Wednesday, June 16. Eat Club At Chad's Bistro. I've reached a conclusion from an experiment with our Eat Club dinners. Enough people have told me over the years that they found the idea of our dinners very intriguing, but think the price is too high. Our dinners hover around the $75 price point, and that's over the line for a lot of people, regardless of the goodness of the food and wine.
So lately I planned a few dinners at significantly lower prices, to see whether this would tap into a new pool of would-be gourmets on budgets. Tonight, we had a dinner for $55. Four courses, with major fish and beef in the entree, and three wines, tax and tip. The attendance was just okay, and took a lot of cajoling.
What I take from this is that another force besides mere budgetary matters keeps some people from spending $75 for a dinner. Many people who do have the money just aren't all that interested in fine dining as an entertainment. I understand the dynamic of this fully. It's at work in my own life. Any price for a ticket to a college or pro football game would be more than I'd want to spend. But, just as football fans think I'm weird for never having watched a Saints game even on television, I'm always taken aback when I meet someone who doesn't care much about great cooking.
So, not only does a lower price for our dinners fail to attract chronic non-attendees, but it also depresses interest among the gourmets. A $55 dinner is rarely as appetizing as a $75 or $85 dinner. And they want to be wowed. (So do I.)
We were not wowed tonight at Chad's Bistro. Chad's is a pretty good place for what it is. For the most part, it offers neighborhood-café dining, in premises much handsomer than most such places. (It was the old Crozier's and two more classy French bistros after that.) But it's a restaurant that specializes in poor boys, fried seafood platters, seafood boats (the best reason to go there), and basic pasta and red sauce dishes. The specials are a notch or two above the regular menu, though. Which is why I thought this could be a good dinner.
It started off well enough, with Buffalo-style oysters. Fried big ones, tossed with pepper butter and sprinkled with blue cheese. In fact, I thought this was excellent. The second course was less so. The salad option looked good, but the chowder of sweet potatoes and crawfish sounded better. It wasn't. The sweet potatoes needed to cook more, and the ingredients didn't really merge.
The entree choices were speckled trout meuniere and a pair of beef tournedos. The trout was broiled instead of fried, and was at about the level of standard banquet fare. The steaks--two five-ounce filets that looked great--occasioned something less than excitement from the people I spoke with. But maybe they're the kind that doesn't get excited about food.
The restaurant bounced back at the end with a well-presented, well-made tiramisu. The Eat Club social magic acted as usual, with most guests enjoying the party aspect of the evening with their newly-met friends. And most said they liked the dinner. But they always say that. It wasn't up to my standards. I take some of the responsibility. I think we pushed this restaurant too far. The lower price was more of an excuse than an explanation.
This had nothing to do with the dinner, but the evening ended on a bad note. Nathan Ales, the radio salesman who sold the remote broadcast we did before the dinner, was forced off the road on his way home by an out-of-control vehicle. He slammed into a powerpole, sustaining significant injuries. As I write this his condition is stable, but the accident will leave scars.
Chad's Bistro. Metairie: 3216 W. Esplanade Ave.. 504-838-9935. Neighborhood Cafe. Seafood. Italian. Creole.
