Wednesday, November 14, 2012.
A Great Dinner After Milling About.
I had to admit defeat today. A week ago, Wendy at Antoine's told me that for some reason their French wine dinner--whose menu looked very appealing to me, particularly on the wine side--had attracted zero diners. I stepped into the breach and offered to boost it by making it an Eat Club dinner. Right away I got twenty-one diners to sign up--enough for the dinner to go ahead. But from that moment on, every email was a cancellation. We were down to eleven people when we decided to cancel the whole thing.
Of course, as soon as we made that decision, six more positive reservations came in. I know a cursed dinner when I see one.
Mary Ann says that the reason for the failure was obvious. Nobody, she claims, has any confidence in the future of America now that her least favorite person had been re-elected. She says that people have so little confidence that they're not even trying to work hard. Sounds like the old self-fulfilling prophecy to me.
In fact, the restaurants in the French Quarter tell me that business is booming. I do know that getting around in the Quarter is very difficult right now, as everybody looks forward to the success of the Super Bowl and gets everything cleaned up to get the most out of it.
Whenever I wind up at the Peppermill for dinner, it means that I wanted to have a nice sit-down meal, but couldn't think of a place to go or dining companions to call. That is a terrible thing to say about the Peppermill, which tonight served me its usual wonderful dinner.
I began with oysters Riccobono, an interesting dish. At its heart, it's Italian-style baked oysters, with the bread crumbs and garlic and herbs. But it also has mushrooms in it, and otherwise it's a more elegant version of the dish than most places serve.
This particular sample was so superb that if it had been served in a bistro on Magazine Street or in the Bywater or from a pop-up eatery in a bar, it would be praised to the high heavens by the urbanspoooners and the yelpers and the bloggers. But it will go unnoticed by all of those, for only one reason: the Peppermill is not in vogue. Not the premises, not the customers, not the neighborhood.
As if to prove the point, after all the above bubbled in my mind through the also-fine drum amandine, a woman who looked to be in her thirties stepped up. She said that she listened to the radio show and read the newsletter. And that she loved the meal she'd just had. And that a friend told her about the Peppermill a long time ago, but she only lately had got around to eating there because "I don't eat in Metairie."
Isn't one of the classic definitions of a standout restaurant that you would cross town to eat there?
The Peppermill makes great caramel custard here, too.
Peppermill. Metairie: 3524 Severn Ave. 504-455-2266.
