Wednesday, June 16, 2010
1103 Restaurants Open Around Town
Emeril has a new cookbook out called Farm To Fork, and his restaurants are all featuring dishes from it right now. The theme of the book, as you might guess, is how to find and use locally-raised food products. He has even taken the idea to the bar, where his mixologists are concocting drinks using local fresh ingredients. Through the end of the month, every Farm-To-Fork cocktail sold will result in a nine-dollar donation to the Second Harvester's Food Bank, and its special effort to help the fishermen whose lives have been emptied by the oil spill. Here are some of the cocktails:
Blackberry Smash @ Emeril's
Blackberry vodka, fresh blackberries, lime, simple syrup, blackberry liquor, splash of lemon soda
Blueberry Mojito @ Emeril's
Old New Orleans Rum, fresh muddled blueberries and mint, lime, simple syrup, splash of soda
Watermelon Candy Martini @ NOLA
Gin, muddled Louisiana watermelon, fresh sour mix, watermelon brandy, watermelon ball garnish
Lemon-Thyme Mojito @ NOLA
Bacardi Limón rum, fresh thyme, lime, simple syrup, splash of soda
Blackberry Caipirinha @ Delmonico
Lemon cachaça, fresh muddled blackberries and lime, sugar
98 in the Shade @ Delmonico
House made sweet tea vodka infused with local blueberries
Emeril’s. Warehouse District: 800 Tchoupitoulas. 504-528-9393. Contemporary Creole.
Nola. French Quarter: 534 St. Louis. 504-522-6652. Contemporary Creole.
Delmonico. Lee Circle Area: 1300 St. Charles Ave.. 504-525-4937. Contemporary Creole.
Formerly New City Grill; New Owners, Same Chef
Old Metairie Bistro Opens
A couple of months ago the New City Grille--a classy, tasty bistro on Metairie Road at Labarre--suddenly closed down for no apparent reason. The popularity of the place became apparent immediately. I got two or three calls asking about the closing every day for weeks on my radio show, which was about fifty times as many as I heard about the place when it was open.
Now, after some remodeling and all the other tasks that attend starting a new restaurant, the place is back in business as the Old Metairie Bistro. Monday, June 14 was the official opening day. The owners are Louis Fuquet III and William Mauk, both of whom had worked at the New City Grille. Mauk was the chef, and a very good one, I thought--particularly when he cut loose with specials.
The new menu leans more heavily to the chef's more innovative side. Other than that, the new establishment seems to be picking up where its predecessor left off, with the same contemporary Creole style.
As for what happened to the previous owner, Derrick Todd: he had a distracting personal issue that forced him to close the place. I expect we'll see him again somewhere else, since he's had a long, successful career running eateries.
Old Metairie Bistro. Old Metairie: 2700 Metairie Rd. 504-836-6972. Contemporary Creole.
Susan Spicer's New Neighborhood Restaurant
Mondo Opens Softly
Over The Weekend
Mondo, the new restaurant from Chef Susan Spicer, opened without much fanfare over the weekend. That did not, however, keep the place from being very busy. The neighbors in Lakeview have kept their eyes and ears open to the any signs of its appearance, and didn't miss the appearance of people in the dining rooms for run-throughs earlier in the week.
Susan, who lives in Lakeview herself, has been thinking about something like this for some time. Not long ago she sold her share of Herbsaint to her partner and former Bayona sous chef Donald Link, and flipped the investment into Mondo.
The space was most recently Lago, with Barataria, Bacchi, and the original location of the Steak Knife there in the past. (The Steak Knife moved across Marshal Foch Street in the 1990s.) In the Bacchi era a brick, wood-burning pizza oven had been added, which Susan is now using. "It wasn't easy," she told me. "Everything here was under water for a long time after Katrina, and the pizza oven developed some issues when we fired it up. All fixed now."
"Mondo" means world. "We will have a world of food, for everybody" she says, noting that Mondo's menu was planned to appeal to the tastes of an entire family. This would be a family with a more ambitious palate than my own does, I'd say--although I personally like the sound of most of this). Here are some selected items from the menu:
- Fried Hominy with Chiles and Lime
- Spreads & Croutons (Taramosalata, White Bean-Roast Garlic, Green Olive Tapenade)
- Carnitas Gorditas
- Jerked Chicken Thighs with Pineapple Salsa
- Chicken Tortilla Soup with Hominy
- Ceviche with Tortilla Chips and Guacamole
- Creamy Crab Toast
- Wood Oven-roasted Artichoke
- Pizza
- Mondo Burger with Griddled Onions, Fries
- Broiled or Sautéed Gulf Fish
- Crawfish Etouffée
- Slow roasted Pork Shoulder
- Broiled Lamb T-bones
- Whole Roasted Fish
- Mac ‘n’ Cheese
- Flaugnarde (thick crepe) with Seasonal Fruit
- Double Chocolate Cake
- Cinnamon Beignets
Prices for the appetizers are mostly between $5 and $10, with entrees running from $11 to $20, with a couple of large plates with higher prices. Mondo will be open Monday through Saturday for dinner only right now, with Sunday brunch and daily lunches in the plans for the near future.
The opening of Mondo pushed the population of restaurants in New Orleans past 1100, for the first time in history. We had 809 restaurants before Katrina. A list of all open restaurants can be found here.
Mondo. Lakeview: 900 Harrison Ave . 504-224-2633. Eclectic.
Tuesday, June 8. Beef Sandwich From Bear's. Beef Fondue At Pho Orchid. Some Thoughts On Vietnamese Food. The Marys made a sortie into Mandeville for reasons I'm better off not knowing about. One of the targets was Bear's, where Mary Ann would score a poor boy and Mary Leigh would down a large order of cheese fries--the only thing she eats there, but enough of a lure to have Bear's on her A-list.
My loving wife brought home a small roast beef poor boy for me. The French bread was thoroughly saturated with gravy, beginning to dissolve in it. (Another reason never to get take-out anything.)
But I know how to fix this problem. I cut the sandwich in half (no way I can finish a whole one), put one half on a wire rack atop a pizza pan, and put it into the oven at 400 degrees. Eight minutes later (the oven wasn't pre-heated), I took out a crisp, hot poor boy, and relished eating it. Not quite as good as if it had come right out of the restaurant's oven (the lettuce had wilted, among other fine details injured). But a nice treat for lunch.
Tuesday is my Ethnic Day. I don't know how or why that got started, but it goes back to my earliest radio restaurant reviews, in 1975. I did one every day, and it helped to have some sort of framework. Ethnic Day influences my choice for Tuesday dinner venues, too.
Tonight I was at Pho Orchid in Metairie. It has never been busy when I've gone, but any call from a listener always radiates praise. It's a Vietnamese restaurant specializing in the beef noodle soup of its first name, but its menu is more comprehensive than most Viet cafes.
Pho Orchid is also a nicer-looking restaurant than most in that category. The address has seen enough former restaurants to require both hands to count. The current owners thoroughly renovated the space, making it dark, cool, and elegant. They're not quite finished, apparently. One wall was covered with plastic sheeting while new windows are installed.
I've had the pho and the bun and the spring rolls and the other Vietnamese standards here. Tonight I wanted to push on into something more elaborate. While looking over the menu from the other wide of a bottle of a Halida Vietnamese beer, I saw that they offer a number of variations on beef fondue. This is a less-than-accurate name--but there's no other English word for it.
Vietnamese fondue is prepared atop the table, and you do it yourself. A pan of stock with savory vegetables simmers over a little propane burner. The variation I ordered had a good bit of vinegar in it, too. Then come the bowls of the same sorts of things you get with pho: fresh basil, lettuce, cilantro, cooked noodles, a couple of spicy dipping sauces.
On another plate was a stack of rice paper "pancakes" (another imperfect translation). These look and feel as if they're made of stiff, translucent plastic, and not particularly edible. But dip them into the big bowl of hot water, and they become wet, slippery ghosts, gossamer thin but surprisingly strong and stretchy. The transformation reminded me of what happens when you stuff a wad of cotton candy in your mouth and, a second later, wonder where it went.
The final plate to arrive on this now very crowded table bore slices of raw beef, thin enough to let light pass. I'm not positive, but it looked like round steak.
How all this stuff merges into a dish is complex enough to require outline form:
1. Soften one of the rice papers, by rotating it in the bowl of hot water until it's entirely wet.
2. Position the rice paper on the plate. This takes a little dexterity, because the thing is not only like thin silk but it sticks to itself and anything else it touches.
3. Tear off a few green leaves and drop them in the center of the rice paper.
4. Chopstick up a small bundle of the cool rice noodles and try to extend them along one diameter of the rice paper, leaving an open space at one limb of the pancake.
5. Pick up a slice or two of the beef and swish it in the simmering stock until it's cooked to satisfaction. (Even well-done, this only takes a few seconds.) In this it's identical to the Japanese dish shabu-shabu (so named for the sound one makes when swishing the beef).
6. Let the beef drain for a second, then move it atop the pile of stuff on the rice paper.
7. Roll the rice paper up. Fold over the unfilled end. Dip this roll in one of the sauces. Raise it to the lips. Open mouth. Insert roll. Eat.
The lady who (I think) owns the place came over to tell me I was doing something wrong. At first, I spooned the sauce onto the pile before rolling. She said that the contents of any rice paper-wrapped roll must be kept as dry as possible, or the rice paper will become unmanageably slippery. Which it indeed was in my first attempt. Live and learn.
At the end of the procedure, there is an eighth step. The vegetable-filled stock in which all the beef has been swished is now a soup. And enough noodles and vegetables remain to make it into something very much like pho.
Noting that, I decided to commit to virtual paper something that's been on my mind for years now. In that time I've waited for the magic of Vietnamese cookery to convince me of its brilliance. The way it has to so many other New Orleans diners. There had to be more to the cuisine than I was tasting. And I have been eating Vietnamese longer than most of its most avid, non-Asian local fans have been alive.
Okay. I like Vietnamese cooking well enough. This dinner was very interesting. (It must have been for me to get three pages out of one dish.) But the appeal came more from its exotic provenance, not its flavor. Even with all the folderol, what this boiled down to (literally) was a different way of serving pho. Broth, beef, noodles, herbs. Almost everything in most Vietnamese restaurants is a variation on pho. Which is not so interesting a flavor that it requires a hundred or more listings on a menu.
Take out all the forms of pho, the spring rolls, and the undeniably delicious mystery-meat banh mi sandwiches (Vietnamese poor boys), and most Vietnamese restaurants are left with little on the menu. A few--Kim Son, Nine Roses, Café Minh, and now Pho Orchid--get a bunch of my stars by having much bigger and more widely varied menus. But those aren't the ones people rave about. The simplest pho shops get all the attention.
I read an article in the New York Times a few weeks ago about the resurgence of the New Orleans restaurant scene. I was astonished by the writer's ten best places to dine in New Orleans. In it were three Vietnamese restaurants, all of them pho and banh-mi shops. What? Did he talk with anybody here over the age of thirty, living outside the Marigny and Bywater? To read the article, you'd think pho were more important to the local eating scheme than gumbo is.
Vietnamese food is unquestionably unique, fresh, and interesting. The people command the highest respect for their victories against unimaginable adversities, for their matchless work ethic, and for their determination to preserve their culture.
But if I never ate another bowl of pho, I wouldn't miss it.
I'm hoping this rumination kicks off a big controversy on the messageboard, so I can find what it is I should be missing. If anything.
Pho Orchid. Metairie: 3117 Houma Blvd.. 504-457-4188. Vietnamese.
Pizza. Sandwiches.
Uptown: 4218 Magazine, 504-894-8554. Map.
Mid-City: 4024 Canal. 504-302-1133. Map.
Lunch and dinner continuously seven days.
Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
Theo's created a stir when they opened a few years ago on Magazine Street, making pizzas in a stone oven and creating some offbeat combinations with entertaining names. It's a measure of how far the standards for pizza in New Orleans have come (we are not historically a great pizza town) that Theo's seems above average. Ten years ago we would have called it brilliant.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The crust is the key to a great pizza, and Theo's does a better job with its firmer-than-average, crisp, medium-thin crusts than most other pizzerias. Most of the time. I have had underbaked and overbaked pizzas here. Also oversauced and oversauced. The quality of the ingredients is beyond reproach, with a large array of vegetables. Not only the usual spinach, mushrooms, and onions, but also squash, anaheim peppers, and banana peppers. Beware of loading too many vegetables, which throw off a lot of water as they bake. That stiff crust stands up to it, but there are limits. Salads and sandwiches are well made and oversize for the prices.
BACKSTORY
Greg Dietz opened the original Theo's on Magazine Street in 2004. It came back quickly after the hurricane, and that boosted the restaurant's popularity quickly. The second location in Mid-City opened in 2009.
DINING ROOM
The original location feels good: a dining room with interesting modern design in an old storefront. Tables are in two small rooms; the front one has windows opening onto the sidewalk, where more than a few people may be waiting on a very busy night. You order at the counter and they bring the pies out to you. The new location is a bit more spacious, brighter, and more squeaky-clean. The staff is something less than rigidly attentive.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Hot wings
Bread sticks with mozzarella and garlic
Stuffed bread sticks
Super soaked salad (artichokes and olives)
Greek salad
Sweet spinach salad
Club sandwich
Turkey and mozzarella sub
Veggie sub
Reuben sandwich
Meatball sub
Pizzas to order, plus these house specials:
The Expert (olive oil, garlic, spinach, mozzarella, tomatoes, purple onion, bacon)
Buffalo chicken pizza
Jammer's Original (tomato sauce, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, onions, banana peppers, goat cheese, mozzarella)
Spicy Mexican chicken pizza
The Eccentric (olive oil, garlic, spinach, feta, pepper-jack, mozzarella, chicken, jalapeños, yellow squash, spicy tomatoes and Anaheim peppers)
FOR BEST RESULTS
The four-cheese pizza is exceptionally good.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The pizzas would come out better if the oven were even hotter than it already is. I don't see the blistery bubbles that are the sign of a really hot baking. The toppings are a little more liquid than ideal--another thing that could be solved by cranking up the heat. The "Meathead" pizza includes just about every meat commonly used on pizza to create a serious train wreck of flavors.
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 -1
- Value +1
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness +1
- Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Sidewalk tables
- Open Sunday lunch and dinner
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open all afternoon
- Unusually large servings
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- No reservations
Mussels With Chorizo
This doesn't sound all that likely, but after sampling two completely different versions of it from two terrific chefs (Adolfo Garcia and Kevin Vizard), I wanted to try my own hand with it. What you get is a sauce that has the flavor of the mussels in the front, a but more substance than what you get from mussel meat alone, and a lingering glow from chorizo's pepper. The kind of chorizo I use here is the loose, uncooked variety rather than the cured Spanish kind.
- 1 lbs. chorizo fresca or Creole hot sausage, removed from casings
- All the juice from a 28-ounce can of Italian plum tomatoes, plus four of the tomatoes themselves, crushed
- 1/4 cup chopped onions
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 4 dozen mussels in shells, well washed
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 2 tsp. lemon juice
- 1 tsp. Creole seafood seasoning
1. In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook the chorizo until fully cooked, breaking it up with a kitchen fork. Add about 1/4 cup of the tomato juice after a two minutes of cooking, to keep the chorizo from clumping up. Remove the chorizo from the pan and set aside.
2. Add the onions and garlic to the pan and cook in the fat from the chorizo until fragrant.
3. Add the mussels, checking to make sure all of them are tightly closed. Add the wine and lemon juice, and bring to a boil. Cover the pan and let the mussels steam for about a minute. Agitate the pan to allow the mussel juices to run out into the rest of the sauce makings.
4. Uncover the pan and lower the heat to medium-low. Add the remainder of the tomato juice, the crushed tomatoes, Creole seasoning, and the chorizo. Stir the pan contents around to distribute the ingredients. It's desirable for the tomatoes and the chorizo to work its way inside the mussel shells. Taste the sauce and add salt and pepper if needed.
5. Remove the mussels to soup bowls. Taste the sauce and add salt and pepper if necessary. Spoon the sauce over the mussels. Avoid scraping the bottom of the pan for the sauce, to avoid getting any of the sand that might have been in the mussels.
Serves four appetizers or one entree.
