Wednesday, March 17. Wearing Of The Green. Drago's. Managed to remember to wear something green today, in honor of St. Patrick. It was one of the ties the Marys bought me this past Christmas. It's a good thing there is a St. Patrick's Day, because otherwise green clothing would never be worn at all.
Today's dinner venue on Jude's required eating list during his current week-long visit home was Drago's. I parked in the marginally legal but little-used parking space a block and a half away. I use it whenever a spot can't be found in the restaurant's small lot. Which is almost always. I walked past Drago himself, seated at his customary end of the bar. He greeted me with an enthusiastic smile and pat on the back. I found the Marys and Hollywood already settled into a corner table, with Klara Cvitanovich (Mrs. Drago) cooing about how big and handsome Jude has grown, but warning that he looked a little thin. Jude explained that this is what everybody looks like in Los Angeles.
The char-broiled oysters began arriving as immediately as they did inevitably. Drago's has reached that sweet spot in which they can have a certain number of oysters grilling away all the time, knowing that an order will come up for them before they get a chance to overcook. That allows them to serve that signature dish very quickly. They came to our table within two minutes after we ordered. And just as quickly scarfed up, with Jude and me eating most of the bivalves while Mary Leigh came behind us with crescents of French bread to get up the excess sauce. Mary Ann, in compliance with her diet, picked one or two small ones.
Another dozen was clearly needed, and came as quickly as the first. Somewhere in the eating of those, it was declared by somebody at our table, seconded by somebody else, and then passed unanimously that these really are the best of their kind. We can say that with some authority, because the four of us eat them wherever we find them. Since almost everyone with the capability for grilling oysters now has copied the dish, that's a lot of competitors. I've learned that when somebody says, "The oysters at [wherever] are better than Drago's," it just means that they're pretty good. Same as the way one must say that a steak is better than Ruth's Chris for the opinion to even register.
The next round of too much food included salads for me and Mary Leigh and gumbo for Jude. Jude is my official Gumbo Editor; he has a passion for the dish. He said this one (the seafood variety; they also make chicken gumbo at Drago's) was in the top ranks.
Mary Ann's entree was an appetizer of fleur-de-lis shrimp, Tommy Cvitanovich's hot new shrimp dish. It's fried shrimp--something that never puts a gleam in my eye. But they're uncoated when they go into the oil, and after they come out they're tossed with a spicy, orange aioli, and then coated with finely-chopped peanuts. It's a terrific dish, and the scattering of Mardi Gras-colored seasonings around the rim makes it look even better.
It occurred to me that the vogue for sprinkling random crumbs and dustings of seasonings around the perimeters of plates may speed up service a bit. Most plates get a drip or two of sauce when the cooks assemble them. This is wiped off in the kitchen most of the time. But if other droppings (that was a poor choice of words; let's change that to "scatterings") are there, you might not nice the stray drops of sauce or chips of crust.
Jude ate panneed chicken with fettuccine Alfredo. For me, grilled tuna with spinach and boiled new potatoes. I don't remember having had this here since the days when the tuna was blackened and the sauce was Rockefeller sauce. That was a great combination; this had almost no excitement at all. The grill wasn't hot enough, and the sauce was too buttery.
Mary Leigh is, like her mom, not usually a dessert eater. But she likes intense chocolate things, and the chocolate brownie sundae here makes that list. It looks like an absurd overkill, the brownie completely hidden by chocolate-sauce-drizzled whipped cream and a ball of ice cream. I took a bite and have to say it's better than most such things. And I don't even like most such things.
Tommy said that plans to open a Drago's in Baton Rouge are, at least for now, derailed. He was negotiating for a location, but it turned out that the mall involved already had a Bonefish Grill, and in the lease Bonefish stipulated that no other restaurant specializing in seafood could be in the same center. So Drago's will keep looking, although it's not an urgent item. Their Hilton Hotel restaurant downtown is still the highest-grossing Hilton restaurant in the world.
Drago’s. Metairie: 3232 N. Arnoult Rd. 504-888-9254. Seafood.
