Wednesday, December 30, 2009. Domenica. The rain is back, stacking up to a bit over an inch at the Cool Water Ranch. Officially, this is the wettest December in history, with twenty-six inches of rain during the month. I wonder what the year's total will be.
Jude had to fly out in this mess. He got a call last night from one of the guys with whom he makes movies, and they said he was urgently needed to cast a number of roles. He will interview 140 people tomorrow. Casting calls on New Year's Eve? Nothing's more important to either an actor or a producer.
Mary Ann decided not to go to Los Angeles with Jude. That's far from the end of her stewing over the matter. But she was persuaded it was the right thing to do when she spoke to Jude late in the day. "He sounded alive again!" she said. "He was just rotting away hanging around here for two weeks, even though he really needed a break." My son, the workaholic. Must be genetic.
I drove through the rain into town, not so much for the radio show (the Rutabagas Bowl football game pre-empted my last hour) as to record a couple of commercials that start on the first. Mary Ann stayed in town after delivering Jude to the airport, and she was available for dinner. She wanted to go to Domenica, Chef John Besh's new Italian restaurant in the Roosevelt Hotel. We wanted to see the hotel in its Christmas glitter anyway.
Mary Ann invoked her powers as the Parking Witch, and found a space right in front of the hotel on University Place. But it was raining hard enough that even with two umbrellas we got a bit wet. And then we were in the glorious old lobby, for the first time since Katrina. It looked fabulous. The antique clock just inside the door is most unusual. I hear it cost seven figures. The angelhair Christmas decorations are not here--some fire issue, I heard--but that took nothing away from the glittery display.
I didn't think Domenica would be very busy, and they weren't. After five months, the novelty had worn off, and the weather (it's cold as well as wet) didn't help. We were led to a table that in most times would have been a very good one, right in the center of the most expansive part of the dining room. But the door to the street was about twenty feet away, and it's a single set of swinging doors. Meaning that every time someone opened it to come in, a chilly breeze rolled over us. On nights like this, they really should ask people to use the lobby entrance, which is well insulated from winter by a revolving door.
We ordered a pizza as soon as we sat down. Pizzas are made in a wood-burning stone oven weighing five tons, imported from Italy. The ingredients on our pie included various exotic mushrooms, chunks of tomato, onions, nubbins of pork belly, and a raw egg broken into the center. The egg business is pure Italian; it doesn't set completely, and acts almost as an enriching sauce when it comes to the table. I'd stop short of saying it was one of the great pizzas of my life, but it was a nice piece of work, with charred spots here and there on the crust.
The other major specialty here is a large selection of salumi--the Italian-style cured and aged sliced meats. They not only start with pork and seasonings, the pork itself comes from locally-raised pigs. For $25 you get a board with an assortment of these, plus some cheeses and garnishes. We took them up on that and had placed before us a piece of wood that really did qualify as a board--long and narrow. The thinnest prosciutto imaginable, silky and wonderful. Some sopressata, a little on the dense side. And coppa--like prosciutto, made from the shoulder instead of the leg. I was, frankly, a little disappointed by the lack of variety. I was hoping for some lardo. The cheeses were just okay. The garnishes were interesting palate-refreshers, acting like the ginger in a plate of sushi.
We both had pasta for the entree. Mine was a bowl of green stracchi--torn pasta sheets--with a ragout of oxtail and fried chicken livers. I was a third of the way through before I remembered those ingredients, and I had to look at the menu again to figure out what they were. Chicken livers usually make a bigger statement than this.
Mary Ann had some spinach and ricotta gnocchi in brown butter, in an appetizer portion. (You can get any of the pastas in a small or a medium). These were good enough. But the presentation needs some work. It came out in a small rectangular bowl with no underliner. Since the tables are unclothed (they're handsome and appear to have been made by hand), the dish looked a bit incomplete sitting there. In fact, so did my entree-size pasta dish. Something's missing. Doesn't feel right. But Mary Ann says that these cavils of mine are ridiculous, and that she loved the restaurant. It could be that I fail to grok the minimalism.
We passed on dessert and went back into the hotel lobby for a further tour. In what used to be the Fairmont Court, there's a coffeeshop with beautiful pastries and a nice Christmas display with model trains. The Sazerac looked much modernized, but the low lighting and high ceilings gave it the grandeur I remember. (And tablecloths, and plates with underliners.) The Sazerac Bar looked unchanged since the old days. It was so full of people that quite a few were standing up with their drinks.
The rain was gone. She took me back to the radio station and we went home in separate cars. At least she's here in town instead of in Los Angeles, with New Year's Eve tomorrow and all.
Domenica. CBD: 123 Baronne (Roosevelt Hotel) 504-648-6020.
