Wednesday, June 20, 2012.
Keith Young's Steak House.
Jude is heading back to California early tomorrow morning. We needed one more whole-family meal before he left, so I stayed home to do the radio show, and we went to lunch at Keith Young's Steak House.
We don't take advantage of Keith's lunch prices often enough. You can eat here for approximately what a comparable (or less) lunch would cost at Zea or the Acme.
The Marys--hamburger hounds both, to their cores--ordered hamburgers. Mary Ann says that this is the best hamburger anywhere in the New Orleans area. Hard to argue that point. Who would cook a better hamburger than a guy who's grilled first-class steaks daily for thirty years?
I had one of these monsters once and found it excellent, but so large that if I finished it (difficult not to) it would affect my on-air performance. That sounds pretentious, as if I had a great speaking voice, but it's hard even to rasp for three hours with a big meal in one's stomach.
Keith sent us a new side dish to try: a seafood-stuffed bell pepper. Not something I've ordered in maybe twenty years. If all of them were as good as this, I would ask for it more often. The pepper was firm, the stuffing was riddled with crabmeat, shrimp, and crawfish tails, and the top of the stuffing was crisp. What keeps me away from stuffed peppers is that they're almost always melting into glop. Not this one.
I had a cup of the beef-and-vegetable soup, the old-style kind like Maylie's and Wise Cafeteria used to serve. Then a Caesar salad with a pair of fried crab cakes on top. I usually disdain fried crabcakes, but it's hard to imagine anyone but a crabmeat-hater not liking these things.
Meanwhile, Jude displayed the enviable ability young men have to pack away massive amounts of food without any effect on their waistlines. He had the same crab cakes I had for an entree, but as an appetizer. He moved on to a tall filet mignon with mashed potatoes. Just a little snack. After the radio show ended, four hours after this lunch, Jude was trying to talk us all into going out for supper. I would have, but the Marys reeled back in horror at the suggestion. So he went out and came back with two boxes of Raisin' Cane's chicken fingers and lots of fries.
Ah, to have that appetite again!
Keith Young's Steak House. Madisonville: 165 LA 21. 985-845-9940.
