Wednesday, June 12, 2013.
Another Taste Of Porter & Luke's.
Readers like top-twelve lists. Even the ones who tell me they regard the idea as an editorial gimmick. If that's all they are, I'd prepare them less often than I do, because they take substantially more time to research than a straight review. At least if done my way. The hard part is explaining each entry and its ranking. Then doing the actual ranking. No alphabetical order or polls of anonymous readers for the New Orleans Menu.
I made four lists today. Two for Father's Day (one brunch, one dinner.) One about restaurants with a lot of different kinds of fish. And a revision of the Best Foie Gras list for CityBusiness. In my column there, I swing in a top ten list (they won't let me do twelve, for some reason) once per quarter. Another one of my funny habits.
I'm working on a straight review for next week, involving Porter & Luke. One or two more visits and I will have all the information I need. Today, I wasn't enormously hungry, and tried the low end of the menu. I was surprised to find poor boy sandwiches here. But if Mandina's can have good luck with that, why not P&L's?
I started with fried eggplant, for which I have a passion lately. These were exemplary. Chef Vincent knows that skinny sticks are not the way to go with breadcrumb-encrusted eggplant. They've got to be cut larger than seems right, and cooked in hotter oil. There was enough here for two or three people, but I held back.
Ordering this also allowed me a taste of Vincent's red sauce, which shows up on a number of other dishes. The waitress said up front that the sauce might seem sweeter than I'm used to. She was right about that, and I don't think the sweetness came from just cooking the tomatoes down a long time. There might be some actual sugar here. However, the natural bitterness of eggplant offsets the sweetness of the sauce, and it worked.
The roast beef poor boy, made with spring mix greens instead of standard iceberg lettuce and a horseradish mayonnaise, will not establish P&L's as the place to go in Old Metairie for that sandwich. On its own merits, it was tasty enough. But it was far enough off the traditional flavor to distract me. Glad I got that over with. There are a lot better things to eat here than sandwiches. Seafood seems to be the big deal. And the fried chicken, of course.
In mid-meal, a familiar face turned up at my table. Chris "Bozo" Vodanovich--the long-time owner of the now-extinct Bozo's--was here with wife and friends, celebrating his eighty-fifth birthday. His wife Bernadine has him beat, though. She gets around fine, and she's ninety-four.
Chris seemed very happy about the outcome of his restaurant, which had an unusually bad case of the problems of a business moving from one generation of owners to another. One of the reasons for the problems is that Chris was irreplaceable. The restaurant could not help but change, and change in a long-running, totally consistent restaurant is inevitable.
It all came together when Ed "Mr. Ed" McIntyre bought Bozo's. Though he has his own three good restaurants, Ed was a regular at Bozo's, and understands the dynamics of the place. It won't be Bozo's, but it will be good.
"I've known Ed since he was this tall!" Chris said, pointing to his kneecap. Sounds like the perfect person to carry on.
Chris sent me a slice of his birthday cake. It came from the bakery at Robert's Market, and was terrific.
Porter & Luke's. Old Metairie: 1517 Metairie Road. 504-875-4555.
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