Wednesday, March 13, 2013.
Dinner At R'evolution, With A Pro
Every two months Mary Ann has lunch with Danny Millan. He's a longtime front-of-the-house master around New Orleans, having worked at Brennan's, August, the Sazerac, and many other glitzy dining rooms. He brought those skills to Le Foret when it opened a few years ago, and to a great extent is responsible for that five-star performer.
MA and Danny were planning their next bimonthly lunch to be at R'evolution, the restaurant about which so much has been said in public that I hardly need to add more, beyond mentioning that it's the new grand restaurant of the Royal Sonesta Hotel.
I am four meals into researching an overdue review of R'evolution. Would my wife allow me to intrude on this dinner date, and move it to the evening? She would, and Danny was delighted to have me there.
They were at the table when I arrived. That's non-standard for Mary Ann, who likes the bar so much that she always begins her R'evolution evenings there, even though she doesn't really drink. It could have been because the bar was full. In fact, the whole place was busy. The constant buzz about this restaurant--some of it manufactured in house--seems to be working well.
We were in the one dining room whose tables are clothed. Joining us was the hostess at Le Foret; Danny wanted her to see another restaurant of the same caliber. She has something in common with MA in not being an adventuresome eater. Danny and I made up for that by eating quite a bit of the exotic food for which R'evolution is known.
Danny also brought some wines, all of them from Spain. He was born in Mexico, and has a great knowledge and liking of Hispanic wines. We began with a cava--the Spanish answer to Champagne. The girls liked that, of course.
R'evolution excels in its amuse-bouches. The one or two items are always a) so little known as to require full identification from the server, and 2) have such an intensity of flavor that, regardless of its goodness, would be overwhelming if you are more than the quarter-mouthful they give you. Tonight's examples were a blob of salad made with quinoa, seasoned with something rich and vinegary. It could have been made into a spread, and you wouldn't need much of it. The other item was a cool lobster bisque, again of such concentration that the little morsel of lobster toned the dish down.
The first revenue courses were a salad topped with a slice of braised (I think) pancetta--the unsmoked, uncured Italian bacon. It's pork belly in an offbeat form, really, curled up and sliced thin. Bacon in its more familiar form also showed up across a salad of greens with fried oysters. (This was Mary Ann's entree. She eats lightest in the most celebratory restaurants.)
Danny began his repast with Death By Gumbo, one of the most talked-about of R'evolution's dishes. We had the same thought about it: it's identical to the quail gumbo that Chef Chris Kerageorgiou put on his menu at La Provence twenty-five years ago. Did he get the idea from John Folse, one of the owners of R'evolution, and a chef who's been around that long himself? Or vice-versa? I don't know for sure. It's a great idea: a dark-roux gumbo with a stuffed (with dirty rice) quail sitting in the middle of the bowl. I like La Provence's version better.
My starter was one of the best dishes I've had here: a carpaccio of venison. Never had that before, and never saw the more conventional beef carpaccio served this way. It looked like a flag on the plate, with the cracker answer to poor boy bread as the staff. The venison itself was nearly raw, save only for a crust around the edge, tinged with ground espresso coffee. Also in the mix were walnuts and shaved chocolate. Say what? I don't know what the chef was thinking with that last ingredient, but the slight off-key flavor note must have come from it.
The girls' entrees were almost laughably basic: fettuccine with shrimp, and rigatoni bolognese. The word is that co-proprietor Rick Tramonto does killer pasta. I can't say I've seen evidence of that yet.
We men were more primitive. Danny's main was called "pork 'n' beans" on the menu (somebody--probably John Folse--likes these cartoonish dish names). This was a pork shank served with beans that looked like the ones in the can of the same name (I'm sure they weren't), with crepes made with macquechoux corn, and a root beer barbecue sauce on the side. Danny clearly liked that, because before I could get a taste he had demolished it.
For me, another oddly-named dish: "bird in a cage." They claimed it was cooked coq au vin-style. The quarter-bird (if there was more than that, I missed it) was like no other coq au vin I've had, but more like chicken stewed with brown gravy. Which, fortunately, is something I like. Black truffles added a special note, as well as an excuse to charge $32 for chicken.
The cage part was pure gimmick. The plate was covered by an edible round screen made, if I understand correctly, by slowly reducing a sauce with enough gelatin, fat, and starch to start trapping big bubbles when it thickened to just this side of burning. Hmm. Clever. But did this have any effect on the flavor of the dish? Do I ever have to see this again in my life? No and no.
The dish left me hungry. I decided it would not be insane to order a house specialty that I feel the need to cover in the review. The steak list here is as long as that of most steakhouses, and involving prime beef dry-aged on premises. For some reason, it lacks both of my favorite cuts: strip sirloin and porterhouse. That's curious, because those cuts benefit more from the high grade and the aging than any other.
The closest R'evolution gets to my kind of steak is a bone-in filet. It's a porterhouse with the strip cut off. Not a common idea, but a good one, certainly adding flavor to the filet. It's big enough for two, and sports an a la carte price tag in the $60s. One of the cooking options is Pittsburgh style--charred all around, and rare in the center. Although I am a big fan of thick steaks--they cook better--I think this one might have been a bit too thick for a Pittsburgh. After cutting a half-inch into the thing, the meat revealed at the center was little changed from the way it looked in the refrigerator. However, that part on the outside was perfect--and just enough to fill me. Mary Ann brought the rest home, of course, and we ate happily from it the rest of the week. Fork tender, she said, loving it.
A curious kitchen policy turned up for the second time in my dinners here. The kitchen is not very flexible in turning out special requests. Last time, I wanted bearnaise sauce for the lamb chops. That's not a bizarre order, nor one that challenges even a just-okay chef. In a restaurant with these prices and pretensions, such a thing should be forthcoming with no hesitation. But they said they couldn't do it. Tonight I had to talk them into making a cream peppercorn sauce for the steak--another easy trick. What's that about?
My mind was taken from that matter by the goodness of the steak and the wines Danny had brought. One was a big Spanish red whose name I wrote on a card that I lost. I do recall it was a 2003 vintage, and was showing the benefits of its time in the bottle gloriously. We all greed that it was by quite a bit a better wine than the other red in Danny's bag: 2010 Opus One. My luck with this wine from the day I tasted the first vintage of it has been disappointing. It always seems too stiff. Maybe I'm not drinking it old enough--but I have had Opus with fifteen or more years on it, and came away with the same feelings.
We had so much good red wine (the girls, of course, weren't drinking) that I was about to order a cheese board. I didn't have to. One came out without our asking. Somebody here is paying attention and has a sense of taste.
Fascinating dessert. The first was a hot bananas Foster souffle, with the classic Foster sauce poured into the center at the table. I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before. Danny, who made thousands of bananas Fosters during his years at Brennan's, especially liked it. Also on the table was an assortment of little cheesecakes, and another cake with a ball of spun sugar on top, jabbing the inside of one's mouth as one tried to eat it.
The dinner ended on a nice note: the check was smaller than I expected, not quite $300 for the four of us. The light-dining ladies most have done that. Danny was not happy that I beat him to the check (I got Mary Ann to do it on the sly.)
Now, after sitting through about a dozen dinners here (mine and those of others), I think I have enough reference to write a fair review. I just have one problem: I don't know what to say.
R'evolution. French Quarter: 777 Bienville (in the Royal Sonesta Hotel). 504-553-2277.
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