Tuesday, August 3, 2010
1107 Restaurants Open Around Town
Most Special Summer Menus Now In Play
Coolinary Begins Officially
Although a lot of restaurants have been running summer specials for some time now, the Coolinary promotion from the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau premiered yesterday. In most restaurants, it will run through September. The idea is to persuade locals to dine out more often in the two slackest months of the year for visitor and convention traffic. The upshot is the best time of the year for diners, with a wide range of complete dinners going for around $35.
MENU will increase the pace at which we run these menus until we catch up with all of them. (I think we could wind up with as many as forty.) The entire collection of Coolinary and other summertime menus is here.
Coolinary Times Begin At Brigtsen's.
Among the more attractive summertime menus around town is that of Brigtsen's. Not only because the food is great, but because through most of the year it's not easy to get a table in the little Riverbend bistro. Summer changes all the patterns, though, and we must save hay while the sun shines. Check out this menu:
Duck & Pistachio Pâté
with red onion marmalade,
Creole mustard, & homemade pickles
~or~
Coconut Shrimp Bisque
with ginger & garlic
Pannéed Veal
with mushrooms, asparagus, and lemon parmesan sauce
~or~
Grilled Fish with Shrimp
jalapeño smoked corn beurre blanc
Strawberries, Raspberries, And Summer Melons
In champagne vanilla sabayon
~or~
Trés Lechés Cake
with pineapple brulée
and piña colada sauce
The price: a steal at $32. It persists though September.
Brigtsen's. Riverbend: 723 Dante, 504-861-7610.
Two Courses, $15 At Mimi's, River Ridge.
Mimi's is one of very few restaurants of any note in River Ridge, but it's good enough to make the trip down Jefferson Highway even if you don't live around there. Chef David Whitmore has taken the summer-special idea one step farther: his is only $15. There are a few minor catches. It's two courses instead of three, and you can only get it Tuesday through Thursday. Also, there is no set menu, as the chef creates a new one each week. Here's what's on this week:
Summer Garden Salad
with creamed spinach, shiitake mushrooms and artichokes, and roasted fingerling potatoes
Grilled Amberjack
with tomato-pesto sauce and baby lima beans
~or~
Grilled Pork Tenderloin
with Creole mustard sauce, black eyed peas and andouille, and braised red cabbage
~or~
Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta
with herb tomato sauce, and pecorino romano
~or~
Veal and Italian Sausage Bolognese Lasagna
White Coffee Cream Custard
This menu, again, will change weekly. The deal lasts until mid-September. Apparently the summer doldrums end early in River Ridge.
Mimi's. River Ridge: 10160 Jefferson Hwy. 504-737-6464. Creole.
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.
Architect Of Brennan's Fabulous Wine Cellar
Jimmy Brennan, 1940-2010
Last Wednesday, while caught in traffic in middle of a rainstorm in East Texas, I got a call from Ted Brennan. His news was grave. Ted's brother Jimmy was dead. When are the services? I asked. They were for family only and had already happened, Ted told me. In fact, Jimmy had died ten days before. Few knew about it. It wasn't in the newspaper until yesterday.
But that seemed right. Jimmy was a very private man. Particularly by the standards of restaurateurs. He left the day-to-day operation of Brennan's on Royal Street to Ted and his other brother Pip. After Pip left the management of the restaurant a couple of years ago, Jimmy became more visible. Indeed, when I went there for dinner one night, I did a double-take when I saw him standing at the corner of the bar, greeting the arriving diners. It was the first time I'd ever seen him at that station.
Not that he was uninvolved. After the break in the Brennan family in 1973, Jimmy came home from Houston (he was managing the Brennan's there) and embarked upon a program that would bring Brennan's a tremendous amount of business and fame. Over a period of years, he filled Brennan's wine cellar with a collection of wine of such distinction that it won the Wine Spectator's top honors every year for a couple of decades.
And those bottles didn't just represent an enormous variety of labels. Brennan's cellar was amazingly wealthy in old vintages from the great wine regions of the world, but especially France. And we're not just talking about the great vintages of the great wines, but oddity vintages of some second- and third-growth Bordeaux.
For example, I recall vividly a 1967 Chateau Cos d'Estournel I had there in the early 1990s. That wine was all of $55. It's incredible then and now that a twenty-year-old claret could go for a price like that. But Jimmy left the prices more or less where they were when he first bought the wines. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was no better wine cellar in New Orleans--and no better bargain. Brennan's wine cellar was Jimmy Brennan's creation and his claim to fame.
I knew Jimmy only well enough to know that he liked to joke around with people, even those he didn't know very well. I hear this is something he picked up from his father Owen, who put the Brennan family in the restaurant business in the first place.
Coincidentally, I was in Houston a few days after hearing the news, and had dinner at Brennan's there. A waiter whose career at Brennan's overlaps Jimmy's tenure in Houston told me, "Customers still ask me about Jimmy all the time, even though he left in 1973," he said. "Everybody liked him. I thought he was a good man."
He died of complications from stomach cancer, a problem he fought for the past decade or more. Jimmy Brennan was seventy when he left us on July 18. The impact of his departure will certainly be felt at the restaurant, where the next generation of Brennans is moving in. I hope the wine cellar will continue its excellence, as a legacy of the man who not only built it in the first place but had to dump it all after katrina ruined it and rebuild from scratch. The man had both taste and tenacity.
Wednesday, July 21. Acropolis. Mary Ann says she has a television appearance booked for me next week in Dallas. A month or so ago, I told the radio station I would vacation this week and next for this very sort of thing. Between engagements, I would drive around Texas, perhaps even visit my beloved Big Bend country. In the original plan, I would leave tomorrow--perhaps with Mary Ann, perhaps not. But, since no plans have been made, it looks like the weekend before anything will happen.
Dinner at Acropolis Cuisine, for my first time in years. I forget it's there. The place is almost invisible, in a small, old strip mall on Veterans Boulevard, swallowed up by many bigger, more glittering restaurants. And there's not enough parking on front (there's more around back, but you don't know that if you've never been).
The food at Acropolis has always been terrific, and the prices are so low that I don't see how anyone with even a slightly avid appetite could resist it. Enough other people have made this discovery to keep the place happily busy. The menu is predominantly Greek, but Greek food is a tough sell. So they flesh it out with Italian dishes and pizza. I never tried that part of the menu until tonight. The motherly waitress said I would like the heaping platter (is there any other size?) of angel hair pasta with red sauce and eggplant Parmigiana. And I did. I couldn't conjure up a memory of one I enjoyed more.
The eggplant parm was the entree in one of several four-course dinners Acropolis offers nightly. You start with either the soup of the day or the avgolemono soup. Egg and lemon soup, as classic a Greek dish as I can imagine, here served with a very generous admixture of chicken. Again, I tried to remember one as good as this. Maybe the Royal Oak equaled it, but that was back in the 1970s, and I can't trust my memory to make a fair comparison. I think I might have to get this soup every time I come in from now on.
I finished up with an excellent bread pudding, with pecans both in the pudding and the sauce, and a nice flavor of cinnamon or nutmeg. Came with the dinner!
Acropolis Cuisine. Metairie: 3841 Veterans Blvd. 504-888-9046. Greek. Pizza. Pasta.
Thursday, July 22. Tropical Storm? American Sector. Rusty Pelican. The weather service is saying that Bonnie, a storm just barely strong enough to have a name, will cross weakly over the Keys, then head straight for New Orleans. They also say it probably won't get very strong. But the BP crews working on the snafued oil well are clearing out, just in case. They're leaving the newly-placed cap in place. They have been watching it around the clock, but seem to think that it will hold for now. So all this adds up to a good-news, bad-news excuse for conversation.
Lunch with Bill and Jim Thomas, father and son, and fellow Manresa men. Bill looks so much like my own late father that even after knowing Bill for twenty years, I still get a twinge of recognition when I look at him.
We met at American Sector, John Besh's retro place in the World War II Museum. Bill, who is old enough to recall The Big One vividly, had been there before and explored the museum, too. He was intrigued by the menu, which is based on the kinds of dishes people ate in the 1940s. I'm interested in it too. Even after eating about two-thirds of the offerings at our Eat Club surfeit a couple of weeks ago, there's plenty more food for me to try here.
I began with oyster stew, the kind we call old-fashioned because almost nobody serves it anymore, made with milk, butter, and green onions. The first hurdle for the restaurant was actually getting the oysters, which they did. In fact, they were large and meaty, and the broth was rich and just peppery enough.
Bill and I were both interested in the beef tongue sandwich, and he wanted to try the beef daube. I ordered one and he the other. Neither dish fit our expectations. Beef tongue is a deli cold cut, if no longer a common one. It's usually made into a cold sandwich. Instead, what came out was an open-face sandwich (not a sandwich at all, really) of hot, thin-sliced tongue in gravy. If I'd know this, I wouldn't have asked for the sauerkraut, which I thought would go well with the cold tongue. Even after shifting my paradigms, I can't say I'd ever get this again.
Bill had a better dish, but it was puzzling as well. Daube is one of those words that has several dramatically different meanings. The two most common are the slices of roast beef simmered in spaghetti sauce, and the hogshead-cheese-like cold appetizer served during the holidays. What we had here was another beef stew, with carrots, zucchini, and green beans in another brown gravy, the beef slices hidden at the bottom.
Jim knew exactly what he was getting, and got it. A Vietnamese poor boy, made with several treatments of pork, with pickled carrots, onions, and cucumbers. He could only finish half of it, but that owed to entirely to its large size.
Because we know one another from our annual retreat, our conversations have a way of focusing on big life issues, almost always with an optimistic slant. But Bill had read Hungry Town, and while he enjoyed it, he was most struck by what I say about Mary Ann in the book. "She must be a saint to put up with you!" he said. That is probably true.
I didn't think I'd need dinner, but by the time I made it across the lake after the radio show I opened consideration of a quick supper. The Rusty Pelican, in the middle of Old Mandeville, came to mind. I've tried to eat there for a couple of years, but it never seems to be open when I go. This time, it was--although it would close immediately after I left.
The Rusty Pelican is a contemporary diner, with a rustic style but squeaky clean. Hamburgers and sandwiches dominate the menu, with a few platters and salads filling it out. It's the kind of place you'd go with your kids after a baseball game.
My expectations of the crab cake salad were suppressed by the $10.50 price, but I was surprised. The two crab cakes were crisp (as in deep-fried) on the outside and creamy on the inside, tasty all the way through. They looked so much like one another that a suspicion arose that they came into the restaurant ready for the fryer. But I don't know that, and since they were unarguably good I'll assume they were made in house. The greens, tomatoes and the remoulade dressing satisfied all the rest of my needs. Wish they would have tossed the salad with the dressing, but that service is getting to be a lost art.
And what's with the plastic utensils and the roll of paper towels instead of napkins? The quality of tabletops in restaurants--from the top to the bottom--keeps going down with each passing day.
American Sector. Warehouse District: 945 Magazine. 504-528-1940.
Rusty Pelican. Mandeville: 500 Girod. 985-778-0364.
Click here for the Dining Diary entry before the one above.
Click here for an index to the last five years of entries.
Neighborhood Cafe. Sandwiches.
Gretna: 435 Huey P Long Ave.. 504-368-1114. Map.
Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday.
Very Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The Jefferson Parish courthouse creates a lot of business for restaurants. Few eateries in the neighborhood are as busy as Gattuso's. It's good enough that it draws customers from other parts of the West Bank, and well after the courts are closed for the day. The menu appears to contain every dish the owners ever thought of; it's hard to think of a local neighborhood-cafe dish that isn't on the list. The essential specialty, however, is easy to identify: sandwiches, beginning with poor boys and radiating outward in every direction.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The kitchen here is the old-fashioned kind that cooks nearly everything from scratch on site. The roast beef poor boy is a particularly good example of this, but the Italian-inspired dishes are better than you expect. Lapses of taste (i.e., cheese fries flooded with roast beef gravy) abound, but these are no less popular. I am least impressed by the seafood.
BACKSTORY
Gattuso's opened in 2000 in what looks like a former gas station, in Gretna's equivalent of the French Quarter.
DINING ROOM
The garish red building is hard to miss. It's more pleasant inside, with enough windows to make it seem spacious even when the place is packed--as it often is around lunchtime. The staff is friendly and happy. They take their time with the food, and you shouldn't come here in a rush.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Crab and corn bisque
Chili
Chicken-andouille gumbo
Guacamole or salsa with chips
Santa Fe chicken rolls
Beer battered onion rings
Fried calamari
Potato skins
Eggplant sticks
Fried pickles
Muffulettas: standard, seafood, or roast beef versions
Wrap sandwiches: shrimp, club, fried or grilled chicken, chicken or tuna salad, etc.
Reuben sandwich
Corned beef and Swiss on rye
Grilled tuna or chicken sandwich
Club sandwich
Hamburger
Meatball poor boy
Roast beef poor boy
Dirty bird (turkey poor boy with roast beef gravy)
Corned beef poor boy
Spaghetti and meatballs
Eggplant parmesan
Lasagna
Fried seafood platters
Grilled marinated chicken or tuna platter
Baby back ribs
FOR BEST RESULTS
When the courts recess for lunch a large number of people pile in here, sometimes creating a line. You'd be better off in the early evening. If a dish seems unlikely for the restaurant (guacamole, for example), see if there's something else that sounds better.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The fried seafood is less than crisp.
The menu needs heavy pruning.
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
- Value +2
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness -1
- Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Sidewalk tables
- Good for business meetings
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open all afternoon
- Unusually large servings
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- No reservations
Watermelon Salsa
I'll bet you're already guessing that this came about because I found the remains of a partially-devoured watermelon, too ripe to mess with, in my refrigerator. Here's the other thing that came to mind: when I was growing up, I remember a lot of people putting salt on a watermelon. Another recollection: a watermelon and shrimp gazpacho a few weeks ago at Herbsaint. Why don't you make that into a into a salsa? my wife said. So here it is.
- 2 cups watermelon pulp, chopped
- 2 cups chopped fresh ripe tomato, skin and seeds removed
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro leaves
- 1 cup chopped white onion
- 2 Tbs. Tabasco green pepper sauce
- 1 clove garlic, very finely chopped
- 1 Tbs. lime juice
- 1 Tbs. cider vinegar (or pepper vinegar)
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. cumin
- 1 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
1. Process the watermelon in a food processor for a few seconds, to make a rough puree. Push through a medium sieve. (Better: run the watermelon through a food mill.)
2. All the ingredients together and allow the flavors to blend for an hour or so in the refrigerator.
Makes four cups.
