Wednesday, July 13, 2011.
Eat Club At Juniper.
En route to Juniper in Mandeville, a disturbing thought crossed my mind. I couldn't remember seeing any paperwork confirming that an engineer would run the remote broadcast. I called the station's sales manager Pat Galloway, who was also disturbed by this. He was relieved to see that the gig was indeed on the engineering calendar.
Trouble was, it wasn't. Nobody was at the site when I arrived. Somehow, the tech guys had it in their minds that the show was on Lafayette Street, out around back of the station's studios. In fact, the street was Lafitte, across the lake.
So, not for the first time, I did the first hour and a half of the show on my cellphone. I can think of other situations that get me hotter under the collar, but they're all along the lines of having a flat tire in the middle of the Causeway.
Chef Pete Kusiw didn't seem to be upset. He was too busy getting the Eat Club dinner pulled together to talk with me long. And in less than a week the dinner drew over fifty reservations--almost as many people as the restaurant can hold.
The food and wine were good, too, although there were a few dissenters in that opinion. We began with fried green tomatoes topped with smoked gouda cheese and crabmeat. My mild disdain for cheese and seafood in tandem was ameliorated by the smoky touch, which brought it together. The salad was an interesting collection of greens and magentas (radicchio was the latter). Some thought the dressing needed a bit more richness.
The eccentric dish of the evening was the bouillabaisse, which in past dinners here has been my favorite dish at Juniper. Chef Pete downsized it to an appetizer, and to present it interestingly served it inside a variety of scooped-out squashes. The flavor was good, but different enough from the standard that some were mildly put off.
No arguments were heard about the main course, though. Described as a ribeye filet, it sounded like a contradiction in terms. The idea is similar to my idea of the New Orleans cut--a thick sirloin strip cut into two pieces the size of filet mignon. And it works just as well. It came out crustier than a ribeye is usually allowed to get while remaining in the medium-rare category. The two sauces served with it--one a straight-ahead jus, the other a creamy horseradish sauce--completed a very nice course.
For dessert we had an oddly-configured little piece of sweet potato cheesecake, with some berries on the side. Not a biggie, but a reasonable finish.
We had some good wines along the way, of which the most impressive was Durigutti Malbec from Argentina. That was just what was called for with that steak. I was less happy with the the Wrigley Pinot Noir from Oregon, which was forced upon the bouillabaisse, and almost failed to stand up to it. The orange muscat (now there's a grape we don't see often) made the dessert whole with its sweet tones.
Juniper. Mandeville: 301 Lafitte. 985-624-5330.
Again, I have photographs for all these dishes, but they didn't come along with me on my current vacation in Los Angeles. I will add them to the archives of the Dining Diary when I get back this weekend.
