[title type="h2"]Wednesday, December 4, 2013.[/title]
The goodness of a restaurant these days seems to be determined by how much of what it serves is manufactured from raw materials on the premises. Sometimes that datum alone supersedes the measure of, you know, like, the actual pleasure those carefully, locally made concoctions provide in the eating.
I can't say I find this determinant to be as foolproof as the restaurateurs and chefs would persuade us they are. I've eaten a lot of dished composed of made-in-house ingredients that weren't especially good.
Which brings up the subject of the brewpub. Strictly defined, a brewpub is an establishment that makes its own beer in house, and sells it alongside a menu of food.
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Old Rail's dining room and open kitchen.[/caption]
The law makes such a place less successful than you might imagine. If the restaurant makes its own beer, it can't sell it anywhere except in the place where it's made. This is such a daunting business proposition that even very successful brewpubs--the one at the Zea in the Clearview Mall, and the one in Beau Rivage Casino--have been forced by the poor bottom lines to shut down their brewing operations.
And I may be wrong about this, but I believe that brewpubs aren't allowed to serve any beer from outside. The ones I know about don't, anyway.
A new brewpub that has caught a lot of attention is the Old Rail in Mandeville. It's a branch of the Barley Oak--a not-so-brew pub on the Mandeville lakefront with many dozen beers on tap. The Old Rail was a long time in coming, in the works for over a year before it opened this past summer.
It was Mary Ann's idea to have an early supper at the Old Rail after today's radio show ended. Mary Leigh came along too. (After two weeks of having six people living at the Cool Water Ranch, we're back down to the full-time three.)
The Marys, of course, not being able to resist the temptation to try the newest restaurants, have already eaten at the Old Rail. A few times. In fact, Mary Ann wrote one of her UnGourmet columns about it here. If you missed that, her take was that the food on the first visit was awful, but that the beer was good. (This is also what I was hearing from most people who called me about Old Rail on the radio show.)
The Marys went again and liked it better, mainly because they stuck with their two favorite dishes: hamburgers and fries. Mary Ann has made the point many times that lots of people like hamburgers and fries, and that the New Orleans Menu should go along. I think too many people are eating too many hamburgers in too many restaurants. My alarm along those lines is becoming more urgent as the number of ten-dollar hamburgers rises.
I have another theory about this matter. It will be the main theme of my year-end review of dining, which will make a statement that many restaurateurs may find unsettling. Watch for it after Christmas.
Back to the Old Rail: We started with a four-beer assortment, running from middling light to middling dark, mild to hoppy. The most interesting of the quartet was a pumpkin ale, which Mary Ann found too far off the beer flavor but which I liked.
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Irish nachos.[/caption]
Next, an unlikely appetizer called Irish nachos. The concept was to put the sorts of ingredients that a Mexican place would pile on top of tortilla chips, but with British-style chips (French fries). The fries, as Mary Ann pointed out, were hand-cut in house. But all the stuff on top made them instantly soggy. It's in dishes like this that frozen fries--and perhaps even battered fries--would work better. But the standard is set: if you don't cut your own fries, you're nothing.
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Potato chips with blue cheese.[/caption]
Also on the table were normal potato chips. Also hand-cut and fried in house, but not to order, judging by their coolness. They were topped with blue cheese. That is a combination that Mary Leigh loves. A now-extinct restaurant a couple of blocks away used to serve them, and she's still on the lookout.
The food at the Barley Oak was never very interesting on my four or five visits there. The beers made up for it, even though they weren't made in house. Old Rail's food seems to be at about the same level. The menu wasn't very interesting to begin with, and what I ordered was much less than what I was expecting.
It started with a cup of brie and garlic soup. It was a cup of richness, period. I like richness, but not without flavor. Garlic? Where? Mary Leigh had a cup of gumbo that looked good but wasn't. It didn't taste like gumbo, which is saying something, since the range of acceptable flavor complements in gumbos is so wide. She liked it even less than I did.
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Corned beef sandwich.[/caption]
My entree was a corned beef sandwich, available hot or cold on rye. I had it cold. The bread was a little stale, the corned beef unexceptional and sliced too thick. Ditto for the cheese. I ate half and turned away.
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Patty melt at Old Rail.[/caption]
Only Mary Ann emerged victorious, and then by ordered the patty melt. Which is, of course, a hamburger.
The premises are handsome and comfortable. I like anything that has some connection with railroading. The old tracks that once ran from Slidell to Covington--the route is now the Tammany Trace bike trail--used to pass right next door. In one of the novels I'm writing, something pivotal happens at this very spot. But I wrote that a few years ago. If the Old Rail gets better, it might find a place in the plot.
It was really cold today.
