Friday, June 18, 2010
1103 Restaurants Open Around Town
Ristorante Carmelo Opens Grandly Tonight
It's been open for over six months now, but Ristorante Carmelo is having a grand opening tonight for its new Mandeville restaurant. After twenty-two years in the French Quarter, Carmelo Chirico decided to move to the North Shore (where he lives). What came out of the move is a much bigger, more pleasant space. And what seems to me to be a bigger menu, too. From four until six this afternoon, drop in and have some food, wine, and entertainment. Maybe stay for dinner?
If not, Carmelo has a wine dinner tomorrow night. He's a serious wine buff and holds dinners all the time, usually with Italian wines. This time, only the name is Italian: Robert Mondavi. It's a five-course dinner for $65, plus tax and tip (so, about $84 total). Cocktails at 6:30, dinner at 7 p.m. Here's the menu:
Antipasti Ai Frutti Di Mare Freddi e Caldi
A variety of delicacies from the sea consisting fresh mussels, clams shrimp, lobster, fried oysters, calamari and fresh fish
Wine: Prosecco
Mafaldine Alla Romagnola
Homemade mafaldine pasta with prosciutto, green peas in a light creamy tomato sauce
Wine: Chardonnay
Insalata Di Arugula
Baby arugula salad and fresh shaved parmigiano cheese
Wine: Pinot Noir
Vitello Alla Sorrentina
Hand-cut tender sautéed white baby veal medallions topped with eggplant, prosciutto
and fresh mozzarella in a light white wine sauce served with vegetables
Wine: Cabernet Sauvignon Napa
Dessert Trilogy
Assortment of in house desserts : tiramisu, cannoli and cheesecake
with fresh berries
Wine: Moscato
Reservations are essential to attend the dinner. Call 985-624-4844 or email ristorantecarmelo@att.net.
One more thing at Carmelo: Sunday is Father's Day, and they'll open specially for that. It's a special menu for $30 for adults, $13 for children under 12. (Kids under seven, free.)
Ristorante Carmelo. Mandeville: 1901 US Hwy 190. 985-624-4844. Northern Italian.
Patron Tequila Train In N.O. Station
Tonight, Tomorrow, Helping Oiled Fishermen
Patron Tequila's private railroad car, is traveling around the country to raise money for the fishermen whose lives have been wrecked by the oil spill. After earning $60,000 for that cause in Washington last week, it's due to pull into Union Passenger Terminal (Loyola Avenue at Earhart Blvd.) this afternoon. The grand old heavyweight private car (vintage 1926) will be the center of several events over the weekend.
The first was a cocktail party Thursday night. Late this afternoon (it begins at four) is another one, but it may be sold out. The chefs tonight are Brian Landry (Galatoire's), Chris Lusk (Cafe Adelaide) and Greg Reggio Zea). The price is $50, with all the proceeds going to the St. Bernard Project to help the fishermen.
Part Three--the biggie, but with very limited seating--is tomorrow night (Saturday), when a five-course dinner will be swerved aboard the railroad car to 25 people. The chefs will be Tory McPhail of Commander’s Palace, Chris Lusk of Café Adelaide and Nathan Gresham of Galatoire’s of Baton Rouge. The dinner is $250. This sounds very cool. To reserve a place on The Patrón Tequila Epicurean Express for either event, email rsvp@stbernardproject.org.
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 owner is Louis Fuquet III; the chef will be William Mauk. He was the man in the kitchen at the previous restaurant, and a very good one, I thought--particularly when he cut loose with specials.
Other than Chef Mauk's presence, there's no connection between the New City Grill (the old place) and the Old Metairie Bistro (the new one). 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.
Thursday, June 10. What's With Cuvee? Mary Ann called to say she was available for dinner in town tonight, and that I should pick a place downtown. I stayed close to the radio station: Cuvee, a half-block away. But it's been a long time since I dined there. I'm not sure I've been since Bob Iacovone--the chef who turned the place into something really good some years ago--left the kitchen here to be a partner in Rambla. Ken Lacour and Chef Kim Kringlie are also involved in Cuvee, as well as Dakota in Covington. So it's a stable situation. Or so I thought.
My last few visits to Cuvee have been noteworthy for empty dining rooms. If the people who shared the place with me in my last three meals there came back all at one time for a reunion, walk-in customers would still get immediate seating. I hear very few comments about Cuvee on the radio show, although all the people who do call have good things to say. As had I.
But this is not the restaurant I remembered. I saw that as soon as I opened the menu. It had three problems. First, it was short--only a shade over a half-dozen dishes in each course. With no special to speak of. Second, it was expensive. All the entrees but one were over $30. A few other restaurants have such tariffs, but only a few. Third, what was on the menu was so uninteresting that we were on the verge of leaving for somewhere else. Mary Ann--no bold eater--has the feeling rather often, but it's rare for me.
The waiter came over and recited his script. The "water service" was determined. (Would it not please everyone never again to hear the phrase ". . . choice for your water service tonight"?) We learned there were no specials other than the identity of the fish of the day. We ordered.
The amuse bouche appeared. Interesting spoons, filled with chilled borscht, a little sour cream, and some chives. Good. But a single spoon of beet soup as a welcome to the restaurant? What happened to the shrimp or the crabmeat lumps or the prosciutto we used to get?
Now came the "bread service." A small square of molasses-soaked cornbread, and a little bread roll that you could wrap your thumb and forefinger around. The long way. We had our choice--one or the other! I asked if I could have both. The server stopped and thought about it, then allowed this. The butter service was a squirt. Not a pat or a ball, but a squirt. We ate these in short order. When the waiter came around to say that the chef was working on our appetizers (good news!), we asked for a reprise of the bread. He thought about it, and brought one of each kind of breadlet for the two of us to share. We asked for another squirt of butter service, because we'd squandered it on the first bread service. We got no more bread or butter for the rest of the meal.
Here came the glass of wine. It was served from a mini-carafe that measures exactly five ounces of wine. You cannot escape the metering of food and drink at Cuvee--or at Dakota, for that matter. Although I've always rated both very highly (Dakota at five stars), I've always noticed this disciplined avoidance of generosity, and found it a mood depressant.
I liked my appetizer. It was tuna tartare (on the left), with a couple of tuna croquettes and exactly five fried taro chips (do you know how expensive those things are?). Taro chips taste like nothing to me, but they were there for visual purposes.
Mary Ann's appetizer sounded interesting. It was a crawfish pie whose matrix was pureed peas. The menu gave this a name I never heard of, and could not discover after a few web searches and checking a few books. (I tried the restaurant's website, which as of June 18 returned only a black void when you clicked on anything.) We ate the whole thing, trying to decide whether we liked it. What we settled on was "not bad."
I persuaded Mary Ann that lemonfish is a good species, and she had it seared, set atop a raft of asparagus, topped with halves of grape tomatoes. I'd give it an A+ for visual, a B for flavor, and a C for generosity. MA liked it well enough, but by now she was saying she didn't need to ever come back here again. "What's the deal?" is how she put it.
My entree was a lamb loin wrapped in phyllo. It's always a risky proposition, putting big wonks of red meat in a pastry crust. Beef Wellington isn't even all that great a dish. The problem here was that the lamb was underdone and it's juiciness saturated the pastry until the bottom part had returned to the dough state. But I wanted the lamb, not the pastry, and that was satisfying, with a good jus, rosemary, and what I think was a tomatillo atop yellow rice. It was nice with the Pali Pinot Noir they measured out for me.
Cuvee isn't a bad restaurant. But I'm as old-school a diner as any, and even to me this meal was a snore. It's the kind of thing that advances the cause of making everyone eat only in casual restaurants, where at least there are signs of life. The funny thing is that it's posing as avant-garde!
The place has been so good in the past that we talked all the way home about what might be going on behind the scenes. The chef was there this night. They certainly weren't slammed by customers. Hmm. What's the deal?
Cuvee. CBD: 322 Magazine. 504-587-9001. Contemporary Creole. American.
Steaks. Contemporary Creole.
Metairie: 111 Veterans Blvd.. 504-218-8967. Map.
Lunch Monday-Friday. Dinner Tuesday-Saturday.
Nice Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
Despite its name, Chops is not quite what I'd call a steakhouse. The menu reads more like that of a contemporary Creole bistro, full of grilled fish, crabmeat, dark roux gumbos, and pannee veal. The steaks are all but hidden on the menu. They're good enough, filling the gap between the inexpensive and the deluxe steakhouses at prices to match.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The restaurant has an engaging, casual feel and a good bar. As the name implies, the kitchen specializes in red meats. Steaks are not billed as prime but of more than decent pedigree. Lamb chops and pork chops are also handled well. The rest of the menu reminds us of the food served at the old Charley G's, which was here three restaurants ago.
BACKSTORY
The restaurant space off the second-floor lobby of the Heritage Plaza office building has seen many eateries come and go over the years. The best remembered of them was Charley G's, which built the place more or less as it stands now. Chops opened just before the hurricane and returned not long after it--at a newly dramatic location. The canal you see outside the windows is the one whose levee break (on the other side) did the most damage to the city.
DINING ROOM
The split-level main dining room is dominated by two rows of booths that are slightly too small for parties of four. Windows on three sides and a stretch of space in front of the open kitchen give an expansive quality.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Crab cakes
Dueling oysters (two ways--Buffalo style and poached and pickled with aioli)
Blackened tuna nachos
Sweet and spicy fried calamari
Fried eggplant with marinara and crabmeat-avocado salsa
Angry shrimp and grits (spicy)
Fried green tomatoes and shrimp remoulade
Crabmeat and lobster au gratin
Roasted corn and crab bisque
Duck and andouille gumbo
Creole caesar salad with fried capers
Iceberg wedge salad with blue cheese, bacon, and tomatoes
Speckled trout with crabmeat
Grilled yellowfin tuna
Grouper with lobster risotto
Potato-crusted flounder
Shrimp and tasso pasta
Roasted breast of chicken
Steaks: filet mignon, ribeye, cowboy ribeye New York strip, porterhouse
Dueling filet medallions (with hollandaise on one and blue cheese demi-glace on the other)
Double cut pork chop
Rack of lamb (New Zealand)
Creme brulee
White chocolate and macadamia bread pudding
FOR BEST RESULTS
Every night the restaurant runs a three-course, $29 dinner with several choices throughout, with optional wine pairings. The grilled entrees are significantly better than the fried. The restaurant gets very busy at lunchtime with all the people in that office building.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Tables in the lower part of the split-level dining room are to be avoided (but they don't use them much). The booths are a little too small. Wine list is a bit weak.
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 +1
- Consistency +1
- Service +1
- Value
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness
- Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Outdoor tables, drinks only
- Romantic
- Good view
- Good for business meetings
- Medium private room
- Open Monday lunch
- Open all afternoon
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- Reservations accepted
Sirloin Strip Steak Bordelaise
For charity dinners I have been known to buy a whole or half sirloin strip roast--preferably bone-in--and marinate it in a whole bottle of red wine. It gets roasted in the oven, while the marinade gets reduced down and flavored with savory herbs. Very dramatic preparation.
- 4 lbs. sirloin strip steak roast (unsliced), preferably from the T-bone end
- 1 bottle red Bordeaux or Cabernet Sauvignon
- 6 Tbs. Tabasco garlic marinade
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme
- 10 black peppercorns
- 4 Tbs. butter
- 1 head garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1. Trim the sirloin of excess fat and all connective tissue, and place in a gallon-size food storage bag. Add the Tabasco garlic marinade and as much wine as will go into the bag. Marinate the steak overnight.
2. When ready to begin cooking, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Remove the steak and season with a little salt. Heat some butter in a heavy skillet and brown the steak all around. Using tongs (do not pierce the meat!), put the steak on a broiler pan and into the 375-degree oven.
3. Add the contents of the marinating bag to the skillet, along with the remainder of the wine. Bring to a boil while whisking the bottom to dislodge the browned bits and juices. Add the thyme and peppercorns and reduce to about 2/3 cup.
4. Heat 1 Tbs. of butter in a skillet and saute the garlic until it smells good. Strain the wine reduction into the garlic-butter skillet and bring to a light boil. Lower the heat and flick in the remaining butter a little at a time, whisking in as you go. Add a little salt to taste.
5. Roast the steak to 125 degrees (for medium-rare) internal temperature, using a meat thermometer. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for ten minutes. Slice about 1/2-inch thick, and serve with the sauce.
Serves eight.
