Wednesday, September 7, 2011.
Smoking At Squeal.
At around this time in 1979, I met up with my then-girlfriend Kim in her northern Indiana hometown. After a few days with her parents, we took a short trip north before heading back to New Orleans. In Ludington, Michigan, we boarded a coal-fired steamship called the Badger, and crossed Lake Michigan to Milwaukee.
The S.S. Badger is big enough to carry not only automobiles but railroad cars. (It was operated by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.) The lake crossing took enough hours that the ship offered staterooms and a real dining room, with white tablecloths and waiters. It was spartan--more like a train than a cruise ship--but special enough that it was a pleasure.
The Badger tied up in Milwaukee just as the sun was setting. And then we were off to a German restaurant called Mader's. For Kim, Mader's had an aura. She went there now and then with her parents when she was a girl. She wanted to relive those feelings. She thought I'd like it, since it had a long history. (It opened in 1902, and is still going strong.) And a restaurant serving German food in Wisconsin is like a Creole restaurant in Louisiana. Mader's is the Antoine's of Milwaukee.
She wallowed in her memories. The place looked and acted exactly as she remembered. I was less enthusiastic. My experience with German food was, however, less than comprehensive. Kolb's and Willy Coln's were about all we had. Mader's was better than Kolb's (what wasn't?). But it wasn't as good as Willy Coln's. The place seemed a bit tired in a lot of ways.
I went into restaurant critic mode and explained why I didn't think much of Mader's. Kim didn't give a damn about any of that. This was Mader's, an icon of her scintillating teens, and what kind of asshole was I to ruin the experience for her? She gave me the silent treatment all the way to Chicago. I noted this lesson. But if I were given a test on it now I'd still get at best a C. It's hard for me to separate the restaurant critic lookout from the rest of what I am. That this happens to a lot of people doesn't get me off the hook.
Now that Mary Leigh is back in school, she's ready to resume our weekly daddy-daughter dinner dates. She had long since decided where we would go for the first one of the new school year. She is a big fan of Squeal, the barbecue restaurant on Oak Street. I, on the other hand, had not been there yet. That's benign negligence on my part, since they've been open for over a year now. She thinks it's inexcusable. I say I've been waiting for her to ask me.
It was another perfect advance-autumn day. Like her mom, ML likes sitting outside, even if it means getting a table in what looks like a converted driveway on the side of the restaurant. (All the tables on the nice front porch were taken.) I was determined to remember the lesson of Milwaukee, and to keep my niggling criticisms to myself. I am a father before I am a restaurant critic to her, am I not?
I began with a cocktail that sounded refreshing and not powerfully alcoholic. It's called a Gardener, I guess because of the chopped leaves floating around in it. It tasted of citrus, with the alcohol (whatever it was) deep in the background. Somewhere between a classic daiquiri and a mojito. It was big enough that it got me through the whole meal.
Mary Leigh's order was more or less the same as she gets here every time. Nachos with pulled pork, split with whomever else is at the table. And a pulled pork or brisket sandwich. Today was a brisket day.
I always order last, working around the menus of my dining companions. I asked for the pork cakes, strongly pushed by the waiter. Then gumbo, followed by pulled pork tacos.
The waiter asked how we wanted all this food delivered. "It doesn't matter, really, as long as there aren't two dishes in front of me at the same time," I said. "Let me say that again. I do not want to have to choose which hot dish I will eat and which will get cold while I'm eating the one I'm eating. Do you understand what I am saying?"
This request seems obvious, enough that it shouldn't need to be said. But the number of times I've had two, three, or more dishes in front of me at the same time--even when I specifically asked that this not be done--is almost unbelievable.
The gumbo came first, with ML's nachos. The gumbo looked like gumbo. Very thick, very dark roux, okra and sausage together, plus too many other ingredients. It was like the gumbo you get when you travel more than 300 miles from New Orleans. Even though gumbo-making admits of an infinite number of variations, there is a certain indefinable, magical quality that separates Gumbo from Not Gumbo. To my palate was decidedly Not Gumbo. And just okay, whatever it was.
In the middle of eating it. . . well, I'll be damned. Here were the pork cakes. And Mary Leigh's nachos, in an enormous portion clearly made for splitting. A minute or two later, the pork tacos arrived. I now had three hot dishes on the table in front of me--four, if you count the nachos--all at the same time. The ceiling fan overhead did a good job of making them cold. The waiter remembered what I said and noticed this even before I did. I hushed him up, not wanting to ruin Mary Leigh's evening at one of her favorite restaurants.
I turned my attention to the good news. Which was that these pork cakes, as unlikely an idea as they seem (crab cakes made with pork instead of crab) were nothing short of delicious. They would be the best item on the table. The tacos were the small kind that are hip these days, using tortillas about three inches in diameter. The pulled pork here is beyond reproach, and the topping of a spicy slaw worked very nicely. The nachos left me cold, but that's not my kind of thing. Mary Leigh was happy with them.
There now ensued a long pause while I chewed through all this food. I caught up. Then ML's barbecue sandwich came out. She ate, I watched. I asked her for some of the very large serving of brisket. It wasn't cut properly for a sandwich, coming out in slabs at least a half-inch thick. What's more, the beef was on the very dry side. This is a common problem with brisket. Two briskets of the same size from the same source cooked at the same time in the same pit can come out very different. We got the dry one today.
Someone noticed that I now had no active plates before me. The kitchen sent out a plate of four St. Louis-style pork ribs to make up for their delivery errors. These were crusty with seasoning and very good. Really, pork handles barbecue better than beef does.
Mary Leigh became the restaurant critic. She had the same comment about the brisket that I did. And she'd had the gumbo before and didn't like it either. So we made it through the dinner without her getting angry with me. She was a little embarrassed, I guess. We will come back again for another look.
Squeal Barbecue. Riverbend: 8400 Oak. 504-302-7370.
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.
