From the New Orleans Menu Daily Archives By Tom Fitzmorris Click here for the current edition March 1-15, 2006 Back to February 16-28, 2006     Forward to March 16-31, 2006 Wednesday, March 1, 2006. Ash Wednesday, but if there's anyone aboard the Carnival Valor in a mood for penance, I did not see him. Perhaps the guys at Bill W's meeting. I've never looked in there to see if anyone shows up for those--a little too nosy, that would be--but I've often wondered. Cruise ships certainly do offer one more than a few opportunities to fall off the wagon. We docked near Charlotte Amalie, the capital of both the island of St. Thomas and the U.S. Virgin Islands--at seven in the morning, and Mary Ann was hell-bent on getting onto land at one after seven. She gave me a dispensation from moving that fast--she knows I do not--but she had to go looking for me to get some cash. When she finally found me--having coffee with some of the people in our group--she told me that she and Mary Leigh would be going to the beach, and that she would see me at lunchtime. I told her I'd come along to help with the pack animal duties. We went to Magen's Beach, which she said Conde Nast Traveler named one of the ten best beaches in the world. It looked nice enough to me, but the girls were unimpressed. I don't do the beach (I don't have the skin type for tanning, but I do for skin cancer), but I enjoyed myself anyway, staring off into the blue sea at the end of a narrow bar, with an island I was never able to identify in the distance between the two shores. I read all about the place in the guidebook, and learned that there was a nude gay and lesbian beach close by. I thought that checking it out would send the wrong messages all the way around. So I sat around studying the trees, whose species I could not identify. It had big round leaves of a type I'd never seen before. Further inspection revealed that it was being eaten live by termites, who'd formed tunnels of dirt and sand running up the trunk and as high into the tree as my eyes could follow. I knocked off a section of the tunnel and, sure enough, those were termites running back and forth. An anole lizard a lot like the ones we have around New Orleans ran up and took advantage of the opportunity, and picked off several dozen lizards like so many oysters. It turned out that all of the trees in the neighborhood has termite tunnels, running around their branches like mace on a nutmeg. I also found quite a few bromeliads growing up in the branches, epiphytes in their native lands. Then it started to rain. Not heavily, but enough to make the girls give up their lying on the beach. They showered and we caught another of the funny buses made by building a few bench seats in the backs of pickup trucks, and headed back to town I alighted in the center of town to head up to the Herve Restaurant, where I expected some of the people traveling with me to show up soon. (The girls returned to the ship to shower more thoroughly and change clothes.) Herve was well up a hill, and I knew as I counted steep steps past forty that some of the group would chew me out for forcing them up that high. The menu was very French, though on the lighter side. I asked about a specialty of theirs I'd heard about: bouillabaisse. The chef said, yes, he'd be happy to prepare it, with lobster and saffron for a mere $51.50. I blanched at this, but rationalized that the girls would probably not show up, and that I could spend their share of the allowance. The bouillabaisse was good, but a long way from the best I ever had. The tropical lobster was its usual self, which is to say disappointing. (It's served with great pride throughout the Caribbean, and I don't understand the appeal.) It did indeed contain a good bit of saffron, as well as fresh fennel, mussels, scallops, and big shrimp. Certainly not worth over fifty bucks, even on this island where everything seems to be a quantum more expensive than I'm used to. And then Mary Ann and Mary Leigh showed up. Fortunately, they ate cheeseburgers. Unfortunately, they complained about them. After lunch, the girls set out shopping, and I thought I'd just walk to the ship--a long way, but it looked like a pleasant walk. Halfway there, it started raining again, a bit more insistently. Mary Ann called on the cellphone and said she wanted me to come back and meet her, because she had a surprise to make up for her pique earlier in the day. How could I say no? The surprise was a Mont Blanc fountain pen. I don't think I want to know how much it cost. We took one of the funny cabs back to the ship, where I retired from the day's wanderings, while the girls did still more shopping. I took a pleasant nap until about six, then flowed down to the central atrium and its bar, where the good classical trio was playing. Mary Ann deigned to join me, although I still couldn't persuade her to have a cocktail. It didn't stop my own martini from arriving, though. The bartender, who knows me now, made it well--which is to say double. It's the first time I've ever had a genuinely generous drink aboard a cruise ship, where they measure the liquor scrupulously. I had dinner in the main dining room, and found it excellent. It started with some superb snails in green garlic butter, moved to a fine onion soup, and finished with a tasty chicken dish with mushrooms. In the karaoke lounge, it was declared adults only, and a scad of far off-color songs flowed, the worst of which was "I'm Strokin." The singer of that one did it twice, to the howls of the crowd. I tried to set a different tone with "Only The Lonely," which I did well, I thought. But it was hopeless, even in the company of eight of our fellow travelers. Thursday, March 2. Mary Ann was so conciliatory about what happened yesterday that she left me completely out of her plans for the day, and allowed me to sleep later. (Not much later--the girls are getting up at seven at the latest.) The ship was in the harbor at Sint Maarten early, and off they went, in search of a beach. I took my good old time having my usual breakfast of fruit, juice, and coffee. Which brings up a matter of taste. On past sailings, I found Carnival's coffee maddeningly weak. (On one cruise I attempted to remedy the latter by packing along my own coffee and chicory, but it was such a bother to make that I gave up the idea.) But this trip the coffee is enormously improved. It's a lot darker, for one thing, and the intensity of the brew is greater, too. I actually look forward to drinking the stuff, and find one cup enough for my needs in the morning. My original plan was to get a group together for lunch on the French side of the island. (It's about equally divided between the Netherlands and France.) I've always heard that in parts of the French St. Martin the great restaurants are cheek by jowl, and among the best in the Caribbean. Then I was told (by a source that proved incorrect), that a passport was needed. Some of my people weren't packing them. But I found a place on the Dutch side that sounded very good and came well recommended by a couple of sources. With the name "Antoine's," to boot. So I told everyone to meet me there, and I walked through the streets to check it out. What I saw made me wish I'd stuck with the French plan. It was more or less on the beach, with an open front and ceiling fans but no air conditioning. The lunch menu also looked impossibly rudimentary, and even the available dinner menu was less promising than I'd hoped. But it was too late to do anything about it, so I strolled around looking at the town of Philipsburg, the capital. Front Street, whose narrowness makes French Quarter streets look like arteries, was where all the usual shops and cafes were. Lots of Indian restaurants were open, which made me wish we'd tried one--West Indian food being to real Indian food what Creole food is to French cookery. I peeled away from Front Street and walked a block up Old Street. There was--logically, I guess--Back Street. Back Street was very different from Front Street. It's where the locals were, and was funky enough to make a guy like me (overdressed, as usual) feel drastically out of place. Instead of diamond shops, there were little grocery stores and bars. Back Street ran out and I moved back to Front. I ran into Don and Andrea Smith, and we converged on Antoine's, where over the next few minutes we collected twenty Eat Clubbers. The table kept growing, to the mild irritation of the waiter. And I crossed my fingers. Surprise! The food was great. Escargots in the snail shells with a great sauce. Coquilles St. Jacques in scallop shells. A French onion soup that Henry Sauviac--who knows--compared favorably to Crozier's. I started with the house's special fish soup, a brick-red, thick soup with a good spice and the flavor of seafood but no solid pieces of it. Then a red snapper with lemon butter and potatoes. I saw a salmon-and-snapper combination with a mustard sauce across the table, but it was eaten too fast for me to get a taste of it. We started with frozen, fruity rum drinks, a concoction made with a liqueur of fermented mango berries (not related to mangoes, these are a distinctive fruit on the island), and some cold white wines. A delicious, festive lunch--everything I was hoping for. Now we have done three of these, one at each island. That's the best result we've ever had on these cruises. My girls came by, looked at the menu, and left, still searching for the perfect beach. Mary Ann was frustrated that she'd spent almost a C-note on cabs to discover that the best beach was the one right outside the restaurant's window--the first one you came to on a stroll from the ship. It was the "Villefranche Effect," named for the little town where the cruise ship stopped when we visited the French riviera a couple of years ago. It proved to have the best beaches and cafes, but we ignored it in favor of Monte Carlo and Nice, and wound up neither swimming nor dining. The three of us did more shopping, then walked back to the ship. Mary Ann remained outside, looking for one more thing before turning herself over to the penance of being aboard. I took a nap, then went out in search of others with which to have a cocktail before dinner. Which was pretty ordinary tonight. The menu offered sole meuniere, but the waiter said it wasn't sole but some kind of fish I never heard of that started with a "b." I asked him to repeat it three times and still didn't know. It wasn't interesting enough to pursue the matter. For some reason, there was no karaoke tonight. But that was a plus. I was so tired from all that walking around that I just went to bed at around eleven. I think I may not be relaxing enough. But with all the ports visited, I'll have time for that tomorrow. Friday, March 3. We're on the way home now, but it will be two days before we get there. The pleasures are the ship are now tested. Mary Ann says she's sick of the shipboard breakfasts. She hates the hash brown potatoes--she calls them, with some justification, "tater tots"--and they are emblematic of the sameness of the breakfast offerings. I have melons, juice, and a couple of pastries more days, but today I thought I'd splurge on an omelette. The egg chefs are terrific with their moves, but everything they make is a fat bomb. The amount of oil that goes into the pan with the omelette's eggs is guaranteed to keep them from sticking, but it's far too much from a taste perspective. After breakfast, I spent an hour or so in a corner of the Lido deck's café writing this kind of stuff. Then I joined the girls on the deck, where they are catching far too much sun. It was relaxing enough, but it's not the place for a guy with long pants, shoes, and socks. The whole time I was there I thought about lunch, and watched the time for its earliest possible beginning. Isn't that awful? Specifically, I had on my mind a bowl of soup from the Chinese window. I hoped for something spicy, and it was--a seafood soup, with shrimp and scallops. I goosed it up with some red pepper sauce, and enjoyed it a great deal--more than I did the entrees, which came from a steam table. Chinese food doesn't have it unless it comes straight from the wok. After another few hours of advanced time-wasting, I met some of the gang for afternoon tea. I love that ritual, but I appear to be one of the few who does. Only four of our group showed up for the smoked salmon, cucumber sandwiches, desserts, and tea. They really ought to open up the bar during tea for the vending of Champagne. Dinner tonight observed what may be the last gasp of another cruising tradition. On every one of our cruises, Mary Leigh and I have had a Daddy-daughter date in the supper club. She loves eating in there, as much now for the excellent filet mignon and mashed potatoes as for the high style of the place. But the romance is gone. I could tell she was barely putting up with my presence, and as soon as she dispatched the entree, I offered her the opportunity to disappear, as soon as I took a mental picture of her beauty, her favorite strapless dress revealing her sunburn. It was glorious while it lasted, and I knew it would come to an end someday. Someday is here. There's a boy on the ship that she'd much prefer to chase, even if she never talks with him (and she still hasn't, nor he to her). Six of our group was in mid-dinner across the room, and they invited me to join them for the cheese course. (Good cheeses, and served so amply that there was enough to share with everybody.) This was an exceptionally convivial group, who'd joined us in most of the restaurants in the port. We sat there telling stories, drinking wine, speculating on the future, reviewing the cruise, and joking around until we'd all but closed the place. We were a little loud for this room, but that happens whenever and wherever New Orleans people get together. Tonight was the gala midnight buffet. I continued yet another personal cruising tradition by ignoring it. Saturday, March 4. It's the last day of the cruise, and for the first time since I began making these trips my workaholic ways are winning over my mood and making me feel okay about the end of the vacation. Part of this may be because I've hardly done a lick of work other than act as the cruise leader, which isn't work for me. I've done almost zero writing. Yesterday, it occurred to me that I'd completely forgotten my CityBusiness column. (Fortunately, I learned they had one in the bank.) The major gravitational force in the schedule today was the Legends show tonight, in which I will be Frank Sinatra, after all. (I don't know what happened to the other guy.) There was a fitting for the costume (it was a tux, with the bowtie untied--but I have all of that of my own) and a fedora (a hat with a tux? Now that's is a costume.) Then we had a rehearsal. Dick, a 67-year-old white guy, will be James Brown--and he nailed it exactly. A young guy has all the moves for Elvis. Another fellow has Garth Brooks down pat. And me as Sinatra, singing "My Way"? I think I can handle that. The rehearsal prevented me from attending a wine tasting, at which the sommelier of the supper club said she'd pour Opus One and a few other big wines for $35 for a tasting of four. We needed thirteen people to make that happen, and after hustling a bunch of people up I was disappointed not to be able to be there myself. Mary Ann and I had lunch in the buffet (nothing much there today, for some reason), and then I took a long nap--right through tea time (as if I needed another meal). After waking incredibly early this morning (something like five), I had to get some sleep to be at my best for the performance tonight. They said I had to be backstage at nine-thirty, and that brought dinner to a screaming halt. I had a light repast--soup, and a sauteed veal dish of no special note. And a hot Grand Marnier soufflee, always on the last dinner menu. I handed the maitre d' the envelope with his tip, and went up to put on the Sinatra suit and take a beta blocker. That pill--one of two I take to control my blood pressure--has the secondary effect of pulling the wobblies out of high-strung performers. Strangely, although I am very comfortable speaking in public, whenever I get up to sing--even at Mass--is get the jitters. The beta blocker helps. And it did. The big stage, spotlights, a ten-piece orchestra--I live for moments like this. I got the song off reasonably well, and the applause was sufficient. Even got a few whistles, if no room keys or ladies' underwear thrown onto the stage. This was the grumpy old Sinatra I was doing. He was almost exactly my age when he recorded "My Way." This may seem hard to believe, but after the performance there were people who actually wanted my autograph. I love this! I am a ham--what can I say? I had a round of drinks with a few people from our group, and then we all retired. Getting off the ship is no fun, especially when you stayed up late. Sunday, March 5. The debarkation went easily enough. Too easy, in fact. For once, I should have followed Mary Ann's insistence that I get a move on. We got to the airport two hours before flight time--but that was not early enough in Miami, on a day when nine cruise ships are unloading passengers at the same time. I stood in line for an hour and a half. I asked any uniformed airline representative who passed by whether there was some way those of us with flights approaching soon could be moved up. They all told me not to worry, so I didn't. Meanwhile, the girls toured the airport. Then someone told me to worry--the agent at the counter. She said it was too late to check bags, and our bags were too big to carry on. The bags could not travel without the passenger to whom they belonged, they said. No alternative could be found but for the girls to go with what could be carried, and for me to wait for the next flight. Eight hours later. So I did. But not there. I took a cab back to near the cruise terminal, where we'd spied the Miami location of Bongos, a Cuban restaurant owned by the singer Gloria Estefan. One of Mary Ann's friends had touted it to us. And so I re-learned something I already knew: restaurants owned by stars are never any good. The place was impressive, but it seemed to be more nightclub than restaurant. The menu looked good (I'd checked this online before we left a week ago), but none of the food had the fresh zing of the best Cuban food I'd had. (The waitress even apologized for making cocktails with canned fruit juices.) The best dish was the churrasco--grilled marinated skirt steak with chimichurri. The waitress recommended the tres leches cake. . . then came back to say they were out of it. The restaurant was nearly empty. It took almost an hour to get a cab back to the airport, but I had nothing but time. At the gate, I learned I was number four on standby, and reassured that this meant I would probably get on the eight-thirty flight. No such luck: everybody showed up, and they even had to offer bounties to ticketed passengers to fit on all the overbookings. What do I do now? The man at the gate said the next flight was at noon. "You're number one on standby," he said. "Where can I get my bags?" I asked. "They're on the plane," he said. "They already left." "But they told me that couldn't be done!" I said. "That's why they wouldn't let me on the earlier flight!" "That's just the way it goes," he said. "But now I have no clothes and no medicine!" Maybe it was the last word that did it. He issued me a boarding pass for the next day. It would get me to New Orleans in time for my radio show. But now I had to find a hotel to sleep and wash my clothes in. Bah! Always something! How could they do this to the man who was Frank Sinatra just twenty-four hours ago? Monday, March 6. Awake at seven after a very good night's sleep at the Marriott Courtyard in Miami, I wondered why the bed was so comfortable. Then I found the brochure offering to sell me one of them. Ah. I also noticed that many hotels have given up on bedspreads, instead draping a narrow decorator cover over the foot of the bed and letting the sheets and blankets cover the rest. Mus save them enough to buy the good mattresses. I'll take that tradeoff. Breakfast down in the hotel's buffet, which looked a lot like the one my kids and I have been dining from Saturdays for over a decade in Covington--but the food wasn't as good. The scrambled eggs, for example, were a solid mass, instead of the buttery curds Miss Gloria makes at home. They didn't have grits. That surprised me, since Miami is clearly south of the Grits Line that runs across America roughly from Washington, DC to Del Rio, Texas. Perhaps there is a second grits line in southern Florida beyond which hash browns take over again. I'd investigate this if I cared. The hotel had a wireless signal, so I wrote a rudimentary Menu Daily newsletter and posted it. I would have written more, but the last thing I wanted to do was to miss the plane again. I was there two hours early, already with boarding pass in hand, and used up the time writing more stuff to post later. Mary Ann collected me at the airport in New Orleans, and we went on a peripatetic quest for lunch. After finding that Don's Seafood and Vincent's were both closed, we headed for Zea, but decided at the last minute to go to Café East. I'd not been there since the hurricane, but knew that they'd opened soon after and were doing huge business. The restaurant took in a foot of water that ruined the wood floors, but you couldn't tell that anything bad had happened by looking at the place now. The owner, Kariya, offered to have the chef send out a few things--an offer I never refuse. We had some terrific Szechian steamed dumplings, very spicy. And shrimp covered in shredded phyllo dough and served with a sweet-spicy sauce. Scallops with a garlic and pepper sauce. And Chilea sea bass, zingy in an aromatic-spice way. I am no fan of Chilean sea bass, which is beautiful to look at but doesn't have much taste. And there's a troubling environmental issue attached to its fishery. There it was, and it wasn't bad at all. Good to be home. The cruise already is fading into nostalgia. Tuesday, March 7. The girls and I resumed our series of Tuesday night dinners with a first visit to Felix's new Uptown location (4938 Prytania, 895-1330). The old French Quarter oyster bar and seafood house (which hasn't reopened downtown yet) opened its first branch ever a month or so ago, in the building that has seen an impressive parade of restaurants come and go over the years. Most recently, it was Vaqueros, but there's no evidence of its having been there--aside, perhaps, from the extra-long bar Vaqueros built. Some of that is taken up with Felix's oyster bar, but all of its stools were occupied by diners and drinkers. The stark and echoing dining room (the space needs decoration badly) was also near to being full. I got my hopes up with a half-dozen meaty, salty raw oysters, followed by a three-and-three of oysters Bienville and Rockefeller. Both were excellent by any standard, although the Bienvilles should have been left in the oven just a little longer. Indeed, this was good enough to actually get me excited. Uptown needs a major casual seafood restaurant. But what followed left me less sanguine. I'd ordered barbecue shrimp on the strength of the menu's advisory that they were made with heads-on shrimp. What came out were headless shrimp, and not many of them for the price, in a sauce that engendered little interest and didn't resemble closely enough what I look for in New Orleans barbecue shrimp. Indeed, they were disappointing enough that I sent them back. Mary Ann ordered a seafood platter, a favorite of hers--and found it less than thrilling. The only happy one among us was Mary Leigh, who munched a thick, hand-made, grilled-to-a-turn cheeseburger that looked very good indeed. But the place is still new, we are in difficult times, and all that. I'll come back again when things calm down. Or when I'm in the mood for some oysters. Felix's has always been unimpeachable for those. Wednesday, March 8. The Eat Club dinner we couldn't schedule the week before Mardi Gras (when it is a tradition of several years' standing) happened tonight at the Palace Café. We had a very substantial crowd, pushing sixty people--but for once I didn't have to worry about it, since the Palace Café took the reservations themselves. They started the dinner a little early, and I got there a little late (I had to drive over from the radio station). So the fondue experiment (I learned that's what it was) was about finished when I arrived. They had two pots of the stuff out with bread, beef, vegetables, and a few other things, in a cocktail-party kind of arrangement. The Stilton and port version was superbly good, the traditional Swiss kind less so. The diners had mixed feelings about the whole deal, largely because of the perception of problems from serving the dip to everyone from the same pot, even though there were plenty enough skewers there to avoid double-dipping. (When I talked with Dickie Brennan later about this, he said he had the same problem with the idea.) From there the goods were good. They stuffed an artichoke heart with crabmeat, laid it on creamed spinach, and covered it with hollandaise, then called it Sardou. Not bad. The pan roast of oysters and salsify (a.k.a. "oyster plant") was a good idea and tasty, too--a variation on their standard pan roast, served in an actual pan. With a handle, yet. Fish en papillote is an interesting idea, although not the way it's usually done around town--namely, to put not only the fish but an extremely thick sauce riddled with other seafoods into the parchment bag. At Commander's some years ago, they came up with a new approach to the idea. The fish was kept company in there with just some herbs, aromatic vegetables, wine and butter. The fish more or less steamed in its own steam, and it was wonderful. That's sort of like what we found when we opened the bags with the redfish in them, along with a bit of tomato and thyme. This is the way to do this dish. I was not moved by the slab 'o chocolate that came for dessert--but intense chocolate things rarely work for me. I did like the wine combination, though--a big Cabernet was very nice with the chocolate, and the orange it was flavored with. We've had better dinners at the Palace Café, but there were no open revolts. I expected one, since we served only a small amount of meat, at the beginning. All-seafood dinners usually cause problems. Thursday, March 9. I was starving. It was inevitable that my appetite would have been stretched by the cruise, and the effort to bring it back to normal (or, as I should, sub-normal) levels has been tough. I thought I would satisfy it with a normal lunch at the new Thai Spice, which took over the old Schwing's in Covington. I'd been there twice already, and knew from those lunches that the lunch portions were modest--just the size I should be eating. But those days are over. I was discovered by the owner, who somehow figured out who I was. Apparently my talking about the place on the radio brought in a good bit of business, and so he showed his appreciation by sending not only an entree of pad kee mao at least twice the size of any entree I'd had before, but complimentary orders of fried dumplings and fried shrimp wrapped in spring roll wrappers. All were very good, as everything here has been. But too much food. My cruise-accustomed stomach met it gladly, though. Especially that pad kee mao, wide noodles with peppers and tomatoes and basil and chicken. Spicy--but they still have not made anything I've had yet "Thai hot," which is very hot indeed. They think we Americans can't handle it. I like this place. The previous owners had made it up to resemble the old Bali Ha'i, with lots of bamboo along the walls and ceilings. That look works perfectly for a Thai restaurant, and the presence of a good cook in the back finishes the ensemble. Friday, March 10. Mary Ann and I made another visit to Table One, so I could try a few more dishes to flesh out my information for next week's column. Mary Ann thought this was a bad idea. She thinks I should never go to the same restaurant twice. I don't see how I can base a review on anything less than three times. So we continue to offer advice on the other's business. The dinner was good. I started with the escargots with blue cheese and shiitake mushrooms, then a romaine version of the familiar wedge-and-blue cheese salad (it's only just now that I realized the blue cheese was repetitive), and the pork tenderloin special with a sweet and mildly spicy glaze. Chef Gerard continues to move away from that too-subtle style he did at Ralph's on the Park. A good thing. I would not place Table One in the top ten restaurants or anything, but I do like it a great deal. Its food is interesting without being weird, and I find the premises handsome and engaging. A great place to take friends for the kind of dinner that will certainly begin with a round of cocktails and go from there. Saturday, March 11. Mary Leigh and I planned to resume our weekly breakfast at the Abita Café, but for some reason the place was closed. Instead, we went to our old breakfast spot, the café at the Marriott Courtyard. I confirmed that Miss Gloria's cooking is the best I've found in any of these hotels (certainly better than the one in Miami last Monday morning) by asking her to make an omelette. The only possible problem with it was that it was too big. Once again, chefs who know me give me bigger portions. I wish they wouldn't. After breakfast, we went on a lengthy shopping trip, thereby giving us lots of time to talk about life. She is reticent about such things these days, as thirteen-year-old girls are wont to be. But I feel I must keep the door open. Later in the evening, the three of us went to the new multiplex (I don't remember how many screens) theater in that big new mall on I-12 at LA 21. We saw Failure To Launch, which I thought was a good description of the movie itself. Neither the hot dog (supper) nor the popcorn were good, either. I think we'll be heading back to the old theater. Sunday, March 12. I spent the better part of the day cleaning the roof gutters around the house. I removed nine wheelbarrow loads of pine straw and leaves, a large part of which had been put there by the hurricane, but far from all. I hauled the debris into the woods on my strolling trail and used it to fill in the few low spots. Even after heavy rains, the trail has few spots where puddles form. Given the nature of this land and the random way in which I picked out the meandering trail, this is a miracle. Monday, March 13. I thought it would be a calm day, but Mary Ann came right home after bringing Mary Leigh to school and started cleaning and re-coating the floors in the living room. That's a major project, and it prohibits free movement. She says she must have the house spic and span for Jude's arrival later in the week. She would never do such a thing for me. I have been teasing her about the Oedipal nature of this and other similar activities. But she misses her boy greatly. Tuesday, March 14. The Pelican Club reopened over the weekend, and when I spoke with Richard Hughes last week, he all but insisted that I come in for dinner to see the improvements he made. Mary Ann and I thought this the perfect venue for our weekly Tuesday dinner together; Mary Leigh was less enthusiastic, because she hates the French Quarter. But I talked her into it. The Pelican Club suffered from a malaise many restaurants in older buildings experienced, but none of them expected. It was nasty enough to keep otherwise ready-to-go restaurants closed for months after the hurricane. The problem was that the walk-in refrigerators and freezers were on the second or third floor. First-floor space is at a tremendous premium in the French Quarter; the upper floors, much less so. Anything that can be put upstairs is. But when they power went off and stayed off, everything in the coolers and freezers. . . well, do we have to remind ourselves of THAT problem again? "I sat out in the alley and watched the workers in their hazmat suits pull all that stuff out of there," Richard said. "And I watched it slosh all over the place. Into the floors, mostly. It ran into the space between the floor and the ceiling below, and it not only ruined both the floor and the ceiling, but it soaked the joists in between. And we had to pull everything out and rebuild it. Three thousand square feet of floor had to be replaced." This is exactly what happened (but to an even worse degree) at Brennan's, which still isn't open. "I became a construction worker for months," Richard added. "And the whole time I was sawing and nailing and putting up Sheetrock, I kept thinking, 'I want some squab! I love squab!" He has squab now, on the menu. I don't remember its being there before, but now that Peristyle stopped cooking the delicious baby pigeons, it's good to have the Pelican Club offering it steadily. Their version is roasted with bacon and served with grits cooked in cream, with some foie gras shoved in for good measure. It's delicious--better than the quail it vaguely resembles by quite a bit, with a fascinating, slightly gamy flavor. At $19 a copy, this gets a gold star. The big change in the room just inside the Exchange Alley entrance. In the past it was a marginal area for dining, serving mostly as a bar. It now has the best tables in the house. The old bar was completely redone, with new murals behind it. The piano was relocated to the Bienville Street end, opening more space. Windows give onto the Alley, where a few tables turn the old passageway into a picturesque, European locale--quite appropriate for the French Quarter. The ceiling fans and tile floors give the room the feeling of the front room at Antoine's, Arnaud's, or Commander's Palace, but on a smaller scale. Very well done. We had a tasting menu, starting with the great crab cakes, the Irish smoked salmon (the best in the world, I think, and I haven't had it in a long time), and the crawfish spring rolls. Then came tuna and scallops with a roasted red pepper sauce, grouper with crabmeat and jalapeno hollandaise, and the squab. The last set Mary Ann into a tailspin. "I'll never get a tasting menu again!" she declared. Which is a problem, since most restaurants with tasting menus ask that everybody get involved.  Mary Leigh couldn't begin to do a tasting menu, so she did what she always does: ordered the filet mignon. Which was as good as it always is here, sent out with truffled mashed potatoes. She said that they rivaled my own non-truffled version, which is high praise indeed from her. (My mashed potatoes are one of my few remaining hooks on her thirteen-year-old heart.) The wine guy kept interesting things coming, while apologizing for the decimated wine list. It all was lost--the cooler was in the attic. I like the St. Hillaire Blanc de Blancs sparkler particularly. Wednesday, March 15. For the first time in I don't know how long, I missed my deadline for my CityBusiness column. I thought I could get away with it, since they made the mistake of telling me that they had one in the bank. But they're going out and photographing the thing now, and so they like it a week earlier than in the first twenty-five years I've been writing it. One never catches up, does one? Stella! reopened tonight with the first of three dinners featuring the French Iron Chef, Hiroyuki Sakai. He's obviously Japanese, but his restaurant in Japan serves French food.) Sakai is a personal friend of Stella! chef/owner Scott Boswell, who goes to Japan and works in the Iron Chef kitchens now and then. The festivities began with the opening of a Salmanazar of Taittinger Champagne, the cork of which was comically difficult to remove. It took them at least five frustrating minutes. I'm sure they weren't even thinking about it, but I have been asked to assist in other moments like this in other venues, and I was hoping they wouldn't ask me now. I don't think I could have done any better. They broke the cork, then winkled it out with various implements. When the pop was finally heard, the crowd applauded loudly. The Champagne was good and toasty and even a little aged. I was seated with a pair of young attorneys at a four-top. I felt uncomfortable, because I'm sure my presence was busting up their evening together. Besides, the waitress offered to serve the wine pairings to me complimentary (the whole meal was; I would not have paid the necessary $300 or so otherwisemore on this issue later). But they had to pay, and I don't think they were going to order the pairings. Which would not have felt right, to me. The dinner was nine courses long, starting with some sushi-bar kinda stuff, moving to beluga caviar (where did they get that, I wonder), and a ball of foie gras inside a bigger ball of potatoes. That's when I left, a little after nine. There was no way this dinner was going to end before midnight (I was told later it pushed on towards one in the morning). The wines were ordinary, and the rest of the menu was neither especially interesting nor anything like the spectacular food that Scott Boswell normally serves here. This didn't surprise me. My consistent luck with celebrity chef dinners is that they are always less good than the host restaurant's normal fare, and vastly more expensive. This dinner, with the wines and tax and tip would have been nearly $300. There is no way I would have paid that. I came only because the Iron Chef's PR firm invited me, and so I could applaud Scott Boswell's efforts. He has been working heroically since shortly after the storm, and deserves all the praise. But that did not require me to stay up so late that driving home would have been dangerous. The restaurant looks terrific, particularly in the main room, where some metal sculptures along one wall gives a sophisticated touch that wasn't in the original scheme. This continues to happen: when the great restaurants reopen, they're better than they were before. Forward to March 16-31, 2006 © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com