Friday, July 23, 2010
1106 Restaurants Open Around Town
Teddy Graziano, who has purveyed wine around New Orleans for decades, is hosting a dinner at the newly-relocated Ristorante Carmelo in Mandeville. The food is decidedly and elegantly Italian, orchestrated by Carmelo Chirico and his staff. The wines, on the other hand, are all from California. I know them all very well: Teddy lets us try them at an Eat Club dinner a month ago on the South Shore. The Sauvignon Blanc and the Pinot Noir are especially fine; the Korbel less so. Carmelo has always thrown great wine dinners (twenty-three years' worth when his restaurant was in the French Quarter). His sparkling new venue works even better for such things. Here's the menu:
Reception
Wine: Bonterra Sauvignon Blanc 2008
Bocconcini di Pesce
Grilled radicchio topped with a variety of fresh seafood
Wine: Little Black Dress Pinot Grigio 2008
Risotto Mare Chiaro
Seafood risotto with lobster, clams and mussels
Wine: Les Pierres Chardonnay 2005
Blood Orange Sorbetto
Osso Buco
Braised veal shank cooked with celery, carrots, and onions in its own juices, with gremolata
Wine: Sonoma Cutrer Pinot Noir 2007
~or~
Fresh Fish of the Day "In Cartoccio"
Fresh fish baked in parchment paper slowly cooked in its own juices, homegrown
Italian herbs, olive oil, and lemon zest
Wine: Sonoma Cutrer Russian River Chardonnay 2008
Assortimenti Di Frutta E Formaggi
An assortment of italian cheeses and fresh seasonal fruit
Wine: Korbel Sweet Rose Sparkling
The welcome wine glasses will clink at 6:30, with dinner at seven. The price is $65, plus tax and tip (so, about $85 total). Reservations are essential: call 985-624-4844. I think you will see me there.
Ristorante Carmelo. Mandeville: 1901 US Hwy 190. Map. 985-624-4844.
Sex On The Beach Is Dead
Among the many and wildly varied events on the docket at Tails of the Cocktail this weekend, this one caught my eye. Saturday morning at 11:30 a.m., a ceremony will be staged on the Baronne Street side of the Roosevelt Hotel to ring the final bell on the cocktail known as Sex On The Beach. In attendance will be bartenders, beverage writers, and other national cocktail authorities, along with a sizable number of cocktail lovers who have agreed to hate this cocktail.
Sex On The Beach, in case you've been lucky enough never to have ordered one, is made with vodka, peach schnapps, cassis, orange juice, cranberry juice, and a slice of orange and a cherry. In other words, a hodgepodge of flavors that cancel each other out. It's hard to imagine anyone ordering it under a different name. In fact, it' hard to imagine stepping up to a bar and saying, "I think I'd like Sex On The Beach."
The drink was chosen for extinction by a vote of bartenders and drinkers. In past years, the process condemned the Appletini and the Red-Headed Slut. "History will remember us all in a better light, for doing our part to right such serious wrongs of the past,” said Paul G. Tuennerman, Chief Business Officer for Tales of the Cocktail. The burial of the cocktail will be accompanied by a New Orleans jazz funeral, complete with walking band.
This is only one of dozens of events related to every imaginable aspect of the cocktail during Tales Of The Cocktail, which fills this weekend with seminars, tastings, and parties for cocktail lovers. This fantastically successful new summertime extravaganza keeps getting better with each year. All the details are at www.TalesoftheCocktail.com.
All The Summer Menus So Far
NOMenu has a page listing not only all the summer specials we know about, but all the menus, too. I'm adding new ones daily.
That list is now online here.
Thursday, July 15. O'Brien's Grill. The new cap has been placed on BP's busted well in the Gulf. So far so good, they say, but oil shooting continues to shoot out of the thing. That was predicted; they will close valves one by one, very carefully, to prevent the pressure from rising so high that the well bursts in an even more non-repairable way.
I've been watching the process off and on by way of the video feeds from a mile down. Everything is handled by robots. Funny: they don't look like robots, but like cubes inside jails, with numerous appendages, cables, and lights. The whole process continues to astonish--except, perhaps, for those who read too many sci-fi books, or who are too angry to marvel. Twenty years ago all of this would have been impossible. (So would wells this deep in the sea.)
O'Brien's Grille has been on my mind for the past month or two. It's the classy, well-disguised steakhouse on Belle Chasse Highway that opened a couple of years ago and wowed all who found the place. Given the starkness of the building, and its proximity to neighbors like Mudbugs Self-Storage, it's no wonder that not a lot of people took a chance on the place at first. Those who did are creating a buzz now. I get a call about O'Brien's every few days on the radio show. The reports are always positive.
The menu has changed since my last visit. I'm sorry to see that they've replaced the bone-in sirloin strip (my favorite cut of beef) with a boneless job. Oh, well. It's still prime, and the specimen they brought me was right up to my standards. Including the sizzling butter, which to me makes magic. One end of the strip is always better than the other. I never start on the better end, even though I try to. This time I came at it from the narrow end and thought I'd nailed it for once. But the more I ate, the better it got.
More than making up for the absence of the bone on the steak was a new appetizer. Panneed rabbit tenderloin came out with a little salad between the two pieces, a nice crust, and squirts of Creole mustard sauce. I thought they overfried it a little--a no-no-because rabbit has so little fat that it can tighten up if overcooked. But that's easily remedied.
I slipped a salad in between that and the steak, and after polishing off a Manhattan I brought in a glass of Avalon Cabernet Sauvignon to finish the game.
In the midst of this, a guy with eight or so friends was celebrating his birthday on the other side of the room. His wife or somebody brought in a cake, and the waiters brought it to the table when the time was right. In place of candles, the cake was afire with sparklers. A good gambit, one used by Commander's Palace years ago for their old "Celebration" dessert. (I wonder what happened to that?)
However, things have changed since then. The smoke from the sparklers set off the alarm in the dining room. A couple of times. It wasn't one of those ear-splitting sirens with strobe lights, but you couldn't ignore it. They shut the thing off, aired out the room (on a hot night, this made the dining room briefly uncomfortable), and everything soon returned to normal--all while I kept working away at the sirloin strip. The birthday boy apologized for the error by sending over a piece of his birthday cake. I thought of going over there to sing happy birthday, but I'd already done that once this week.
And there's a very important birthday tomorrow.
O'Brien's Grille. Gretna: 2020 Belle Chasse Hwy. 504-391-7229. Steak.
Click here for the Dining Diary entry before the one above.
Click here for an index to the last five years of entries.
Classic Creole.
French Quarter: 417 Royal. 504-525-9711. Map.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days.
Dressy (although not everyone there will be)
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
Brennan's preserves a style of dining popular in the 1950s and 1960s, before New Orleans became gourmet. But its bedrock of standard dishes is so strong that they get away with this--and at the town's top prices, yet. Breakfast at Brennan's--the meal really needs a different name--is without question the most opulent morning meal served anywhere. It's something every New Orleanian should experience at least once. Dinner is sedate but good, with added interest from a wine cellar that's always been one of the best in the nation.
WHY IT'S GOOD
Brennan's has always bought first-class foodstuffs and cooked them well, if in an old style. That style was created by its first chef, Paul Blange, who was so brilliant that his recipes continue to wow diners after all these years. In its specialties, Brennan's is hard to beat. Turtle soup, egg dishes, veal grillades, unusual steaks--nobody does them better. The menu is enormous--so much so that the list below only captured the high points.
BACKSTORY
Brennan's was the first major New Orleans restaurant to open in the years after World War II, a glorious time for this city. With Europe in ruins, gourmets from around the world came to New Orleans. Brennan's was in those days what K-Paul's was in the 1980s, Emeril's was in the 1990s, and August is in the 2000s. In its early years it was inventive and exciting, creating many new dishes and an entirely new meal. Breakfast at Brennan's was said to be an old New Orleans tradition, but really they made it all up from whole cloth. It became a spectacular and unique dining experience.
Brennan's premiered on the corner of Bourbon and Bienville in 1946, and moved to where it is now in 1955. Right before the move Owen Brennan, the founder, died at 45. His brothers, sisters, and sons took over the management and continued to enhance the restaurant. Brennan's expanded into other restaurants and cities, but the expansion put stress on the family. In 1973, the family went through a nasty split, with Owen's sons taking control of Brennan's and their aunts and uncles taking all the rest, with Commander's Palace as their new headquarters. After that, Brennan's settled into a groove from which it has never left. Its menu is largely the same as it was in the 1970s, and its last two chefs have been old-line masters who've worked there for decades. Nevertheless, it has remained solidly good.
Brennan's history is the most complex tale in the annals of the New Orleans restaurant business. It's well told in both of the Brennan's Restaurant cookbooks.
DINING ROOM
Brennan's occupies an historic building around a classic French Quarter courtyard. Dining rooms on two floors flanks two sides of the slate-paved, lushly planted courtyard. The best dining rooms are the one just past the bar, and the Terrace, a long gallery alongside windows onto the patio. The upstairs dining rooms are beautiful--one has a working gasolier--but except for private parties and a few tables whose windows open onto the courtyard, they're to be avoided.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Breakfast (all of this is also available at lunch and dinner):
Eggs Sardou (artichokes, creamed spinach, hollandaise)
Eggs Bayou Lafourche (andouille, hollandaise)
Eggs St. Charles (fried trout, hollandaise)
Eggs Hussarde (Canadian bacon, tomato, marchand de vin sauce and hollandaise)
Eggs Shannon (fried trout, creamed spinach)
Eggs Nouvelle Orleans (crabmeat, brandy cream sauce)
Grillades and grits
Dinner (this only scratches the surface of a titanic menu):
Oysters Casino
Oysters Rockefeller
Buster crabs with pecans
Escargots Bordelaise
Shrimp Trail
Crepes Barbara (with seafood)
Trout or Veal Kottwitz (artichokes, mushrooms)
Trout Nancy (crabmeat, capers)
Redfish Jaime (crabmeat, red wine sauce)
Blackened Redfish
Veal with crabmeat and pecans
Salmon Audubon (grilled, Creole mustard hollandaise, shrimp)
Chicken Lazone (spicy, tasso cream sauce)
Tournedos Taylor (two, with bearnaise on one and marchand de vin on the other)
Filet Stanley (marchand de vin, creamy horseradish sauce, and baked bananas)
Bananas Foster
Crepes Fitzgerald (cream cheese and strawberries)
Chocolate pecan pie
FOR BEST RESULTS
When making reservations and showing up at the desk, make certain they know you're a local person, and that you want to sit downstairs. There is an attractively-priced lunch menu weekdays that's designed for locals. Ask for it; the waiters don't always recognize that it even exists.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The prices are too high. Much of the menu is in need of brushing up to current taste standards. They really ought to enforce a dress code in the better dining rooms.
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 +3
- Consistency +1
- Service +2
- Value -1
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar +3
- Hipness
- Local Color +3
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Outdoor tables, drinks only
- Romantic
- Good view
- Good for business meetings
- Many private rooms
- Open Sunday lunch and dinner
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open most holidays
- Historic
- Unusually large servings
- Free valet parking
- Reservations honored promptly
Eggs Sardou
Eggs Sardou is probably the most popular fancy egg dish in New Orleans, a fixture at Sunday brunch all over town. It was invented by Antoine's in honor of the French playwright Victorien Sardou, but Brennan's version, which added creamed spinach, is the one that gave the dish its star quality. It's best to do this when you have access to fresh artichoke bottoms. Poaching eggs requires the freshest eggs available. Only then will you be able to make the yolks stand up like golf balls instead of slouch down. That's why restaurants do that and you usually can't.
Creamed spinach:
- 1 stick butter
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/3 cup milk
- Pinch nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/8 tsp. white pepper
- 2 10-ounce bags fresh spinach
Hollandaise:
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 Tbs. red wine vinegar
- 1 stick butter, softened
- 1 tsp. lemon juice
- Pinch cayenne
- 2 Tbs. salt
- 2 Tbs. vinegar
- 8 very fresh jumbo eggs
- 8 fresh artichoke bottoms from steamed artichokes
Creamed spinach:
1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk into the butter, as if making a roux. Cook until the texture changes, but don't allow the mixture to begin to brown.
2. Remove from the heat. Add the milk and whisk until you have a thick bechamel, the texture of loose mashed potatoes. Add the salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.
3. Wash the spinach well but leave dripping wet. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, covered, cook the spinach until just tender. Remove the spinach from the pan. Squeeze out any excess water. Chop in a food processor, or by hand.
4. Stir the spinach into the bechamel until well blended.
Hollandaise:
1. Whisk the egg yolks and the vinegar briskly in a metal bowl set over a saucepan with about an inch of simmering water at the bottom. If you see even a hint of curdling in the eggs, take the bowl off the heat, but keep whisking. Keep going back and forth from the heat until the mixture turns thick and lightens in color. Whisk in a tablespoon of warm water.
2. Begin adding the softened butter, a pat at a time. After about a fourth of the butter is in there, you'll begin to see a change in the texture of the sauce. At that point, you can step up the addition of the butter a bit, and keep going till all the butter is incorporated.
3. Whisk in the cayenne and the lemon juice. Set the bowl in a bigger bowl of warm (not hot!) water and cover with plastic wrap.
Eggs:
1. Use a large stainless-steel skillet filled with water about an inch and a half deep. Bring it to a boil while dissolving the salt into it and adding the vinegar.
2. The hard part of poaching eggs is keeping them together as you add them to the pan. The best trick is to use a coffee cup--the kind that narrows at the bottom. Break one egg into each of four cups. (Or eight, if your skillet is big enough to fit all those eggs.)
3. When the water comes to a boil, lower the heat to the lowest possible setting. Slide the eggs carefully into the pan, two (or four, even) at a time. Let them simmer for three to four minutes, depending on the size of the eggs.
4. The best tool to remove the eggs with is a round skimmer with holes in it, or a large slotted spoon. Carefully remove one at a time, and let the excess water drip off.
5. Place about two tablespoons of creamed spinach into each artichoke bottom, making a depression in the center of the spinach. Slide a freshly-poached egg atop the spinach, then top with hollandaise. Repeat for all the other artichoke bottoms, two to a plate.
Serves four.
