Wednesday, January 6. The Worst King Cake. Arnaud's Again, With Salesmen. Second morning with temperatures in the low twenties. The jet stream is crossing Siberia, turning north and passing the North Pole, then straight down the Mississippi Valley, right at us. It will bring us the chilliest weather in over a decade.
But there are worse problems. When I arrived at the radio station this afternoon, a half-dozen slices of king cake were in the kitchen. I couldn't dope out who the baker was. I took a piece, of course. Today is King Day--last day of Christmas, first day of Carnival. It was loaded with soft, super-sweet white icing. The cake itself was heavy from not having properly risen. It was terrible. I threw half of it away.
I am of the opinion that king cakes get worse every year. They're either too sweet or too dry, with the former being the more pervasive problem. And I'm not even talking about the cakes filled with apple gunk or cream gunk. I gave up on those long ago. Because even the plain king cakes are way, way overloaded.
I hope Krummel's Mandeville Bake Shop, which has been consistently good in recent years, keeps up its record. Or, maybe I don't. A year without king cake might be a good thing for my figure. And now that Jude is gone, any king cake that enters our home will be eaten entirely by me.
The radio station sales department is having a meeting over dinner tonight at Arnaud's. That plan was made only two days ago, after I'd already had dinner at Arnaud's with Graham Kreicker. But I have no reluctance about eating twice in one week at Arnaud's. I don't get there often enough to have gone through its entire big menu. And I love their food and the place itself.
The contrast with the scene on Monday was complete. The main dining rooms were largely full, with several parties going on upstairs. Ours was in a room I've never dined in before. (But Arnaud's has a lot of private rooms.) I was the last to arrive, and a few people seemed miffed that I was holding up their dining. What held me up is that I don't get off the air until seven. I hope they know that.
I was to give a talk to the fourteen people to explain how the show's commercial load is handled. The unique aspect of my show is the number of commercials I ad-lib live. Most radio commercials are produced and recorded. There is no question that a live spot--even one in which the announcer stumbles along trying to pull the string tight--are incomparably more persuasive than even a very well-produced recorded spot.
The problem is that some of the newer sales people miss the subtlety that I must limit my participation in this to restaurants I actually like. Some of them find it frustrating, especially when a brand-new restaurant is involved, that I won't do the spot until I feel good about the place.
Well, we went over that, and the Eat Club dinners. Burt mainly we ate and talked about food. Several orders of shrimp Arnaud, the house's great five-way assortment of baked oysters, and souffee potatoes passed around. I washed that down with a French 75 (that tasted pretty good two nights ago, and did again).
The first real course was a half-dozen little china cups, each filled with a snail and garlic butter and topped with puff pastry. This is Arnaud's singular presentation of escargots, and it's very good--except for the fact that you eat the pastry and the French bread you dunk in the cups to get the garlic butter. And the bread here is good. I don't remember when it happened, but I'm pleased to see that they persuaded Leidenheimer's to resume making the distinctive cap bread that was a hallmark of Arnaud's through most of its history. Even though the cap bread of today is identical to poor boy bread in every way but shape. When I fisrst began dining out in the 1970s, quite a few restaurants served cap bread, but it was a denser, crustier loaf.
I followed that with turtle soup. I think I heard an audible gasp when the waiter asked whether I wanted sherry in the soup and I said no. I like the idea of sherry cooked in the soup, and I also like the idea of a glass of sherry on the side of a bowl of turtle soup. But putting it in the soup itself at the table brings the potage down several different ways, despite the old tradition. I explained all this to the younger attendees.
Watching over our group was Lisa Sins, the long-time sales manager of Arnaud's and an exceptionally congenial person. Like many long-time employees and friends, she has a dish named for her on Arnaud's menu. It couldn't be more appropriate: Sweetbreads Sins. That's her, all right. It's been a long time since I sampled that dish, so that's where I went in the main course. Classic: dusted in flour, sauteed, served with brown butter and capers. Delicious. I am eating a great deal of butter tonight.
I persuaded everyone to have bread pudding for dessert.
Arnaud's. French Quarter: 813 Bienville 504-523-5433. Classic Creole.
