Wednesday, January 12, 2011. Eat Club At Café Giovanni. This is historically the coldest few weeks of the year in our part of the world. The current averages are proving that true. It was twenty-four this morning, and that will be the warmest temperature we'll see for days.
The chill must have got me moving, because I finished my daily writing tasks early enough to head into town early and get a much-overdue haircut. When my hair gets long, it curls upwards at the sides, making it seem that a a large bird is sitting on my head. The bird has been there for weeks now. Mary Ann says this looks not like a bird, but the hair of Bozo the Clown. Isn't that nice?
My barber Harold Klein made me look normal again, and caught me up on all the political gossip. His shop is in the Royal Orleans Hotel, and he has many powerful people among his clientele.
It was a five-block walk from there to Café Giovanni, where we will broadcast and dine today. En route, I noticed that the W Hotel on Chartres is already working on re-configuring the former Bacco restaurant space into something else. (Bacco is in limbo until Ralph Brennan finds a new location for it.)
A little farther along, I took my mind off the windy cold by observing that the sun was exactly lined up with Chartres Street. All shadows were parallel with the curbs. Chartres and the French Quarter's other longitudinal streets run a little more north-south than east-west. Everything looks funny when the light comes from a sun that far south.
Café Giovanni was nice and warm when I arrived. I asked for and got a little cup of spectacular chicken andouille gumbo to warm me up further, bobbling it up as the theme music for the show sounded. The only untoward moment during our three hours on the air came when I reached into my pocket for some money to tip the waiter who kept me in coffee, and pulled out a large wad of clipped hair. Or wing?
Nobody beats Chef Duke Locicero on antipasto, and the large platters thereof proved that point again. He had something new: escargots, marinated in olive oil, garlic, and herbs, served at cool room temperature. Apparently I wasn't the only one who couldn't remember having had snails served at other than tongue-burning temperatures. Some thought the slugs were mushrooms, even after they swallowed the first one. They were much better than I expected, but it's hard to compete with bubbling garlic butter. The rest of the plate was heavy on marinated vegetables, with enough prosciutto, salami, olives, cheeses, and other nibbles to make this the most filling course of the night.
The tables were turned with the next course: a warm crabmeat dish billed as a salad. The limoncello vinaigrette gave it a salad flavor, but the fried green tomato and very rich , cheesy grits underneath took it away again. I'm not one to complain much about textures, but this dish was sub-optimal in that department.
Next came a single meatball in Giovanni's unique and very delicious red sauce (it's somewhere between a fresh, quick sauce and the ones that take all day). The meatball was also different: made of wild boar, although I don't know if I would have guessed that in a blind tasting. Underneath it was goat cheese polenta. Polenta and grits are too much alike to show up in two consecutive courses, but, okay.
Now a high point: a large sea scallop, seared to crunchiness, set atop some lentils flavored with Sambuca, moistened with two kinds of pesto. Everything about this amplified everything else. The fresh meatiness of the scallop and its pairing with beans (always a good idea) made it irresistible.
Then "baby osso buco." There's nothing baby about a veal shank. These were cut from the low end of the bone, instead of up near the joint, whence comes classic osso buco. No problem there: it was still generous enough that I couldn't quite finish it. This came out as moist and melt-in-the-mouth as you please. Great sauce. The osso buco fans in the audience were very pleased.
The dinner went against standard multi-course dynamics by lightening up from here on. Next was a dualism of rabbit. Crunchy and smooth. Panneed (a little too) over here, and a ragout of rabbit (delicious) over there. We were drinking a very good wine with this and the previous course: Jekel Pinot Noir, just right with these lighter meats.
The final entree was a generous piece of pompano with crabmeat and brown butter, surrounded by Jerusalem artichokes and white raisins. This drew nothing but raves, and we had a good wine to go with it: Castello della Sala Chardonnay. Italian Chardonnays can be superb, and this one was.
Wait. Pompano with crabmeat and brown butter? That's as classic a New Orleans fine-dining dish as can be named. Kind of thing you'd eat at Antoine's. But Café Giovanni is only half Italian, at most. It stayed traditionally Creole into the dessert, with fresh berries on top of Creole cream cheese. That's what my mother--whose 100th birthday will be next year--often made for herself at home.
We weren't halfway through the meal when people started telling me that they'd never had a dinner as good as this here, or experienced as fine an Eat Club event. I thought it was way up there, too. But my superannuated standards came forth to give me pause about the way many of the dishes were served. I have no problem with the idea of small courses. Love them, in fact. But when the small courses are served on equally small plates, and those plates are put directly onto the table, with no underliner of any kind, it looks inadequate and silly to my old eyes.
But these are the things restaurants do to maximize value. Tonight, Chef Duke declared at the beginning of the meal that no bread would be served, even if we asked. "There's enough food," he said. "You don't need bread." Well, I don't need a nice fountain pen, either, but I very much like having one. On the other hand, it cost $200, and only a few pen buffs will pay a price like that. Chefs don't want just a few at our Eat Club dinners, so they lower the price to far below the fair market value. That certainly was the case tonight, with eight courses, seven wines, tax and tip for $75. How can I legitimately complain about small plates without underliners and the absence of bread?
And everybody was happy. I don't argue with happy.
Cafe Giovanni. French Quarter: 117 Decatur. 504-529-2154.
