Wednesday, January 28, 2009. Red Maple.
The last time we had an Eat Club dinner at the Red Maple in Gretna, it was an embarrassing disaster--and not on their part. We had only about twenty people show up. Why it is that crossing the river is such a deterrent to so many people is hard to understand, but I do understand it: I myself am reluctant to go there, even though I know the time spent going across the bridge is no greater than driving out to West End, and less than driving to some parts of Metairie. Certainly it's a shorter run than one to Kenner.
Wary about this, I pushed the dinner very hard. It helped that we had a good menu, one that came across as a bargain. Sixty people signed up, and we filled the terrace-like room on the side of the main dining room. 
We started with pass-around appetizers of bacon-wrapped shrimp, stuffed mushrooms that should have been plated but tasted good anyway, and alligator sausage. Then some grilled oysters--enormous ones, with the Red Maple's take on Drago's idea, and very good at that. Turtle soup: always good here, a little less rich than I remember. Innocuous salad.
The entree was a combination of a grilled redfish with crabmeat on one side and a small filet mignon on the other. It was Example #2485-54a of a consistent truth. It sounds like a good idea to put two entrees like that together, and it sure sold well. But both had to be downsized for it to make sense, and neither one of those proteins cook especially well when cooked in small portions. This would have been better if they had:
1. Served on or the other, in normal portions, or
2. Cooked large pieces and then cut them into smaller ones for serving, or
3. Cut them thicker but not as big around.
Still, I didn't hear anybody complaining.
A half-hour into the dinner, I jumped into the mensroom and, while washing my hands, stopped to listen to the sounds filtering in from a dining room outside. If I were talking to someone on the phone, he'd conclude I was not only at a party, but at a very lively one--at the New Year's Eve level, I'd even say. Next time I have the fleeting thought that I have a dull social life, I'll remember this. And that I host a party like this almost every week.
I will also remember the presence tonight of Barney Seely. He's a guy who was a reluctant buddy of mine, in my sixth-grade class for the fall half of the school year at St. Rita's in Harahan. That would be 1961. I did not see him again until tonight. I mentioned his name on the air when a different Barney called me a few weeks ago. Barney Seely heard about that, and contacted me to find out how I knew him. We had a few exchanges as he tried to remember me, which he never quite did. I wasn't much to remember, truth be told. He was interested enough, however, that he and his wife came to the dinner tonight. I couldn't have picked him out of a crowd based on my sixth-grade recollections, nor he me. He got started with is family faster than I did, and--like many of my classmates--is well along his career as a grandfather. I'm probably ten years away from that. He proved to be as nice a fellow as I remembered.
I remember Barney very well. However, the fifty-eight-year-old version of him has nothing at all in common with the eleven-year-old I knew. Not from my perspective, anyway. How many different people we get to be in a lifetime!
Red Maple. Gretna: 1036 Lafayette. 504-367-0935. Steak. Creole.
