Wednesday, May 11, 2011.
More Crabmeat. Andrea Calms An Irate Customer.
Mary Ann says we will lunch on what's left of the pound of jumbo lump crabmeat she acquired a few days ago. She served it on a green salad with buttermilk dressing. I don't think that went as well with the crabmeat as last night's remoulade did. But it wasn't the end of the world, either.
During the radio show today, a gentleman called with a reasonable complaint about a dinner at Andrea's last week. He ordered the leg of lamb and found it tasteless. When he brought this up to the staff, he got an apathetic response. The reason he called me was that he got the idea to go there when Chef Andrea did one of his extended radio commercials on my show last Friday.
The fellow went on and on, getting worked up about the whole experience, including a telephone call to the restaurant in mid-afternoon to find out what time they opened. The answer he kept getting was, "We're already open." (Andrea's doesn't close between lunch and dinner.) What he really wanted to know was the time they opened for lunch, but from what I could tell he didn't ask the question that way.
We were sliding into an argument, so I thought I'd complicate it even more by getting Chef Andrea on the phone. That turned out well, and calmed the customer quite a bit. Andrea offered to have the man in for a replacement dinner--the perfect strategy.
Then Andrea started in on the quality of his raw materials. He said he buys only American lamb, the best in the market. He also referred to the excellence of all his other ingredients. In all of this, the chef is truly beyond reproach.
By the time he finished outlining all of that, a few minutes had gone by and the customer was worn down into friendliness. Andrea is great at public relations.
I couldn't get a word in either. But I wasn't trying very hard. I've heard the intrinsic-merit reasoning since the first time a restaurateur took issue with one of my reviews. I can't remember who that was, because so many of them have taken that tack. They put forth as self-evident that their food has to be good if they spend so much money on fresh fish and Prime beef and house-made pasta and American lamb.
Yeah, but: it is quite possible for a chef to start with the very finest ingredients and wind up with a mediocre dish. Or worse. Good ingredients do not guarantee good cooking. In fact, great ingredients often make bad cooking more likely, because the kitchen gets complacent. Andrea's has that problem at times, as do many other restaurants.
But I left this out of the discussion and everybody went away from that set-to happy. Including me, now that I've vented my spleen on the matter here.
At the end of the show, another issue stole my attention. Research shows that gout is not triggered by what you ate yesterday. They say that the ingredients for a flareup are always there, and when the attack comes, it's random. I respect authorities, and so I'll go along with that, because they did the tests and I didn't.
But it's easy for me to indict the two steaks I had last week for my present gout attack. Or--even more likely--that tub of popcorn I consumed last night. Whatever it was, I awakened this morning with an episode in my big right toe. It escalated into the worst gout I've ever had--so painful that just moving my foot made me wince. On my good foot, of course.
I took the prescription pills and an Aleve, knowing full well what the side effects of the former are. I crossed my fingers that the blowback wouldn't happen during the radio show tomorrow. (Let's get this over with. It did.)
Andrea's. Metairie: 3100 19th St. 504-834-8583.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
