Monday, July 26, 2010
1106 Restaurants Open Around Town
Kicks Back $25 To Gulf Relief
All this week, the New Orleans branch of Morton's Steakhouse is offering a table d'hote version of their menu for $75, of which $25 will go to helping people whose lives have been complicated by the oil spill. The menu includes most of the dishes I'd recommend for a normal visit to the handsome deluxe steakhouse. It's available Today through Friday, July 30, dinner only. Here are the choices (I've noted my recommendations in red):
Salad:
Morton's Salad
Caesar Salad
Beefsteak Tomato, Crumbled Blue Cheese, Purple Onion
Entree:
Single Cut Filet Mignon
Ribeye Steak
New York Strip Steak
Broiled Salmon Fillet
Accompaniment:
Sauteed Garlic Green Beans
Steamed Fresh Asparagus
Lyonnaise Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Dessert:
Hot Chocolate Cake
Creme Brulee
Key Lime Pie
The restaurant's donation will go to Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, which distributes funds to 45 programs delivering health and human services to the poor and vulnerable in the eight civil parishes of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. At their emergency distribution centers, families can receive food vouchers to local grocery stores, case management services, crisis counseling and other emergency supplies.
Morton's. CBD: 365 Canal (Canal Place Mall) 504-566-0221.
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.
Friday, July 16. An Adult Son. No Oysters At Pascal's Manale. Today is Jude's twenty-first birthday. The first thing I did this morning was to send him a two-page letter I composed late last night. I sent it by unsentimental e-mail--but his media of communication are all electronic. I did send the letter as an attachment, so he could print it out and save it. I still have a card my big sister Judy sent me on my twenty-first. "Now you are a man," she wrote in it. "Not a boy anymore." I'll say. I was already living on my own for two years. Jude's got me beat on that one, and almost all the other ones, too, as I told him in the letter. He's lived away from home almost five years now, and is moving up in his avidly-pursued career at an age when I didn't quite know what I wanted to do with myself.
I told him that this was the last time I would give him unsolicited advice on life. I sent him six articles of wisdom, reflecting as I did how much better off I'd be if I'd followed all of them myself. He seems to have most of it figured out. His career is blasting off. The only thing that has held him back was that he wasn't old enough to do some of things he needed to do. For example, he had a problem getting a bar to let his film crew shoot some scenes inside. The problem that he couldn't get in to talk to the manager, because he wasn't old enough.
Jude and his co-worker Steve talked about driving to Las Vegas today so he could enter adulthood in the time-honored manner. But Jude isn't really a drinker, other than an occasional glass of wine with dinner. A big deal about his first real drink strikes him as ridiculous. As it turned out, he and Steve were too busy filming to take the day off. That's my boy--man, I mean.
I've not dined at Pascal's Manale in a year or so, and it's been on my mind. They were reasonably busy, with a good-sized party going on in one of the main dining rooms. I was served by Eric, the husband of Linda, The Gourmet Aerobics Instructor--a regular caller to my radio show. He worked at Brennan's a long time, but said he needed a change of scenery.
No oysters, he told me. They got their last sacks over a week ago. Sandy DeFelice, one of the owners, told me that the beds owned by their usual suppliers were closed to fishing. This puts a major dent in their menu. As famous as Manale's barbecue shrimp are, the place has always cooked better oysters than almost anything.
I started with crabmeat-stuffed mushrooms. The management needs to look at this dish through the eyes of a customer. They were good and the price wasn't unfair, but the three mushrooms were small and served on a small plate, creating an ungenerous impression. It could have passed for an amuse-bouche.
Eric said the soft-shell crabs were nice. I charged him with bringing out a big one, with a puddle of meuniere sauce underneath and a substantial pile of jumbo lump crabmeat above. That worked for me, but I thought they should have had something else on the plate. A few brabants, or green beans, or asparagus. I ordered some potatoes au gratin, and that did the trick.
My taste for old restaurants gives a pass to some of them for certain things, just as the glitter of newness and hipness lets others see those restaurants get away with outrages. But some of these venerable eateries would benefit from having someone who understands the dynamics of old local institutions come in and kick ass once in awhile. Otherwise, they slip into old, comfortable habits that are not, let's say, optimized for customers. I know how easy it is to fall into that trap.
Pascal's Manale. Uptown: 1838 Napoleon Ave. 504-895-4877. Creole Italian.
Saturday, July 17. Oil Plugged. Oysters Die Freshly. Core Families Revisited. This is a happy day. BP shut first one valve, then another, then a third on the new cap over their blown-apart well in the Gulf. And once that was done, no significant amount of oil could be seen gushing out. As it has for nearly three months. This is the first piece of genuinely good news about the disaster.
Even so, the spokesmen are being cautious. The big worry is that the pressure in the well might be enough to further damage the part of the well below the Gulf's bottom, which would be truly difficult to remedy. But as days went on, although the pressure in the well was not what the engineers expected, the situation seemed to be stable.
Meanwhile, news reports from the oyster beds show dead oysters being tonged up from formerly productive beds. It's all blamed on the oil spill, of course. But what really caused all this was not the oil itself but the fresh water channeled in from the Mississippi River. The idea is to keep the oil from penetrating into the bays and inlets. But fresh water kills oysters as effectively as anything. On the other hand, it doesn't permanently poison the beds. I'm sticking with my prediction that we will be eating Louisiana oysters with gusto again by Thanksgiving. Somebody's got to be a cockeyed optimist.
Mary Ann and I had breakfast at the Courtyard. We haven't been there in awhile. Every time I get their scrambled eggs from the buffet, I marvel at how good they are. Just the way I like them--soft and creamy. That is emphatically not how mainstream Joe likes his eggs. Mary Ann, for example, is a devotee of hard-scrambled eggs and bulletproof omelettes. Today, I found out by sheer sneakiness what the secret is. They stir a little sour cream into the eggs after cooking them. (And they don't cook them hard.) Yum. I will try this at home.
Radio show for three hours. A number of people called to tell me they've tried the $20.10 lunch special at Antoine's and loved it. For years, every time Antoine's came up on the air I winced, because it was likely to be a bad report. Not getting many of those anymore. But always a few, from those who want the 170-year-old restaurant to behave like one that opened last week.
Supper party at Ceil Lanaux's. Also there were George and Margot Bragg and Ed and Lisa Rapier. That's all but one of the parents of the Cobras--the five-best-friends Boy Scout unit that stayed together and active for ten years. Jude was a member until Katrina. The missing parent is Ceil's husband Charles, who died from a freak infection two years ago. And there's a tragic symmetry among the young men. Ben Bragg died in a weird accident less than a year ago. This is the first time we've all been together since Ben's funeral, although we see each other often enough. Even with our young men and our other interests scattered to the four winds, the bond of many years of the best possible times with our boys and two major sorrows is unbreakable.
Courtyard Cafe. Covington: 101 Northpark Blvd. (Marriott Courtyard Hotel). 504-871-0244. Breakfast.
Click here for the Dining Diary entry before the one above.
Click here for an index to the last five years of entries.
Sandwiches.
CBD: 401 Poydras. 504-523-9656. Map.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner continuously, seven days.
Very Casual
AE MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The city's longest-running poor boy shop is famous nationwide, and rightly so. Everything is cooked in house from scratch to create a menu of all the New Orleans everyday-dining specialties. Locals decry the fact that visitors have jammed the place and that prices are about a quarter higher than in similar restaurants. But the goodness cannot be denied.
WHY IT'S GOOD
Only the best makers of poor boy sandwiches roast their own beef. Nobody else I know bakes its own hams and turkeys. Those two items alone give Mother's sandwiches an advantage above the typical. For those, and dishes like red beans and rice, gumbo, jambalaya, and plate specials, few kitchens put more in the making than Mother's does. Most of it is prepared in a distinctive, old-fashioned style which, in some cases, differs enough from the local standard to throw some customers off.
BACKSTORY
Simon Landry (whose wife was the restaurant's namesake) opened Mother's in the 1930s. He ran it hands-on for decades, and then his sons Jack and Ed took over and kept the style. Their recipes are links to a bygone era of eating in New Orleans. The recipes were designed to be made anew daily. When they ran out of that day's meats and platters, the restaurant closed. In 1986, Jerry and John Amato brought Mother's from the Landrys, expanded it and extended its hours. This created a firestorm among the local regulars, who insist that it's not as good as it once was. It tastes exactly the same to me, and I've been eating there since the mid-1960s.
DINING ROOM
The old brick building with its worn concrete floors was duplicated next door in the 1990s, making tables a little easier to come by. A cafeteria-style counter is where you order and pick up your food, although a waitress might ask to be allowed to fetch your food for you. Cooks are forever breaking through the never-ending line of customers to deliver pots and piles of food to the front line.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Breakfast combos
Mae's omelette (black ham, green onions, mushrooms)
Red bean omelette
Other omelettes to order
Biscuits
Pancakes
Blueberry pecan muffins
Seafood gumbo
Chicken file gumbo
Poor boys:
Ferdi (ham, roast beef, and debris; turkey can be swapped out for the ham)
Baked ham
Roast beef
Turkey
Sausage (smoked or hot)
Fried seafood (oysters, shrimp, catfish, or soft shell crab)
Platters:
Jambalaya
Red beans and rice
Fried chicken
Fried seafood platters with etouffee or jambalaya
Corned beef and cabbage
Daily plate specials
Bread pudding
Pecan and sweet potato pie
Cafe au lait
FOR BEST RESULTS
Mother's is so famous that it attracts an ungodly number of visitors. But it's too good to write off as a tourist joint. Just don't go when the line runs halfway down the block. If you're up early, Mother's breakfast is terrific, and until nine on weekdays they have a generous combo for about five bucks.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
It sure seems overdue for a major renovation, but that might create a riot among the regulars. Getting food to the table is at best inconvenient. And the line, when many visitors are in town, is daunting.
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
- Value +1
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar -1
- Hipness -1
- Local Color +3
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Many private rooms
- Open Sunday lunch and dinner
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open most holidays
- Open all afternoon
- Historic
- Unusually large servings
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- No reservations
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Mother's owner Jerry Amato talked about expanding the restaurant almost from the day he bought it, over a decade ago. With good reason: Mother's may be the city's busiest restaurant in terms of customers served per square foot.
Mother's food has a heaviness that creeps up on you and weighs you down before you even finish. Some of that comes from the enormous portions. Even if you order half a sandwich (at three-fourths the price), you'd have to have a very empty stomach indeed to get it all down without feeling some pressure. But the cooking itself is heavy. Many dishes involve ham fat, for example. That's a spectacular taste in things like red beans or omelettes. But there's only so much of this anybody can eat. I limit myself to one visit every three or four months. But I look forward to them with gusto.
Jalapeno-Cheese Cornbread
Chef Paul Prudhomme made these popular in the early 1980s, although the idea was around long before then, especially in Texas. You can leave out the cheese and the jalapenos, and substitute other things, like corn kernels, bacon, or green onions. Or add 1/3 cup of sugar to make it sweet.
As usual, I prefer self-rising flour, which I find is not only more convenient but gives a superior result, especially with the acidity in the buttermilk to kick it off.
- 2 cups yellow self-rising cornmeal
- 1 cup self-rising flour
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 1/2 cups roughly grated sharp Cheddar cheese
- 2-3 fresh jalapenos, seeds and internal membranes removed, chopped
- 4 eggs, beaten
- 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
- 2 Tbs. vegetable oil
Preheat oven to 400 degrees, and turn on convection if you have that feature.
1. Blend the cornmeal, flour, and salt in a bowl. Blend all the other ingredients except the oil in a second bowl. Dump the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and mix completely. If it doesn't flow, add a little water.
2. Heat the oil in a large iron skillet, tilting the skillet around to coat the entire inner surface. Add the batter to the pan, bang it down on a towel on the countertop, and put the skillet into the oven for about a half hour at 400 degrees. Check its progress then, and continue baking until the top is lightly brown.
3. Allow the cornbread to cool for five minutes, then cut into squares. This recipe can also be made as muffins, or in those cut little sticks that look like ears of corn.
Serves eight to ten.
