Friday, June 11, 2010
1097 Restaurants Open Around Town
Creole Tomato Festival This Weekend
Today at 10:30 a.m., the Treme Brass Band starts bumping and honking at Washington Artillery Park (that the little square with the steps across Decatur from Jackson Square) and will marches through the French Market.
And the twenty-fourth annual Creole Tomato Festival will be underway, through the afternoon and early evening, and all day Saturday and Sunday. The Creole tomatoes are, at long last, in the markets now. In celebration of that fact, a lineup of cooking demonstrations by local chefs goes on throughout the festival, a new chef every hour and a half or so. Food vendors--some in the business, others occasional--sell a wide variety of ethnic dishes, including New Orleans ethnic.
The Creole Tomato Festival is the oldest of three mini-festivals that have come together on this weekend to make up the Vieux-To-Do. Also part of it (at the U.S. Mint end of the French Market) are the Louisiana Cajun Zydeco Festival, an arm of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The Louisiana Seafood Marketing Board continues to try to turn its Louisiana Seafood Festival into something big, with this lineup of participating restaurants:
Bywater Bar-B-Que
Shrimp remoulade stuffed tomato, Bywater mudbug pasta,oyster and artichoke florentine
Creole Delicacies
Alligator jambalaya, Cajun fish tacos with Cajun coleslaw
Deanie’s Seafood Restaurant
Char broiled oysters, crawfish etouffée, fried crab balls
Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House
Boiled seafood platter (shrimp, crab, crawfish, corn), shrimp pasta salad, build your own Creole tomato
Dunbar's Creole Cooking
Creamy crawfish rice topped & fried catfish,chicken wings and French fries
GW Fins
Shrimp etouffee, bananas Foster & ice cream
Saltwater Grill
Crawfish and spinach boat, fried green tomato and shrimp remoulade po-boy,
grilled alligator sausage on a stick
Vidalia Grill
Grilled shrimp with scampi or BBQ sauce, grilled corn
Nola
Vietnamese shrimp toast and spicy tomato glaze
RedFish Grill
Ginger boiled shrimp tossed in a sweet soy sauce, crawfish remoulade lettuce wraps
Original New Orleans Sno-Balls & Po-Boys
Shrimp po-boy, fried shrimp platter, French fry po-boy, booze balls
Full schedules of the weekend’s activities are here:
www.frenchmarket.org/events
www.cajunzydecofest.com
louisianaseafoodfestival.com
If you buy anything in any of the shops in the French Market District totaling $25 or more, you get a free crate of Creole tomatoes!
Tomato Festival. French Market, from St. Ann Street to Esplanade Avenue, all this weekend.
Oil Spill Closes Too Many Oyster Beds
P&J Oyster Quits Shucking Today
The best-known New Orleans processor of oysters announced that it would end shucking operations at its French Quarter facility today, according to a story in the Associated Press.
The AP is reporting that Al and Sal Sunseri, who with their family manages the century-old oyster company, are so uncertain about the supply of Louisiana oysters that they aren't sure whether the company would survive. The article is here.
This is very bad news. Sal Sunseri has been one of the most positive and active people in the seafood business in New Orleans. His product has been good enough that many restaurants around town specify on their menus that they serve P&J oysters. For him to lay off his staff and shut his doors indefinitely does not bode well for our favorite local seafood. It is not an act designed to just get attention, that's for sure.
The oil spill, even though it's come under partial control during the past ten days, is still putting fresh oil into the water. It's meeting with what's there already to create a really abysmal glop that is flowing into all the best areas for oystering. And there's not going to be an easy fix for this. Some are saying (although I don't believe this myself) that it will be many years before we have oysters again from the prime beds in Barataria Bay and on the East Bank of the river.
Unlike many inside and outside of the media, I don't pretend to know the solution. That's really the worst part of this: questions are everywhere, answers are nowhere. It's scary when even the best people don't know what to do. (There's a difference between saying you know and actually knowing.) Nor do I think the orgy of blame assignment, lawsuits, and shoulda woulda coulda scenarios is adding anything to this horrible turn of events.
I just want to cry. And then I want to wait and see, with crossed fingers. They said it would be years before we'd have oysters again after Katrina. It proved to be only weeks. I know this is different, but. . . .well, I'm waiting and watching. What else can one do? Other than help those affected directly?
Thursday, June 3. Sun Ray Grill's New Sushi Bar. BP's answer to Sea Hunt--without, unfortunately, a hero like Lloyd Bridges to come in and save the day at the end of a half-hour--continued in the Gulf. The underwater photography was exciting today. I tuned it in constantly while I should have been writing and throughout the radio show. All the way to the bottom, the camera followed the cap that promises--if all goes well, which so far it hasn't--cover the wellhead and capture the leaking oil. Right now they have to land it right on top of the gusher and hope it stays in place, while pumping alcohol through all the holes to keep the water from freezing up. It continues to be as amazing as it is revolting.
A few months ago one of the disk jockeys on one of our FM stations told me how lucky I was to have so many restaurant sponsors. "I love doing restaurant commercials," he said. "I get to go over there and they treat me like royalty, and send out tons of food I don't have to pay for!" That is, indeed, typical in the business. Nut and Jeff--who were of the generation before me on my radio station--ate free all over town at their sponsors' establishments.
But they didn't work as restaurant critics, and the rules are different for me. The FM jocks are shocked to hear that I go to restaurants unannounced and pay the check out of my own pocket. But that's why I have so many restaurant sponsors, and why my show has survived eight format changes of the radio station over the years.
Sun Ray Grill just signed onto my show as a sponsor, but I haven't been to one in awhile. There have been some changes. The one in the Warehouse District, I knew, installed a sushi bar since my last visit. I took a seat at it and quickly learned that this is not a standard Japanese sushi bar. Not only can one order anything from the restaurant's entire Caribbean-inspired menu and have it served at the sushi bar, but the sushi selections themselves were much more limited than in a Japanese place. And they included some items I've never heard of before.
But a good meal came out of this. I started with the soup of the day, a chunky chicken broth with vegetables, much more substantial than Japanese clear soup. The main course was two large specialty rolls. I have been drifting away from these in recent months--most of them seem more designed to make the mind register "wow!" when you read about it, but become a mishmash of flavors in the eating. But somehow it seemed like a good idea here.
And it was. One of the rolls was called "blackened voodoo." I couldn't remember ever having had a blackened fish sushi roll, so why not? It was quite spicy (and I liked that), and the exterior fish was crusty and could have stood alone. Inside was spicy tuna and salmon, and thin slices of mango were under the blackened fish. A spicy mayonnaise striped the whole thing.
My other roll--with which the chef made an X with the blackened job--had the fanciful name Yellow Submarine. It was a yellowtail roll with crunchy vegetables and avocado inside, and spicy tobiko caviar on top. It made for a nice contrast with the blackened roll, and I went back and forth between them.
I wouldn't call this one of the better sushi bars in town, but as an adjunct to another, unrelated, full menu, it works. The whole meal with a beer came to just under $40. I duly paid it, of course.
Sun Ray Grill. Warehouse District: 1051 Annunciation. 504-566-0021. Caribbean. Mexican. Seafood.
Contemporary Creole.
Uptown: 5831 Magazine. 504-899-6987. Map.
Dinner Tuesday-Saturday.
Nice Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
Bistro Daisy is a textbook example of the fine little bistros that opened in the years immediately after the hurricane. It's modest in terms of size and amenities, but serves food on a par with what we're getting from the best of the grander restaurants. Its kitchen is just hip enough, and uses familiar local fresh foodstuffs in interesting but unpuzzling innovations.
WHY IT'S GOOD
Chef Anton Schulte is running the kitchen these days, and his style is hard not to love. He has a good sense of what tastes good together, plus enough experience in some very serious kitchens to have picked up more than a few good ideas. Bistro Daisy has reached into the New Orleans culinary past for many of its inspirations. A good move, at a time when many avant-garde chefs are cooking as if they didn't live here.
BACKSTORY
Anton and Diane Schulte are a young couple with the added complication of a little kid (whose name is Daisy, like her grandmother's). They first turned up at Peristyle during the great Anne Kearney years. They were the initial operating team when La Petite Grocery opened. A disagreement with the owners there over style motivated the Schultes to move their act 18 blocks up Magazine Street. They moved into the former Ristorante Civello, a handsomely renovated old cottage, and it was magic from there on.
DINING ROOM
Diane Schulte orchestrates service, the bar, and the wine collection. The trio of small dining rooms have high ceilings, wood-plank floors, a real fireplace with a fake fire (they can't afford to give up the table in front of it), and big windows. The ceilings are painted unusually in a trompe l'oeill manner. This is the finest example I know of a cottage-to-restaurant conversion.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Jumbo lump crab and gulf shrimp in aioli with artichokes
Daisy salad (fresh mozzarella, roasted peppers, arugula, pumpkin seeds)
Grilled sweetbreads, lemon, fried capers, pine nuts, brown butter
Belgian endive, apple, walnuts, and blue cheese salad
Oysters poached with horseradish, bacon, and garlic cream
Gulf shrimp with herbsaint, garlic and tomato beurre blanc
Ravioli of crawfish, mascarpone, mushrooms, leeks
Pan roasted, porcini dusted chicken
Duck breast with lentils, chard, and poached garlic ragout
Tomato and mint braised lamb shank, gnocchi and spinach
Filet mignon, blue cheese, red wine demi-glace, foie gras butter
Warm chocolate fondue
Strawberry baked Alaska
Homemade ice cream or sorbet
FOR BEST RESULTS
Parking requires at least a half-block's walk, if you're lucky. The best place to look for curbside spots is on Nashville Avenue, on the river side of Magazine. Reservations are a must; this is a small restaurant with many fans.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
When the restaurant is full of joyous spirits, the sound level can get pretty loud.
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 +2
- Consistency +2
- Service +2
- Value +1
- Attitude +2
- Wine and Bar +2
- Hipness +2
- Local Color +3
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Romantic
- Good view
- Small private room
- Reservations honored promptly
Trout Smilie
"Smilie" is the nickname of Rodney Salvaggio, who opened this Harahan restaurant in the 1970s. He has since sold it, but it's still open. Still bringing Creole and Italian flavors together. Rodney cooked this for a television show I used to do, and I like the dish enough to keep it in my repertoire. Other good fish to use are drum, small amberjack, or flounder.
- 4 trout fillets, 6-8 oz. each
- Salt and pepper
- 1/2 cup melted butter
- 1 cup Italian bread crumbs
- 8 oz. lump crabmeat
- 1 bunch green onions, chopped
- Juice of 2 lemons (about 1/4 cup)
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
1. Salt and pepper the trout fillets and set aside.
2. Coat the bottom of a baking pan with some of the melted butter. Sprinkle a thin layer of bread crumbs over the bottom of the pan, and lay the trout over it. Spoon 1 Tbs. of butter over each fillet and sprinkle with enough bread crumbs to coat the fish.
3. Divide the crabmeat four ways and top the trout with it. Sprinkle chopped green onions over the fish. Douse each fillet with the rest of the butter and the lemon juice.
4. Bake the fish at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes. Two minutes before removing the fish from the oven, spoon 1 Tbs. of wine over each fillet. Serve immediately.
Serves four.
