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Join The Eat Club At The Pelican Club
N.O. Wine & Food Experience
Wine Dinners Next Week
A week from today, the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience Vintner Dinners go off at thirty-one restaurants. As usual, I am inviting our readers and listeners to join me at the Eat Club table for one of these. My choice this year is the Pelican Club, perennially one of my favorite restaurants, and one in which we have not had an Eat Club event in some time.
The dinner consists of six courses from the hand of chef-owner Richard Hughes. Each comes with a paired wine from the portfolio of Simi, from Sonoma Valley. I've always enjoyed Simi's wines, and for this dinner we have the best of their produce--notably the Landslide Cabernet.
Here's the menu:
Duo of Ceviche
Red snapper ceviche with avocado, creole tomato, garlic, chives, jalapeño, and blue corn chips, and hamachi and poblano pineapple ceviche in an orange-ginger sauce
Wine: Simi Sauvignon Blanc Sonoma 2010
Crawfish and Diver Sea Scallop Potstickers
Caviar, daikon salad and ponzu sauce
Wine: Simi Reserve Chardonnay Russian River 2009
Stuffed Quail with Foie Gras Mousse
Applewood smoked bacon, herbed polenta cake, marsala demi-glace and pearl onions
Wine: Simi Pinot Noir Sonoma County 2009
Braised Berkshire Pork Belly
In a Chinese steamed bun with scallions, cucumbers, hoisin sauce and sriracha
Wine: Simi Petit Syrah Dry Creek Valley 2008
35-Day Dry Aged Cowboy Ribeye
Wild mushrooms, haricots verts, roasted garlic bordelaise vinaigrette, and celery root purée
Wine: Simi Landslide Cabernet Alexander Valley 2008
Key Lime Pie
Dark rum chantilly cream
Wine: Simi Riesling Late Harvest 2008
The price is $125 per person, inclusive of tax, tip, and wines. It begins with a reception at six-thirty, then dives into the food shortly after. Dress is smart casual. Discounted parking is across the street at the Monteleone Hotel Garage. Reservations are required, made directly with the restaurant at the number below. If you'd like to dine at an Eat Club table with me, please tell the reservationist. And I'll see you there!
Pelican Club. French Quarter: 615 Bienville. 504-523-1504
www.pelicanclub.com
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A Five-Star Edition - A Five-Star Stories
Sid-Mar's Is Gone, For Now
A reader who tried to go to Sid-Mar's for dinner the night before Mother's Day reports that she found the door locked and a sign saying "Closed."
A call to the restaurant brought a recorded message saying that the well-known but beleaguered seafood restaurant has in fact shut down. It thanks customers for their patronage and suggested that Sid-Mar's might come back in a new location, but made it clear that you'll have to get boiled crawfish, gumbo, and fried seafood platters elsewhere for the nonce.
Most of the blame can be laid at the door of Hurricane Katrina. Opened in the 1960s, Sid-Mar's was the oldest restaurant in Bucktown, and felt like it. The steps to its screened porch were clamshell-throwing distance from the beach of Lake Pontchartrain, not separated from the water by any kind of flood control. Katrina blew it away utterly.
The Burgess family wanted to rebuild on the site. The Corps of Engineers had other ideas, claiming (rightly, I'd say) that the land where Sid-Mar's had been was essential for building a combination floodgate and pumping station at this critical weak point in the canal and levee system.
It all went to court, but the Burgesses only got money, not their restaurant site. They reopened Sid-Mar's in 2010 just off Veterans on N. Turnbull Drive, in Metairie. Same menu, but no lake view, no screened porch. The building was a nice-looking place--perhaps too nice for Sid-Mar's, whose fans liked its scruffiness as much as they did its food.
When I heard about this move, I shook my head. The Turnbull location has a star-crossed history for restaurants. In fact, it may have had more restaurants open and close than any other single address in New Orleans:
1970--Le Charcuterie (French, a bit fancy)
1972--Archie and Danny's (Manning and Abramowicz)
1975--Susan Dupepe (an interior design store, not a restaurant)
1976--Romanoff's (very classy French)
1979--The Regency (not so classy French)
1981--The Butcher Shop (a steakhouse by Frank Occhipinti)
1985--China King (ordinary Chinese)
1997--India Palace
2006--India Palace II (different owners and food)
2008--Gimchi (Korean and sushi)
2010--Sid-Mar's
The problem here is not the building, which through its history was renovated often enough to keep it looking good. It also has an ample private parking lot. The fatal flaw is that the place is a half-block off Veterans Boulevard. If you're looking for it, you will see the restaurant's towering sign. But if you're not looking for it, you may not find it. And an astonishing percentage of would-be Metairie diners shop the dining possibilities by mentally or actually driving up and down Veterans.
This--and the lack of the old Bucktown atmosphere--is what killed the modern Sid-Mar's. We will miss it, and hope it tries again in a more suitable location.
Monday, May 14, 2012.
The Magnificent Mushroom. Zuppardo's Deli.
While trimming weeds at the southeastern extreme of the Cool Water Ranch, my eye was arrested by an enormous mushroom. I've seen this kind before, but what I noticed was the thickness of its stem, which ballooned at the bottom. That's a salient characteristic of a first-class bolete mushroom--also known as a porcini (Italian) and cêpe (French).
A lot of boletes come up in and at the edges of our woods, particularly after a few good rains. As we had, a week ago. The season for these things is usually June, with another in September. But it's been so warm so early that everything is ahead of schedule.
Not many of the bolete mushrooms are edible. Not so much because the mushroom itself is poisonous--very few members of that family will do you harm. But as soon as they come up, they're attacked by a range of insects, whose eggs become little worms within hours.
But this mushroom was in a class by itself. It was seven inches tall, with a cap six inches in diameter. It looked like a hamburger bun on a stalk, but much bigger and toasted. I weighed it on my postal scale: ten ounces. One mushroom!
Pulled the stem out (it's edible, but tough), sliced the cap, then waited for discoloration. Turning blue would be a bad sign, but that would have happened right away. The meat inside the cap remained a pale cream color. I saw no worms, either.
Heated some butter in a skillet and added the mushrooms. After a couple of minutes, splashed in a little white vermouth. The mushrooms browned a little. After five minutes of cooking, they remained very firm, and only a little shrunken.
I stabbed a slice and ate, alert to a bitter taste. None whatsoever. The flavors were meatiness and mushroominess. I kept eating. This thing was delicious. Even better than the chanterelles I found last week.
Eureka! Not only a fine mushroom for free, but the certain knowledge that this particular variety is safe to eat. No ill effects at all. I will know it when I see it from now on. I hope I see it often.
Accompanying my mycological appetizer was a bowl of vegetable and brisket soup from Zuppardo's Supermarket's deli. The store is celebrating its eightieth anniversary by (among other things) sponsoring the radio show. I asked Mary Ann--who likes supermarket deli food inordinately--to pick up a bunch of items from Zuppardo's, so I can have some facts and opinions for the spots. We also had a couple of good stuffed crabs, a rice casserole with chicken and olives, an artichoke casserole, and an overly creamy corn and crab soup.
Good as all that was, my gargantuan wild mushroom was the memorable part of the meal.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
Tripping On A Culinary Time Machine
Antoine's
Wednesday, June 6, 2012, 7 p.m.
French Quarter: 713 St. Louis St.
$100, inclusive of tax, tip, and wines
I was talking with the management at Antoine's not long ago about how long it's been since we have an Eat Club function there. We talked about repeating a very successful all-appetizer repast we had there a couple of years ago. But my mind kept going to dishes I used to like that have disappeared from the menu.
"Why not a full evening of dishes from a hundred years ago at Antoine's?" I blurted out, half kidding. We all looked at one another, each of us thinking about how good such a dinner would actually be. A few minutes later, we have the whole menu worked out.
All of the dishes have long histories, but became extinct recently enough that both Chef Mike Regua and I can remember what they tasted like. Of course, Antoine's still has all the recipes in its voluminous files.
Oysters Ellis
Not a baked dish, but a thick, rich, highly savory stew of oysters in a brown sauce with mushrooms, sherry, a little tomato, and an accent of sauce Colbert
Vichyssoise
A classic cold soup of leeks and potatoes, this could not be called extinct. But Antoine's unusually rich version hasn't been served there for years. Sounds French, but it was actually invented in America.
Fonds d'Artichaut Bayard
Utterly unique, this looks like what you'd get if Picasso ever designed a salad. An artichoke bottom holds a ball of minced, highly flavorful vegetables--including all the ones that go into oysters Rockefeller (secret revealed!). A little caviar on top. I always loved this.
Caille Sauce Paradis
The original Antoine's version was made with squab (baby pigeon). But that's very difficult to find these days. So we're using quail instead. The "sauce of Paradise" (!) is a chicken veloute with a unique array of flavors from bacon to ripe grapes.
Cerises Jubilee
We're cheating on this one: you can still get cherries Jubilee at Antoine's. But its history is long: it made created for the jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria in 1887. It's what I had for dessert at the end of my first dinner at Antoine's. The waiters literally set the place on fire!
Wines will accompany every course. I don't have those details yet, but will post them as soon as I do. We will also have a reception before we sit down to dinner, with souffle potatoes and maybe a few other things.
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Fazzio's
Mandeville: 1841 N Causeway Blvd. 504-624-9704. Map.
Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
Fazzio's is a landmark at the busy intersection of Causeway Boulevard and LA 22. With Italian food of the kind your mother used to make (or like you wish she had made), the appeal of the place is easy to understand. Lots of thick, sweet, smooth red sauces on enormous piles of pasta, meatballs, and veal, often covered with thick strata of melted cheese. And almost as many dishes with rich cream sauces. With seafood and steaks filling out the selection. The prices are low, the wait staff is friendly, and there are many regular customers.
WHAT'S GOOD
The dominance of tomato sauces is something you know as soon as you step inside. The alluring aromas jump-start your appetite, een if this isn't your kind of Italian food. Despite all those the homestyle Italian dishes, the best food here involves seafood. A good meal can be made from the appetizer list alone, with
BACKSTORY
Fazzio's opened in 1987, which makes it one of the oldest restaurants in Mandeville. Lots of people were relocating to the North Shore, but not many restaurants were there to serve them, and Fazzio's lock on the homestyle Italian segment built a numerous clientele.
DINING ROOM
Rustic on the outside, the restaurant has a dimly-lit, borderline romantic environment which nevertheless usually has a few tables filled with families. The bar has always been busy, but in recent years--with the help of new laws--the cigarette smoke that used to drift from bar into the dining room is gone.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Starters
»Da Fazz shrimp (like BBQ)
Fried eggplant
»Fried calamari
Southwestern eggrolls
Shrimp remoulade
Crabmeat au gratin
Onion rings
Eggplant royale (cream sauce and shrimp)
Shrimp cocktail
Popcorn shrimp or crawfish
Ahi tuna, ponzu glaze
Crab cakes
Soups And Salads
Seafood gumbo
Soup du jour
Shrimp salad
Chef salad
»Italian salad
Black and blue salad (steak, greens, blue cheese)
Caesar salad
Garden salad
Salad options:
Popcorn shrimp or crawfish
Grilled or blackened chicken
Lump crab crabcake
Grilled yellowfin tuna steak
Skewered grilled shrimp
Entrees
»Fried catfish, shrimp, oysters, or combination platters
Jimbob shrimp (stuffed with crabmeat)
Crab cakes
Filet mignon
»Ribeye
»Skewered jumbo shrimp
Boneless skinless chicken breast
Angel hair pasta, red gravy, Italian sausage or meatballs
Angel hair pasta, crabmeat cream sauce, stuffed shrimp or crab cake
»Fettuccine Alfredo (with shrimp or crawfish)
»Lasagna
Fresh fish of the day
Chicken or veal, marsala or parmigiana
»Eggplant parmigiana
Chicken Fazzio (grilled, crabmeat cream sauce)
»Veal Fazzio (mushrooms, artichoke, capers, cream sauce)
Filet mignon Fazzio (topped with sauteed shrimp, mushrooms, peppers, olives, cream sauce)
Veal Ledet (crawfish, artichokes, brandy cream sauce, baked with mozzarella)
»Veal Milanese (panneed, with fettuccine Alfredo)
Daily specials (notably braciolone)
Desserts
»Bread pudding
Tiramisu
FOR BEST RESULTS
Order light, show up very hungry, or split entrees. Ask for more information than you usually would about the specials. If you're thinking about a steak, you might find it better with three or four ingredients removed from the platter.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
A section of dishes that would not have been seen in 1965 would be welcome. It wouldn't be a bad idea to serve the pasta that comes with many of the entrees with a different sauce than the one on the main item.
FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics. Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.
- Dining Environment
- Consistency +1
- Service +2
- Value +1
- Attitude +2
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness -2
- Local Color -1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Romantic
- Good for business meetings
- Small private room
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open all afternoon
- Unusually large servings
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- Reservations accepted
Dozen Best Garlic Bread, Crostini, Bruschetti, And Kin
Garlic bread is a cheap thrill. Yes, but it's such a thrill that even when it shows up in the best restaurants (i.e., #2 below), you use inordinately more than you should of your appetite glomming it down . Some restaurants have noted this and created garlic bread with college degrees, adding other ingredients like goat cheese and fresh herbs, and giving it alternative names like "crostini" and "bruschetta." (If only the waiters would pronounce it correctly: "broos-KET-ta.")
Although we think of garlic bread as quintessentially Italian, it's actually an American invention. (Toasting the bread and adding cheese are purely American.) Or, for the sake of argument, you could say that it's a takeoff on pizza.
It is a certainty that the idea is spreading and becoming much more varied. Here's my list of the best garlic breads and such like served around town.
1. Lilette. Uptown: 3637 Magazine. 504-895-1636. The best of the class is both mouth-filling and subtle at the same time. White truffle oil, parmesan cheese, wild mushrooms and marrow in full (not demi) veal glace. Insanely good.
2. Commander's Palace. Garden District: 1403 Washington Ave. 504-899-8221. My wife's favorite dish at this perennially great restaurant here is its garlic bread. She doesn't mean that as an insult to the rest of the menu. She goes through several plates of the oozy, toasted French bread crescents with invisible but tastable garlic, dill, and parmesan cheese. I keep right up with her.
3. Carmelo. Mandeville: 1901 US Hwy 190. 985-624-4844. At his original place in the French Quarter, Carmelo Chirico introduced New Orleans to the Calabrian idea of topping bruschetti with diced tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and a dash of balsamic. It's still a great starter at his new restaurant in Mandeville.
4. Sylvain. French Quarter: 625 Chartres St. 504-265-8123. Sylvain is as much a bar as it is a bistro, so it makes sense that they have two excellent appetizers-on-bread. The roasted beet bruschetta with goat cheese and a sherry vinaigrette gives--if you need one--a new appreciation of beets. The chicken liver crostini, meanwhile, it given textural contrast with sprouts and a thick syrup made of reduced dandelion wine. Get both with the first cocktail.
5. Brennan's. French Quarter: 417 Royal. 504-525-9711. The garlic bread appears in whole baguettes doused with the same herb-and-garlic butter they sizzle with escargots. Plus a little Parmesan cheese.
6. Andrea's. Metairie: 3100 19th St. 504-834-8583. Bruschetta with tomatoes, olive oil, fresh basil, oregano and other herbs on toasted ovals of French bread. Like everything here, it's a little inconsistent, but usually very fresh and appetizing. Served complimentary at dinner for special customers, or anyone who asks.
7. Slice. Lee Circle Area: 1513 St Charles Ave. 504-525-7437. ||Uptown: 5538 Magazine St. 504-897-4800. Slice bakes its own bread and makes crostini from it. All that's left is for them to top it with the tomato dice, fresh basil, and EVOO, and for you to dive in.
8. Mandina's. Mandeville: 4240 La 22. 985-674-9883. ||Mid-City: 3800 Canal. 504-482-9179. Simple: garlic and butter, on hot rounds of French bread. The Mandeville location's version is better by a nose.
9. Blue Plate Cafe. Lee Circle Area: 1330 Prytania. 504-309-9500. "Breakchetta" is a morning version of the idea, with thick, whole-grain toast topped with scrambled eggs, goat cheese, tomato and basil relish, and some light greens as a garnish. As tasty as it is healthy.
10. Leonardo's Trattoria. CBD: 709 St Charles. 504-558-8986. Classic bruschetta: toasted Italian bread rounds with tomatoes and enough olive oil to drip a little. It can substitute either for a salad or a pizza as a first course.
11. Lebanon's Cafe. Riverbend: 1500 S Carrollton Ave. 504-862-6200. Za'atar bread is the Middle Eastern equivalent of garlic bread, substituting olive oil for butter and a seasoning mix (za'atar) combining oregano, thyme, marjoram, sesame seeds, dill, sumac, and salt, but usually no pepper. It's toasted on pita bread and served hot.
12. Nirvana. Uptown: 4308 Magazine. 504-894-9797. Garlic naan probably can't be found in India, but it was inevitable here that the bread--baked on the inside wall of the super-hot tandoor oven, then buttered--would at some point have garlic added to the formula. And here it is.
Delerno's
Old Metairie: 619 Pink Street
1940s-1990s
Can you imagine a New Orleans-style restaurant that never serves crawfish? Strange as it seems, that was the case in most New Orleans eateries above the level of boiled-and-fried seafood houses in the 1960s and earlier. Crawfish--even in polite dishes like bisques, etouffees and gratins--were simply not on the menu in most white-tablecloth restaurants.
The few better establishments that made crawfish a house specialty did very well with it. The Bon Ton Café became world-famous for serving great Cajun-style crawfish dishes. Out-of-towners found it exotic and delicious, back then and still.
Delerno's was on a crawfishing par with the Bon Ton, but focused almost entirely on local diners. J.B. Delerno (I never heard anyone--not even his wife--call him by other than his initials) spent some years in other people's restaurants before opening his own in Old Metairie. He was quite a host, and built up a clientele so regular in their visits that it made a lasting impression.
If you mentioned Delerno's to those people, they would almost instantaneously reply, "J.B. makes the best crawfish in town!" They wouldn't mention which dish, exactly. J.B. cooked crawfish a lot of ways. Not only were these delicious, but they were presented more beautifully than I've seen crawfish served before or since.
The etouffee was a great example of that. An island of rice on the plate was surrounded by crawfish tails in a singular, deep orange sauce with a huge flavor and a tremendous number of crawfish tails. It was more a Creole etouffee than a Cajun one, but crawfish live in New Orleans, too.
That traditional dish was only the beginning. Crawfish turned up in various sauces next to or around all sort of other things: soft-shell crabs, veal, chicken. Crawfish appetizers were rife, notably an oddity called crawfish topas. These were essentially crawfish tostadas, with crawfish etouffee on flour tortillas, topped with cheese and green onions, all run under the broiler. (The name was a misspelling of "tapas." It and the dish spread to a few other restaurants, evolving into "Topaz" somewhere along the way.)
Delerno's cooked just about everything else well, particularly in the seafood department. It was a classic New Orleans neighborhood restaurant in the category of Mandina's or Manale's, with modest but comfortable dining rooms and chummy service.
Delerno's closed when J.B. passed away in the early 1980s. It has been a number of restaurants since--two of them called "Delerno's." Mrs. Delerno owned the building and lived upstairs. When asked by a tenant, she'd give advice on how to run the place. The location is now the Sun Ray Grill.
Spinach Salad with Grilled Mushrooms
This spinach salad is considerably different from most served around New Orleans. The mushrooms, the feta, and the powerful balsamic vinegar all add a distinctive flavor. This is best served as a side salad; its assertive flavors may be a bit much for an entree.
- 1 lb. fresh spinach
- 3 oz. feta cheese
- 2 whole French shallots
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- 3 large grilled shiitake or portobello mushrooms
- 1/4 cup chopped, fresh herbs
- Salt and pepper to taste
1. Wash spinach very well, with four or five changes of water. Spin or shake dry. Remove large stems. Place washed spinach on small salad plate.
2. In a mixing bowl, place chopped shallots, oil, vinegar, and herbs. Mix well. Slice mushrooms thin and put into dressing. Add seasoning to taste. Top spinach with dressing, then with crumbled feta cheese. Serve cool.
Serves four side salads.
