Monday, July 19, 2010
1106 Restaurants Open Around Town
I keep telling you that you need to pick up the time-honored habit of having lunch in the French Quarter once a week. Okay, once a month, if that's all the time you have. (For goodness sake, it's summer! You're expected to goof off a little this time of year!) Among the many options for doing this, one of the best is Muriel's on Jackson Square, which has made its lunch even more alluring with a $16.50 two-courser. Chef Gus Martin is waiting for you with this menu:
Soup of the Day
~or~
House Salad
Stuffed Mirliton
Shrimp and andouille stuffing; baked and served with a roasted Creole tomato sauce
~or~
Shrimp Creole
Louisiana shrimp, simmered in a classic New Orleans Creole sauce, served with popcorn rice
~or~
Wood Grilled Pork Chop
With red beans and Louisiana popcorn rice, with cornbread
~or~
Wood Grilled Beef Tenderloin Salad
Wood grilled Beef Tenderloin Salad, With Kalamata olives, tomato and basil, tossed with rotini pasta in a roasted garlic vinaigrette with shaved parmesan.
Muriel's. French Quarter: 801 Chartres. 504-568-1885. Contemporary Creole.
All The Summer Menus So Far
NOMenu has a page listing not only all the summer specials we know about, but with all the menus, too. I'm adding new ones daily.
That list is now online here.
Saturday, July 10. Testy Breakfasts. Fun And Good Eats In Bay St. Louis. I don't know why Mary Ann and I keep going to breakfast together on Saturdays. Every week, a political argument breaks out, and we wind up being mad at each other the rest of the day.
The breakfast itself was good enough. It was our third time in five weeks at the Toad Hollow, the New-Agey café in old Covington. We must like it. Mary Ann had her usual overcooked eggs and the house's excellent multi-grain toast (she ordered the former to get the latter). I tried the breakfast burrito, filled with scrambled eggs, salsa, beans, sour cream, and turkey bacon. Now I know what I had just assumed: turkey bacon is to real bacon as graham crackers are to lost bread. I suppose they have a good reason for not having pork products on the menu here, but I always miss it.
I was on the radio from noon till three, took a fifteen-minute nap, then struck out for Bay St. Louis. I was invited by Bay Books, a small independent bookstore on Main Street, to meet their customers and sell them a book or two.
Bay St. Louis looked great. It was ground zero for Katrina, with the kinds of winds and tides that rip highways right out of the ground and blow buildings clean away. Many lots are still empty. But the streets and sidewalks were built anew, and if there was unrepaired damage to the structures lining them I didn't notice it.
Almost from the moment I sat down, a continuous stream of people advanced to my table for my cookbook, Hungry Town, or both. The two hours hadn't quite elapsed when the store was sold out of two cases of each.
The people on the Gulf Coast are unique. Open and friendly, they want to know all about you and seem genuinely grateful that you're walking their streets. I'd use the expression "Southern hospitality" if I weren't afraid of stepping in a cliche. Many of them are writers themselves--as quite a few told me. (I bought a book from one of them.)
Adding to the camaraderie was Art Walk, a monthly festival in downtown Bay St. Louis. The stores, cafes, and bars all enter party mode. You couldn't walk a block without encountering at least two instances of live music. Kay Gough, the owner of the bookstore, told me that Art Walk has become so much a part of the fabric of the town that they even held it the month after Katrina. "All we had was a card table, a bottle of whiskey, and a stack of cups, but we were here!" she said.
Many (perhaps most) of the people were curious to know where I might be dining this evening. When I said I wasn't sure, they began ladling the advice. Bay St. Louis's restaurants are not all back, but the major ones are.
Many of my new friends touted the Sycamore House. I've heard good things about it for years. It's a pair of ante-bellum cottages pulled together into one structure in the 1850s. It evolved into a boarding house over the years, until such things became extinct. Chefs Stella LeGardeur and Michael Eastham--Culinary Institute of America grads and a couple--took over in 2002. There is no sycamore tree. The place is named for the house in England where Michael's grandmother lived. The dining spaces are slightly maze-like. A screen porch covers two sides.
The Sycamore House is one of the growing number of otherwise formal, non-Italian restaurants that also serve pizza. We saw many people leaving the place with boxes. I'm glad they did. We got the last table--a deuce wedged between the fireplace and the passageway used by the waiters to serve the room beyond. This is the worst table in the house, I hope. But the alternative was worse. After we sat down, we heard murmurings about a half-hour wait for dinner.
We began with cocktails and duck liver pate, nicely presented and livery enough, but tasting if not a particle of salt had been used. (And there was no salt or pepper shaker to be had.) Good thing some crackers and Creole mustard were there to add some tang.
Now a new idea to me: the flauta du jour. Goat cheese, spinach, and roasted red peppers, rolled up and fried inside a corn tortilla. ("Flauta"="flute" in Spanish--but wait. Shouldn't that have made it flauta al dia? Never mind.) Good stuff. Also here was tuna poke--the Hawaiian tossed salad of raw tuna, dressed with a spicy marinade. That's always welcome at my table.
I was impressed by the number of fish the kitchen had available, and particularly that one of them was tripletail--a.k.a. blackfish, a species seen only in restaurants that put unusual effort into shopping for raw materials. They "meuniered" it, to use the expression I once heard a chef use. Mary Ann ate most of that, and thought it pretty good. Before me was a sirloin strip steak with bordelaise sauce; no complaints here.
I was trying to stay under the radar, but the restaurant was filled with people who, a couple hours earlier, had asked me to sign a book for them. They tipped off the owner. On the way out, he said that his kitchen had been slammed, as it always is on Art Walk night. He said we should come back on a calmer evening. I certainly will, and hope I bring my camera next time. (These terrible pictures were made with my cellphone.)
We really ought to spend a week around here. My knowledge of the restaurants on the Gulf Coast is abysmal. I need a vacation anyway. I suggested to Mary Ann that we check into a hotel and spend at least a long weekend, or maybe a week. "I can't believe after all these years you wouldn't know that would be the most boring thing in the world for me," she said.
"I thought you liked the beach," I said.
"I do like the beach. But not this beach. And that was when the kids were younger. Mary Leigh would only want to go to the beach with a bunch of her friends. She'd sit around watching TV all day if she were with us."
This is a problem, being married to someone whose tastes in vacation have diverged so far from one's own. And become so ambitious. Mary Ann has talked me into an Eat Club trip to Paris and London for New Year's Eve, followed by a transatlantic trip home aboard the Cunard Queen Victoria. I love the idea, but have no idea how to pay for both that and this year's astronomical tuitions. (Contrary to widely-held belief, we do not travel free on these adventures.)
I know that women's minds are made that way, so their men will be pushed to greater heights than they might otherwise achieve. Ask for the impossible, and get the best possible, I guess. But, boy, I'd like to have a week in which I don't have to work eighty hours.
Sycamore House. Bay St. Louis: 210 Main St. 228-469-0107.
Sandwiches. Platters. Seafood.
Mandeville: 4700 LA 22. 985-792-0499 . Map.
Lunch Monday-Saturday.
Lunch and dinner continuously (until 8 p.m.) Monday-Friday.
Very Casual.
AE DS MC V
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The best culinary development in the twenty years I've lived on the North Shore is the proliferation of old-style neighborhood cafes. They're usually in strip malls instead of in the neighborhoods, but the food is immediately recognizable as bone-fide everyday New Orleans eats. This well-hidden cafe is one of the better such additions to the scene, with first-class poor boys and the classic platters.
WHY IT'S GOOD
This is a serious kitchen that cooks all the important items (roast beef, red sauce, gumbo, red beans, etc.) in house, and serves them up generously and well. The half-size poor boys (they claim six inches as the length, but they're actually bigger) are plenty enough for even a big appetite. The frying is conducted on a case-by-case basis, resulting in not only good seafood but excellent onion rings. (An order of the latter is enough for at least four people.)
BACKSTORY
The place took over an existing restaurant in a secondary strip mall in 2007. The good Megumi sushi bar is also in the mall.
DINING ROOM
The premises aren't fancy, but in excellent repair and clean as a whistle. The entire dining room has been known to fill up with customers, many of whom are waiting for their sandwiches. They're made to order, and this takes longer than some of them may be accustomed to.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Onion rings
Eggplant sticks
Potato salad
Gumbo (Friday only)
Baked macaroni and cheese
Baked potato (with a menu of toppings)
Poor boy sandwiches, especially:
Roast beef
Turkey
Hamburger (also available on buns)
Hot or Italian sausage
Meatball
Veal, chicken, or eggplant parmesan (also available as platters with pasta)
Fried shrimp, catfish, soft-shell crab or oysters
Grilled chicken breast
Club sandwich
Caesar salad
Grilled chicken, tuna, or shrimp salad
Italian salad
Tuna stuffed tomato
Fried seafood platters
Daily special platters (beans, meat loaf, pork roast, spaghetti and meatballs, etc.)
Bread pudding
FOR BEST RESULTS
No matter how much of the menu appeals to you, order light. Come back another time for the other stuff.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Some of the daily special platters are a little too homestyle.
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
- Value +1
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness
- Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Good for business meetings
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Dinner ends early (8 p.m.)
- Open all afternoon
- Unusually large servings
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- No reservations
Crab Cakes a la Charley G's
Crab cakes were the most talked-about specialty in the years when Charley G's had a restaurant in Metairie. (They still operate in their home town of Lafayette.) Their solution to the challenge of making the greatest amount of crabmeat stick together in the least amount of binder was solved by pushing the crab lumps into a matrix of bechamel. (That's what you get when you whisk milk into a blond roux.) The bechamel was not only soft and neutral in flavor, but it could hold the onions, bell peppers, celery, and other ingredients you'd like to be present in the cake. As for bread crumbs, they only form a light coating on the outside, so they can lend a toasty flavor. Here's what they showed me on my old WVUE television show. Some of the seasoning ingredients are off the mainstream. Don't worry about it; substitute or leave them out. (You won't make them exactly the same way the restaurant does, anyway.)
- 1 Tbs. olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion, chopped
- 1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
- 2 ribs celery, chopped
- 1 lb. lump crab meat
- 1/2 Tbs. Creole seasoning
- 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- 2 Tbs. Tiger sauce (bottled; available at the supermarket)
- 1 qt. heavy cream
- 1 oz. chicken demi-glace (optional)
- 1 Tbs. granulated onion
- 1 Tbs. granulated garlic
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 stick melted butter
- Flour for dredging
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups milk
- 2 sticks margarine, clarified
1. Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan to smoking. Add onion, bell pepper, and celery and saute until wilted and slightly caramelized.
2. Transfer to a deep baking dish capable of holding 2 1/2 quarts. Add crabmeat, Creole seasoning, green onions, parsley, and tiger sauce. Toss with a rubber spatula to mix well. Set aside.
3. Combine cream, chicken demi-glace, granulated onion, and granulated garlic in a large saucepan and bring to a boil.
4. In a bowl, combine flour and melted butter to make a white roux. Once cream has come to a boil, lower the heat and add the roux. Whisk until the very thick sauce begins to pull away from the sides of the pot.
5. Pour the bechamel into the crabmeat mixture and fold until the crabmeat is well distributed. Chill overnight, uncovered.
6. Divide and shape into 16 cakes, all about the same size.
7. Blend eggs into milk. Dust the cakes with flour. Dip into the egg-and-milk wash, then dredge in the flour again.
8. Heat the margarine over medium-high heat, with enough margarine in the pan to come about halfway up the cakes. Sizzle four crabcakes at a time until golden brown. Turn cakes, lower the heat, and cook until the bottoms are crusty and golden brown.
Serves eight. Serve with remoulade sauce or tartar sauce--or nothing at all.
