Wednesday, December 5, 2012.
Maker's Mark. Pizza In A Breakfast Place.
A pretty good rain overnight continued into the morning and kept the roofers from working. This was frustrating for Mary Ann, who has a deadline to meet with these house repairs. Jude's girlfriend and Mary Leigh's boyfriend will be visiting during the holidays and seeing the Cool Water Ranch for the first time. I say we should just tell them all that this is just our country bungalow, and let it go at that.
Really, I'm happy it rained. Any leaks in the new roof will be revealed while the roofers are still here.
Rob Samuels visited the radio show. His grandparents founded Maker's Mark, the distiller of first-class Bourbon whiskey. Although the brand is now owned by a large spirits-making corporation, the Samuels family continues to preside over their creation. It has roots in distilled brown goods going back to Scotland many generations ago.
The Samuels could not have known where the whiskey business was going in 1952, when the first batch of Maker's went into barrels. Bourbon and liquids like it were favored through the 1970s, but were left behind when the Baby Boomers came of age in the 1980s. But that was when Maker's Mark appeared in the national arena. At the time, it was just about the only premium Bourbon out there, and it caught on among connoisseurs.
The package helped. They tear all the labels by hand, and the red wax dripped over the neck and cap are also applied individually. No two alike. All that was the idea of Rob's grandmother, who thought that the bottle should stand out from all the other whiskeys on the shelf. Without her ideas, it's questionable that the product would have done as well.
Rob brought a bottle of the standard Maker's Mark, and another of a new product they make called Maker's 46. The significance of the number proved so jejune that I've already forgotten what it was. (Everything else on the bottle had a story behind it.) The 46 competes with the many other hand-made, center cut Bourbons that have come along in the last decade. I compared the flavors of the two and found the 46 more assertive and complex, and almost thick on the tongue. Both are higher in alcohol than the standard 80 proof. The 46 is 94 proof.
I learned most of this about twenty-five years ago, when I had lunch with Rob's father Bill and Dick Brennan Sr. at Mr. B's. The Brennans were big supporters of Maker's Mark, and the two families became friends. Bill said that we here in New Orleans get it when it comes to drinking the good stuff.
Although I had nothing like a meal today, when the show ended I wasn't particularly hungry. I'm thinking about having dinner at the Bon Ton before Christmas, to relive a memorable moment
from 1974 that I will explain (not for the first time) if and when I get around to it. But the memory requires a blustery, cold day.
I wound up at Café Navarre on the street of the same name, just off Canal Boulevard. It's the former Weaver's, a great maker of roast beef poor boys. Now it's run by the younger generation of the Riccobono family (they of the Peppermill). I' ve had breakfast and lunch there, but wasn't sure what, if anything, went on at dinner. It was open, all right, but the menu was a surprise: pizza was about it, plus a few appetizers and salads.
I asked for a cheese and garlic pizza. It came out with a thin crust and a restrained, tasty mix of toppings. I'm only guessing, but the crust didn't look as if it had been made in house. But it was good enough, the price was right, the Caesar salad was fresh and sharp, the servers were very friendly, and the place has a big screen for the watching of football. In other words, a fine resource for people in the neighborhood. Nothing wrong with that.
Cafe Navarre. Lakeview: 800 Navarre Ave. 504-483-8828.
