Wednesday, March 24. Emeril's Twentieth. The wisteria vine I transplanted a couple of weeks ago is forming flower clusters. I guess it likes its new spot. I hope it climbs up all the pine trees around there and makes major purple displays every spring. And that I live long enough to see it.
Twenty years ago today, Emeril Lagasse held a full-dining-room dry-run opening of Emeril's, his first restaurant. It would open to the public two days later, after he went through a list of about six dozen (this is no exaggeration) items that he felt needed to be changed. He told me that today in a long, face-to-face interview in Emeril's as we broadcast the radio show live from there to celebrate the anniversary.
"Fir example, there was this catfish dish we were trying to do," he recalled. "It just wasn't happening. I just pulled it off the menu. And a bunch of other things like that."
On the other hand, Ella Brennan--Emeril's former employer at Commander's Palace--gave him two words of advice after sampling Emeril's that night. "Change nothing!" she said. To have impressed Ella Brennan to that degree is the highest imaginable accomplishment for a first day.
I was at the restaurant that night, too. With me were Mary Ann, who would not have missed this for anything. It meant bringing along nine-month-old Baby Jude, who sat in the only high chair in the place. (We didn't use babysitters for at least the first ten years, despite the fact that Mary Ann has many siblings with kids.) It would be nineteen years before Jude would returned. (I tell this story at length in Hungry Town, my new book, the first two copies of which I hear are on the way to me today.)
Emeril told me today that he remembered where we sat (our memories about that agree), but not what I ate (neither do I).
During the interview, Emeril's six-year-old son E.J. showed up, wearing an apron. "He told me this morning that he had to get to the restaurant, because he had a lot to do," Emeril said. "I asked him just what he had on his plate. He told me, in all seriousness, 'Dad, you don't understand. The restaurant is my life!'" I talked with EJ a few minutes. He was articulate and earnestly interested in cooking and food. He must really love his dad.
All this was, if I say so myself, a very good interview. I captured the audio and video of it, and as soon as I can figure out how to post them on the website, I will.
We followed the broadcast with an Eat Club dinner for fourteen people, in Emeril's Wine Room. They wanted to keep it down to that number, and charge a substantially higher price than we usually do: $150. The dinner sold out in less than a day, long before I even had a menu in hand. When it arrived, I saw that the value was all in the wines. Since it never was published on the website, here it is, with my ratings of each dish on a scale of five stars:
Tempura-Battered Soft-Shell Crawfish
