Wednesday, March 21, 2012.
Dinner (And Everything Else) In The Rain.
Yesterday, warm winds blew hard from the southeast. Enough that the water in Lake Pontchartrain was threateningly high. Army Corps of Engineers to the rescue! They closed their new floodgate at the outlet of the London Street Canal, and started pumping water over it. This is the mechanism that will prevent another Katrina disaster from happening. (The London Canal levees broke in the three places after Katrina.) A run-through for the next big hurricane. Worked perfectly.
At this time of a year, double-digit winds from the Gulf are inevitably followed by a front cool enough to condense three or four inches of rain out of the clouds. I was going to avoid making the drive across the lake in that kind of storm, but the option of doing the show from home vanished when the power went out at half-past noon.
People with fragile nerves (which I inherited from my beloved but shaky dad) should never drive through a blinding thunderstorm on the Causeway while listening to a Stephen King audiobook. (Under The Dome, to be exact. A very disturbing piece of work.)
In the city, the rain caused damage to the telephone network, making it hard for people to call the radio show. At one point, the entire system went down for about fifteen minutes. I can talk by myself for three hours if I have to. But I don't like it, and it doesn't make for a very engaging program.
Things smoothed out in the last half, enough that my mind lightened up to burp up a great promotional idea. It would unite the sports aspect of my radio station (we're ESPN all the time, except for me) with my food theme. I will get the entire Hornets team to autograph a football. Yes. Wouldn't that be a great giveaway? I wonder if the team's management has a sense of humor.
It was still raining, if not hard, as I drove the entire length of Magazine Street looking for a dinner inspiration. I took a detour to check out the new Tamarind on Lee Circle. Chef Dominique Macquet has a hand in that. But there was no parking in a three-block radius. On a clear day, I'd just hoof it, but I left my new umbrella back at the radio station.
I next tried to approach Apolline--Dominique's previous place. Same story anent parking. Two blocks was as close as I could get. Which meat I'd get wet.
I began to wonder and worry why I was not feeling a passion for dinner. I had no lunch--nothing since juice and a slice of toast at breakfast. I should be ready for anything. Then--bing! The thought of Ristorante Filippo fired up the old culinary desire.
The rain depressed Filippo's business this evening. Only two other tables were active. And the waiter had bad news: the one item on the menu not available tonight was the very dish I was virtually salivating for: Phil Gagliano's lusty chicken spiedini. Dammit! That's not been available on any of my last three or four times!
But then owner-chef Phil came out and said that, indeed, he did have spiedini tonight. In fact, his sous chef had just finished making a batch. The recipe is not complicated, but requires a good deal of manual work that must be done in advance, in the same way that braciolone does.
Good news! I began with a salad of greens, tomatoes, olives, artichokes, capers, and no small amount of lump crabmeat. Wonderful, especially with crescents from a hot knot of Italian bread.
Then the spiedini--the best dish Filippo makes. It's pounded chicken breast wrapped around an Italian bread-crumb stuffing (good bit of garlic, olive oil, and herbs; think of Italian baked oysters) with a few thin slices of ham and a knob of mozzarella. The whole thing is rolled up, panneed with a bread crumb coating, sliced into cylinders, and sent out on the edges of a pile of linguine with olive oil, garlic, roasted peppers, and a few other things. It smells wonderful, with the aroma and flavor you come to a place like this for.
That went down with a glass of the house Chianti. A block of amaretto-almond bread pudding that I didn't need but loved anyway was almost the last thing. But Phil had some homemade Italian cookies left from his St. Joseph's altar on Monday. Good with espresso.
I love this place, for all the usual reasons and a couple of others. The music is the kind of thing I listen to at home: Big Band, the great singers of the American popular song, a little jazz. A great mix. Wish more restaurants played this stuff. (It comes from Muzak, which these days has much more than elevator music in its repertoire.)
It was no longer raining when I left. The waves on the lake had calmed down, too.
Ristorante Filippo. Metairie: 1917 Ridgelake. 504-835-4008.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
