Wednesday, October 7, 2009. Daisies. Everybody Knows Me At Charlie's Seafood. Along the gravel road that leads through the woods to the Cool Water Ranch, a bumper crop of daisies is in bloom. As in thousands of them. I guess they must need a lot of water to grow this tall and flower so profusely. Usually, we only see these in the wet section back where the pond drains. All the rain we've had this year is creating large banks of the yellow-and-black flowers, including one particularly exultant patch at the turnoff to the house. Mary Ann has been grumbling about the weather lately, but she must be happy about all these wildflowers. She loves them far more than store-bought posies.
Or maybe it was the temperature that triggered the daisies. Any illusions we may have had that fall arrived on the official date were dashed today. It was ninety-five degrees along Causeway Boulevard, and that's on the North Shore. I hear that broke a record.
Nothing doing this week with the Eat Club--a relief. For the past month, we've had two remotes and dinners per week. I have a feeling we may be wearing out the franchise. Reservations for next week's dinner at the New City Grille--a good restaurant, offering an appealing five-course menu with wines for $75 inclusive--are coming in very slowly. Among my suspicions as to why is that all the summer specials during the past few months have caused menu price deflation. At least in the minds of diners, who are so accustomed to getting three- and four-course dinners for under $50 that our long-running $75 tab seems suddenly high. In fact, it's been six years since we reached that plateau, save for a few special dinners, and it's always been a sweetheart price from the restaurants.
I took advantage of the free evening by having dinner at Charlie's Seafood (a.k.a. Charles Sea Foods) in Harahan. That place has been an icon as long as I can remember. Which is back to 1958, when my Aunt Ollie and Uncle Frank lived more or less across the highway. Charlie's was on one side of the corner, and the bus garage was on the other. I walked, bicycled, school-bussed, and drove past it hundreds of times during the years we lived in River Ridge. And yet, I never set foot in the place until tonight.
I was there tonight because Frank Brigtsen--who also grew up in River Ridge, but who did eat in Charlie's often--bought the place and reopened it in July. And he wanted me to ad-lib some radio commercials for him. I can't do that without direct experience. So I sat down hungry.
As promised, the new Charlie's is what the old Charlie's was: an inexpensive, casual neighborhood seafood house, with a bar along one wall and utilitarian tables to the a maximum allowed by law. The neighbors have responded. I had to wait a couple of minutes for a table. Lots of ceiling fans spun, and they needed to: the air conditioning was not quite keeping up with the day's unseasonable heat.
A soon as I sat down, a number of people came over, spoke from their tables, or just stared at me as I ordered a big meal: gumbo, a delicious, overstuffed meat pie with two dipping sauces, a salad, and a fried oyster platter. Between the first two (a time measurable in seconds), John Barrois appeared in the chair next to me. John was the long-time advertising director for National Supermarkets and its other brands Canal-Villere and The Real Superstore. I worked with him in various freelance capacities for about fifteen years in the 1970s and 1980s, and again in the 1990s when--after National went down--he turned up at A&P. He retired from all that about ten years ago and spends most of his working hours now with his real love: local live theater, for which he does graphic design and photography.
The fried oysters arrived (hot, plump and crisp), and just as they did in walked Clark, the Gourmet Truck Driver. That's when it occurred to me that I had mentioned on the air this afternoon that I was coming here. That explains his presence, and maybe even some of the others. By then, it was clear that everybody in the place (with the possible exception of the waitress) knew who I was.
I invited Clark to join me. He wound up getting the best dish on the table: a crabmeat au gratin, topped not with rubbery wads of day-glo orange cheese, but a fine crust of bread crumbs and herbs. I will have a whole boat of this next time I come in.
I was intrigued by a manifesto Frank and Marna placed on all the tables. I wasn't surprised that his determination to use only fresh Louisiana seafood, and cook it all to order. But both those criteria are rare enough to be noteworthy. I was a little more impressed by his plan to use wild-caught catfish, which is not an easy thing to do. (It's not always available.)
I left Clark in mid-meal. I woke up at five-thirty this morning, and was about to hit the wall with a fifty-mile drive ahead of me. In the rain.
When I got home, Mary Ann asked me, "Where'd you go for dinner? You smell like fried seafood!"
Charlie's Seafood. Harahan: 8311 Jefferson Hwy. 504-737-3700. Seafood.
