Despite her best efforts and the force of the Tea Party revolt, Mary Ann's sister came in a respectable but distant third in the primary election for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in Maryland. This is good news for our family. Now Mary Ann won't be up there until the November election.
Mary Leigh called to see if I'd like to take her to dinner tonight. Like to? I'd love to! Except for the decision about where to go. She never has any ideas. I have plenty of them, but they must mesh with the limited range of the teenage palate. And with her insistence that wherever we go must be amenable to very casual clothing. Apparently, being seen walking even a few feet in a public space at Tulane while dressed nicely endangers a student's coolness.
I was in college in the middle of the hippie era. That made it easy to be a sartorial non-conformist. Instead of wearing torn jeans and stained T-shirts like everybody else, I wore button-down shirts and ties. I really stood out. Especially during the year when my hair was down to my shoulders and my beard made my neck invisible.
Tonight, I needed to go to the Crescent City Steak House to take a new picture of their neon sign for their web ad. Mary Leigh can always be wooed with a filet mignon, so there we went.
The place was reasonably busy for a Wednesday night. Something new: a sheet of seafood specials! For most of the Crescent City's seventy-six-year history, if you came here you'd better be hungry for a steak, because that's all it had. I guess if Antoine's can open a bar after 168 years and Galatoire's can take reservations, then the Crescent City can grill tuna and redfish.
We stuck with the old program. Garlic bread, a salad with blue cheese vinaigrette, a filet sans the belt of bacon it usually comes with, and a sirloin strip. Sizzling in butter, of course. The strip was of the usual top quality, but was less well seared than I like it. If there's one thing I could suggest to the steakhouses of the world, it would be to jack up the heat in whatever appliance they're using to cook the steaks to the maximum possible temperature. It makes all the difference.
My daughter has her eyes on a young man in one of her classes. It's all she can talk about. I can't talk about it, though, without incurring her wrath. She is very shy, but she is also very persistent. This guy's days as a free-floating male spirit are numbered.
In other news, she's taking a Brazilian dance-exercise class a few times a week. That and her scant eating (she finished only half the filet) are keeping her lithe. I see heads turning when she walks by. Not something I'm comfortable with, quite yet. Especially when the heads are in their forties.
Crescent City Steak House. Mid-City: 1001 N. Broad. 504-821-3271.
