Monday, July 12, 2010
1105 Restaurants Open Around Town
Bacco Is Ciao-ing Down Again This Summer
Among the most regular players in the summer specials game is Bacco. They're back again with their "Ciao Down" menu, in which you choose one each from three appetizers, three entrees, and three desserts for $25. That's an exceptional price even by the standards of summer specials. It's available every night from 5:30 to 7:30, and includes some of the best dishes at the restaurant. Here's the menu:
Mista Salad
Baby greens, sun-dried tomato vinaigrette, goat cheese, pine nuts
~or~
Lemon Parmesan Salad
Romaine, grape tomatoes, lemon & parmesan dressing, garlic croutons, parmigiano-reggiano cheese
~or~
Corn & Crab Soup
Fresh crabmeat, roasted corn, red peppers, sweet cream
Lobster Ravioli
Wine: Our signature dish with champagne butter sauce and caviar
~or~
Bacco Shrimp
Jumbo Louisiana Gulf shrimp, garlic, rosemary, Abita Amber beer, Creole seasonings
~or~
Roasted Chicken & Stracci
Pulled chicken, spinach, basil, pasta rags, tomato sauce, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Ultra Chocolate Panna Cotta
A rich chocolate creamy dessert served with a coulis of red raspberries and crowned with a dark chocolate curl
~or~
Lemon Ice Box Pie
Cool and creamy lemon pie, with a lightly sweetened graham cracker crust, finished with fresh berries and raspberry coulis
~or~
Seasonal Sorbet
Bacco also has a summer luch special menu: two courses for $15, every weekday.
Bacco. French Quarter: 310 Chartres. 504-522-2426.
All The Summer Menus So Far
Over the weekend, I built a page on this site listing not only all the summer specials I know about, with the menus, too. That list is now online here.
Saturday, July 3. India 4U Heats Me Up. After the usual Saturday morning errands, I had nowhere to go all day. No book signings on this holiday weekend. I spent most of the day on the financial aid forms required by Tulane for Mary Leigh. I thought they could be cloned from Jude's, but there's no way to even cut-and-paste the data from one to the other. I have to pull out the tax returns and type in all the information again. Thirty-one pages' worth. I am convinced that they make these things so time-consuming to discourage people who don't really the assistance from just going for it. But we do need it.
Dinner at India 4U. Something about the place made me think that it has been taken over by new management, but I don't know. The menu is different. The last two pages listed Mexican food. Before I could look it over the waiter said it was null and void. Just as well. I wonder who came up with that idea. Even though Mexican and Indian sauces have flavors in common, they're very different. And if there's one thing Mandeville doesn't need, it's another Mexican restaurant.
First course: paneer with red peppers. This was a very hot dish--just what I wanted. Indian restaurants routinely make paneer cheese in house from milk, resulting in something a little firmer than fresh-milk mozzarella. This batch, however, had been cooked to the point that it was beyond chewy and almost leathery. It was not pleasant. Everything else about the dish was fine, including the portion size--certainly enough for two people, and I couldn't finish it.
Indian food serves entrees oddly, by Western standards. The main part of the dish is often served in the smallest dish on the table. That effect is pronounced at India 4U. Malabar chicken curry came out in a small metal dish, its creamy sauce hiding nearly all of the chicken and other solid parts of the dish. The size is an illusion--the dish is deep, and holds more than you'd think. It still takes one aback, though.
When India 4U first opened, they placed these metal dishes over a little tabletop burner, with a votive candle as the heat source, to keep the food hot to the point of bubbling. That gadget wasn't here today, but it was never really necessary.
These guys do not hold back from adding the seasoning to the sauces. Indeed, the aroma that hits you when you walk in is of roasting whole spices, in the time-honored Indian way. The Malabar sauce was rich, peppery and good. But there wasn't much chicken in it. They had the naan wrong--I asked for plain naan and they brought the garlic version, but I can live with that. The waiter was trying hard, that's for sure.
Other dinner at India 4U (other than our Eat Club dinner here a year or so ago) have been marked by an empty dining room. But they were quite busy tonight--at least thirty other people. I'm glad we have any kind of Indian food on the North Shore, but there's lots of room for improvement here.
India 4 U. Mandeville: 1703 N Causeway Blvd . 985-626-5657. Indian.
Sunday, July 4. Quietude. My One Meal A Year At McDonald's. On this Fourth of July, with everybody except me in Washington, D.C., the house was very quiet, the stillness interrupted only by the summer thunderstorms. I didn't even turn on the music in my office. Just sat there shoveling at the pile. I'm nervous about all the work. I popped a beta blocker, then employed a gambit that serves me well whenever I get overwhelmed. I just make a list of everything I need to do. Doing that removes all fear of the unknown--because then it is known. And it feels good to check one thing after another off the list. It would require more left-brain dominance for me to do this all the time. I have no doubt that it would take a toll on creativity. But once in awhile, it's an enormous help.
A lot of items were scratched off by mid-afternoon. I went out to indulge my long-standing Fourth of July custom of having a cheeseburger at McDonald's. The cheeseburger is the most American of dishes, and certainly McD's version is its most famous. This practice started in 1982 or thereabouts. I had nothing much to do that day, and was between girlfriends. I headed out on a solo drive through the Mississippi countryside. Mississippi is one of the few states that has a lot of country roads that aren't marked with either numbers or names, and they sometimes lead to interesting out-of-the-way places. Not always; they have a chance of dead-ending. But even that is kind of fun. Or was, in those days. My first stop after crossing the lake was the McDonald's on Claiborne Hill in Covington.
Nowadays those very arches are the closest ones to where I live. And there I was again.
Last year, I broke with tradition and had the fast-food giant's new Angus burger, its attempt to move upscale. It was terrible. This year, I went back to basics: a double cheeseburger (a good choice, because they must make it to order), fries, iced tea, an apple pie. I think I'd rather go hungry than eat this hamburger again. It has no flavor at all, save for pickle and mustard. The cheese is bad even by the standards of American cheese. Spongy bun. . . aw, you know how it is. Nothing new learned here. Fortunately, it will be at least a year before my next stop in a McDonald's. God bless America.
Monday, July 5. Everyone Off, Even Me--Sort Of. Pad Thai At Thai Spice. Now, this is really bad news: tar balls are showing up in Lake Pontchartrain. I would have guess that the lake, connected with the Gulf as it is by a couple of tidal passes, was safe from the BP oil spill. The word is that the tar balls are rolling along the bottom. They sank there after the dispersant used on the billowing oil from the broken well made it heavier than water.
On the other hand (as I look for light at the bottom of the sea), BP is saying that they'll finish drilling into the defective well sooner in August than they thought.
The radio station had to run a baseball game over two of my hours today, and suggested I just take the whole day off. It's the first time I wasn't on the air for a Fourth of July holiday since the show began in 1988, but I see no reason to hold onto that string. Nobody's listening anyway.
For the sake of symmetry, I also took the day off from publishing a newsletter. This slack in my day was nice. At last, it let me catch up with all the miscellaneous projects that have waited for my attention since ML's graduation festival over a month ago. And a little free time, too. I thought about going for a walk on the Tammany Trace, but it wouldn't stop raining long enough for me to do that.
Lunch at Thai Spice. This is one of the two distantly related Thai cafes--both excellent--on the corner of Three Rivers Road and Causeway Boulevard in Covington. I was surprised that they were having a very busy day, with a table of some twenty Asian people having a feast.
I started with the Chinese-style hot and sour soup and a spring roll (those come free with the lunch), and finished with pad Thai (below). I eat Thai food once or twice a month, but even though pad thai is to Thailand what gumbo or red beans are to New Orleans I rarely order it. It seemed the perfect thing today, and was. Too much food, of course, but I ate it all. The check was ten bucks. The price of a new-era hamburger, and incomparably better. No wonder so many American restaurants (Zea is a notable example) are borrowing idea from the Thai cuisine.
Thai Spice. Covington: 1531 US 190. 985-809-6483. Thai.
Sandwiches. Platters.
Metairie: 2408 N Arnoult Rd. 504-837-9912 . Map.
Lunch Monday-Saturday.
Very casual.
DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The slice of Metairie just south of the I-10 between Causeway Boulevard and Clearview is a self-contained community. If you don't live or work very nearby, you're unlikely to know about the dozen or so restaurants there. Some of them are worth seeking out, and this is one of them. Spitale's is a first-class poor boy shop, cooking everything from scratch with credible recipes and serving it generously.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The sandwich menu is dizzyingly comprehensive, and has quite a few originals. Many Italian-style poor boys (sausage, meatballs, chicken parmesan, etc.) are available, as are their companion pasta dishes. There's a New Orleans version of a Philly cheese steak. The "dirty turkey" poor boy (with grilled onions and roast beef gravy) shows more creativity than goodness. Daily specials appear on the expected days.
BACKSTORY
Charles and Gerald Spitale opened this place in 1983, when office buildings were going up in the neighborhood and the West Napoleon Canal--then without an adjacent roadway--kept the clientele captive enough for a restaurant to be viable. A big part of their business is making trays of sandwiches and the like for the offices nearby. No small number of Rummel Raiders from the nearby high school sneak over for some variety in their cafeteria diets.
DINING ROOM
The building is a warehouse, shared with far more industrial business. The dining room is utilitarian and a bit worn. You order and pick up at the counter, like you do at Mother's. The low level of service is balanced by the prices. Even the largest poor boys stay under ten dollars, as do most of the platters.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Poor boy sandwiches of every kind. Here are the best:
Roast beef (hot or cold)
Italian sausage
Hot sausage
Veal or chicken or eggplant parmesan
Meatball
Barbecue beef or pulled pork
Ham (cold or grilled)
Pastrami
Turkey, and turkey club
Hamburger
Fried shrimp, oysters, or catfish
Grilled tuna
Muffuletta
Daily specials, particularly:
Red beans and rice (Mon.)
Baked chicken with macaroni and cheese (Wed.)
Lasagna (Thurs.)
Any day:
Meatballs, Italian sausage, veal or chicken parmesan with spaghetti
Hamburger steak and mashed potatoes
Fried or grilled chicken breast with mashed potatoes.
Grilled tuna salad
Grilled chicken caesar
FOR BEST RESULTS
The roast beef poor boy, while more than decent, may be the least of their poor boys. Italy really rules here.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Toasted French bread would make the sandwiches better.
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 +2
- Service -1
- Value +2
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness -1
- Local Color -1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Good for business meetings
- Open Monday lunch
- Unusually large servings
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- No reservations
Fresh Salsa
This is the enhanced first stage of making guacamole. My wife once said to me, why don't you make that into a into a salsa? So here it is. You can chop everything in a food processor, but it looks nicer and tastes better if you do the chopping by hand. If you use the machine, chop in a few short busts and stop just before it seems right.
- 3 cups chopped fresh ripe tomato, skin and seeds removed
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro leaves
- 1 cup chopped white onion
- 2 Tbs. Tabasco chilpotle pepper sauce
- 1 jalapeno pepper, seeds and membrane removed chopped
- 1 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 Tbs. lime juice
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. cumin
- Pinch cayenne
Mix everything together and allow the flavors to blend for an hour or so in the refrigerator.
