Wednesday, January 23, 2013.
Eat Club At The Flaming Torch.
I once told a friend that my goal in life was to become as famous as Mr. Bingle. I don't think I've reached that level yet, but every now and then evidence appears that I'm headed in the right direction. Meeting Michelle Matlock--the chef at the Flaming Torch--made me believe I've taken another step forward. When she came upstairs to talk on the radio this afternoon, she made rather too much of how she has all my books, considered the cookbook a great help in developing her taste, and how she was honored to cook for me and the Eat Club this evening.
I'll have to get Mary Ann over here to reveal some realities about me, and to pull this esteem down a notch.
We had quite a crowd show up for this dinner. Because of a few missed connections, we wound up with sixty-three people. That's too many. I was counting on the usual number of people who cancel in the last few days before the event, or are unrepentant no-shows. But everybody was here, including a lot of our most selective regulars. With the bar open on the first floor, we were ready to party.
After a half-hour of that, we climbed (and that is the word for it) the stairs to the upper dining rooms. We were served Prosecco in those shallow, wide glasses you see only at wedding receptions anymore. Why? Because it never was the right glass for champagne, despite the lore to the effect that such glasses are the size and shape of Marie Antoinette's breasts. Why did we have them? Too many people showed up, is why.
The opening dish was pan-seared oysters served in little tartlet shells, with leeks and a citrus mousseline. Good with the bubbly. I liked that the chef had rendered all the dish names into French. Huîtres Grillées, in this case.
Then on to Cresson Noyer Avec Salade Camembert. This was a watercress salad with walnuts and a little wedge of Camembert. The sauce engendered numerous compliments. It was a lemon and dill vinaigrette. "Lemon! That's it!" people said.
Now a duck breast glazed in Chambord liqueur (raspberries and honey are its main components), with a compound butter containing dried cherries. This was the dish I missed, moving around from table to table. I was downstairs when this came out, and the waiter never found me. Not his fault.
When I first saw the menu for this dinner, my first instinct was to let the chef know that a duck dish would come after a fish dish in a formal dinner. But then the very small section of my brain that tells me to keep up to date said to just let it go. Who cares about the old rules, anyway. I wish now that I had found the duck somewhere so I could say how that worked out, but nobody complained about it.
And the out-of-order redfish dish was the best of the night, according to a lot of people. It was a demi-portion, but not overcooked, and there was enough crabmeat in there to fill it out. The sauce was one we don't see often: sauce Maltaise, which is sort of a hollandaise with orange juice instead of lemon.
I think the chef's best work tonight was the dessert. A poached pear, cooked down with framboise, glazed with raspberry puree, stuffed with a little bit of Roquefort and a good deal of mascarpone cheese, was as good a version of that old classic I think I've ever tasted. Something called a sugar glass flame turned out to be a little molten sculpture of a burst of flame. I had been speculating about that all week.
Going around the tables near the dinner's end, I heard the same comments again and again. "The food tasted good, but it wasn't hot." That will register in the column under "Problems Caused By Booking Too Many Diners." It was also caused by the fact that the kitchen is downstairs and the dining rooms (for us, anyway) are upstairs. And the stairs are a bit steep. Indeed, a waiter slipped and dropped a whole tray of glasses, adding excitement to the evening.
I hereby resolve to cut our attendance off at fifty from now on.
Flaming Torch. Uptown: 737 Octavia. 504-895-0900.
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