers of fine juice was David Gladden, the general manager of Martin Wine Cellar. He and I were close friends for many years, until I found myself with wife, kids, and house ("the complete catastrophe," as Zorba the Greek called it). Then I stopped going to David's great wine tastings at Martin, and ceased buying wines by the case for aging purposes. ("What on earth do you need more wine for?" asked Mary Ann.)
David had a perspective on the local wine and food business I have not heard before. "For most of the past two years during the national downturn, our dollar volume was down a little," David told me. "But the unit volume stayed about the same. Customers were trading down to lower-priced wines. But we were doing just as much work and needed just as many people. Same number and size of deliveries, same amount of restocking shelves. It was causing a problem."
This effect may be showing itself in the restaurant business. It would explain what seems to be a spreading occurrence of discounted menus and coupons. I'm going to ask around to see whether the per-person check averages have been going down. I would be surprised by that, although not by the news that not as many high-end bottles of wine are being sold.
The good news, David says, is that all the trends have turned upward since summer, and appear to be pointed that way for 2012.
The highlight of Dr. Bob's party was the live music, provided by no less than Allen Toussaint--my nominee as New Orleans's greatest living musician. Toussaint was attired as handsomely as he always is. (Even in his seventies, he looks like a model from the pages of a men's fashion magazine.) He sat down smiling, clearly happy to be there. Toussaint and Dr. Bob (a music buff in addition to all the other things about which he is interested) are good friends. Toussaint joked that he would play "I've Got You Under My Skin" in honor of Bob's medical specialty.
He didn't. Instead, he reeled off the well-known catalog of songs he composed. Most of his songs were hits for other people, including almost everything Irma Thomas ever recorded. He plays and sings all of it at least as well as the hitmakers. I could listen to Toussaint for hours.
And he played for hours, accompanied by a young Asian violinist who, after running through a few sheets of notes Allen made up for her on the spot, improvised with him with a brilliant right hand. Now this was a party. As for the birthday boy, he was grinning ear to ear all night long.
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.
