Thursday, August 12, 2010
1108 Restaurants Open Around Town
Coolinary And Other Special Summer Menus Now In Play
Royal Palm: Rare Coolinary On The West Bank.
This will go down as the year when the Coolinary summer-menu program managed to cross the river for the first time. Participating this year is the handsome Royal Palm in Marrero, which has sent out meals ranging from pretty good to excellent to my table in the past couple of years it's been open. Warning: avoid Ladies Night, which fills the bar (and the dining room) with loudness.
This three-course Coolinary menu goes for $34, plus plus. It's available Wednesdays through Fridays through the month of September.
Crab and Corn Etoufee
in a crispy puff pastry with sage emulsion and sizzled leeks
~or~
Panzanella Salad
Fresh tomato, torn bread, olives and cured ham
~or~
BBQ Shrimp
with Gruyere cheese biscuit
Smoked Chicken Breast
sweet potato grits, Creole tomato sauce, collard greens
~or~
Filet Tips Tchoupitoulas
Fettuccine pasta
~or~
Black Drum Amandine
asparagus and lyonnaise potatoes
Crème Brulee
fresh berries
~or~
White Chocolate Bread Pudding
rum sauce
~or~
Vanilla Ice Cream
bananas Foster sauce and candied pecans
Royal Palm. Harvey: 1901 Manhattan Blvd, 504-644-4100.
All 28 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.
Saturday, July 31. Houston For A Grand. Hugo's. To Antoine's For Champagne. Yesterday morning, I came down to Quattro in the Four Season Hotel in Houston for breakfast. Pastries, fruit, orange juice, and coffee. The only way I can get something like the café au lait I treat myself to at home every morning when I'm on the road is to get a latte or a cappuccino. I had two of those, then Mary Ann appeared. She had eggs and toast, and we planned the day. The check: a shade over $60. She was scandalized by this. Today I was back down there, this time just getting the $15 continental combo. She joined me again, but just looked on, not wanting to give this place another nickel.
I keep telling here that when you stay in luxury hotels, everything's more expensive. This is one of the paradoxes of travel. If you check into a Marriott Courtyard or a Best Western, almost everything but the room is free. Phone calls, breakfast, use of the business center. In luxury hotels with room rates two or three times higher, they charge you for all of that.
The punchline to this bad joke was the total bill for our stay in Houston: $785. Add to that dinner last night and lunch today, and we have spent just under a grand for these two days. The ratio of pleasure to money spent on this junket is about as low as it's ever been in all my travels.
Mary Ann wanted to put off leaving Houston until as late as possible so we could have lunch. Some relocated Orleanians we spoke with during dinner two nights ago recommended that our required Mexican repast be at Hugo's. Everyone else we checked with was equally sanguine about the place.
Hugo's is in the Montrose section, not far from downtown, in what I think is an old industrial building. It was renovated in a sharp way, with high ceilings and big windows. It doesn't look Mexican, but that's the way it is these days with the new wave of ethnic restaurants. They're not competing with all the other restaurants of its ethnicity, but with ambitious restaurants of all kinds.
There's no mistaking that Chef Hugo Ortega is going all out to be as impressive as any other chef. He leaves behind the cliches of Mexican cooking as we know it in the United States, and builds on the unique, rich palette of flavors Mexico developed over the centuries. This is what Taqueros would be if it were a little more intensive. (And if New Orleans diners knew more about Mexican food.) Hugo's menu includes dishes and ingredients I've never encountered in any other restaurant. How about these chapulines, for example: pan-sauteed grasshoppers with guacamole and chilpotle tomatillo salsa?
We started with something much more conventional: queso flameado, a sort of gratin of grilled steak with onions and chile pepper strips, with fresh cheese. The waiter, using a couple of spoons, filled the tortillas with the concoction. Fantastic.
Mary Ann's entree was pork ribs marinated in achiote (hence the yellow-orange color), interspersed with pickled onions, black beans underneath. She loved this. But the great dish was mine. Pato en mole poblano (below): roast duck with one of the world's greatest sauces, made with non-sweet chocolate, chilies, and a few dozen other ingredients. In any place where Mexican cooking is endemic (Houston is such a place), mole is commonplace. But we have almost none of it in New Orleans. This one was the finest I ever tasted. Pairing it with duck was brilliant. A platonic dish, to use Richard Collin's encomium.
By coincidence, the people who turned us on to this place two nights ago showed up in the middle of our meal. They had some great-looking food, too: a whole red snapper Veracruz style, and seafood tacos.
Hugo's put a bright period at the end of our Houston sentence. And now we really had to get going. I am expected this evening at Antoine's, for a tasting of sparkling wines. A large percentage of the attendees will be there at my urging, so I must be too.
To shorten the trip by at least an hour, I let Mary Ann do the driving. We weren't out of Houston before we allowed ourselves to slip into a rip-snorter of an argument mixing politics and personal values. I maintain that our values are the same, otherwise we would forever be in disagreement with how our kids should be raised. In fact, we are in lockstep about that. But she says results be damned: nobody who votes the way I do could possibly have the same values that she does. So I ask: tell me which of my values you disdain. And that's where the dialogue either comes to a complete halt. Or heads off in a radically new direction.
We calmed down by Lake Charles, and arrived in the Japanese Room at Antoine's about forty-five minutes late. Two hundred people had come, the waiters told me. The array of sparklers included nothing really expensive, but plenty of good bubbly wines from many countries. The spread of food included Antoine's more popular appetizers, including an endless supply of oysters Foch. Mary Ann said that the strips of beef in a brown sauce were spectacularly good.
She was lucky. I hardly had anything either to eat or drink. That's how it always is. People walk up to ask or tell me something, and then we get into an actual conversation. I excuse myself after a few minutes to refill my glass (for a long time it never gets filled the first time) and get some food, but en route someone else stops me and another exchange begins. If I only ate at parties like this, I would lose much weight.
A number of people were waiting for me to give them a tour of Antoine's. (I made that offer on the radio.) Downstairs and found that my tour could not be as comprehensive as usual. Almost every private room on the first floor had a party going on. The only two empty ones were the Proteus Room and the little Tabasco Room. Even the Mystery Room, with its photos of Franklin Roosevelt's famous visit to Antoine's in the 1930s, was occupied.
The main dining rooms were busy, too. Wait a minute. This is the last day of July. What's going on? This is supposed to be the dead time of the year for restaurants. The oil spill is supposed to have kept people from visiting, too.
My answer: things aren't as bad as they seem. They never are, if you ask me.
Hugo's. Houston: 1600 Westheimer, 713-524-7744.
Antoine's. French Quarter. 713 St. Louis. 504-581-4422.
Click here for the Dining Diary entry before the one above.
Click here for an index to the last five years of entries.
Caribbean. Mexican. Seafood.
Gretna: 2600 Belle Chasse Hwy. 504-391-0053. Map.
Warehouse District: 1051 Annunciation, 504-566-0021. Map.
Old Metairie: 619 Pink, 504-837-0055. Map.
Kenner: 2424 Williams Blvd., 504-837-8371 . Map.
Lunch and dinner continuously, seven days.
Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The Sun Ray has a history of placing its moderate-price restaurants in neighborhoods where such restaurants are not to be found. So they become popular. The menus have a self-conscious international aspect--mostly quasi-Asian and semi-Mexican--with an underpinning of New Orleans flavor. They refer to it generically as "beach cuisine"--the kind of food you'd find in a place that has beaches. It sounds appealing, and often is.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The Sun Ray's greatest hits are among the salads, sandwiches, grilled seafood, ribs, and finger food. They're less good at pasta, steaks, and poultry. The specials have always offered some interesting options, with more consistency in recent times. It's refreshing to find very little fried food here. Each restaurant's menu differs a bit from the others in the chain, but not enough to make one significantly better than another.
BACKSTORY
The Gretna location is the original, opened in 1996. Subsequent openings have been in a wide variety of premises, from the enormous Warehouse District place (in an even bigger warehouse) to the modest Old Metairie digs (in the former Delerno's). The concept was created by owner Dana Deutsch, who had a significant history as a chef, including stints in Europe and the Windsor Court Hotel.
DINING ROOM
No two of the restaurants look alike, but all have in common open spaces and colorful design. The Warehouse District location is especially expansive, and recently added a second concept: Aloha Sushi, a tweaked approach to the namesake cuisine. The newest location, in Kenner, has a full-fledged oyster bar.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Raw oysters (Kenner only)
Grilled oysters (most locations)
Sushi and sashimi (Warehouse District only)
Black bean soup
Guacamole
Crawfish bruschetta
Fried spring rolls
Sailfish tostadas
Chicken quesadilla
Chicken or duck nachos
Baja chicken or shrimp skillets (like fajitas)
Grilled filet tip wrap
Hamburgers (many varieties)
Santa Fe burrito (steak or chicken)
Jungle fish bahn mi (Vietnamese poor boy)
West Indies salad (with jerk chicken or shrimp)
Pecan crusted chicken salad
Chinese chicken salad
Italian lobster salad
Beer battered fried shrimp
Fish taco platter
Cajun fish and chips
Grilled fish, many styles and species
Guava glazed duck
Thai barbecue ribs
Riviera filet mignon (lobster and brie sauce)
FOR BEST RESULTS
This is one of the few restaurants whose websites are up to date. They even show the correct daily specials every day. Very useful.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The menu sounds better than it is. The kitchen could do with a more refinement; a lot of what it produces is reminiscent of chain restaurant food. Must every restaurant have spinach-artichoke dip?
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
- Service +1
- Value +1
- Attitude +1
- Wine and Bar +1
- Hipness +1
- Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Sidewalk tables
- Romantic
- Good for business meetings
- Medium private room
- Open Sunday lunch and dinner
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open all afternoon
- Oyster bar (Kenner only)
- Unusually large servings
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- Reservations accepted
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Back when the West Bank had few white-tablecloth restaurants, the Sun Ray Grill opened a small cafe next to a hospital, and shortly had the whole area talking. The success of that restaurant led to the kind of expansion that's common in other cities, but not so much here. It's now a mini-chain, targeting customers on the younger side who are looking as much for a place to go as for something memorable to eat.
Here and there on the menu are some pleasant surprises--notably the guacamole, which is made to order and very good.
Confetti Chicken Dumplings
Here's a tasty variation on pot stickers. Instead of being stuffed with pork or beef, these use chicken and crunchy vegetables, and are finished off with a sauce of goat cheese. So they're a fusion of the Far and Near Easts. And eats. Hunh? Good.
- 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
- 4 Tbs. olive oil
- 1/2 cup chopped green onions
- 1/2 cup fresh mushrooms, coarsely chopped
- 1/4 cup red bell pepper, finely diced
- 1/4 cup yellow bell pepper, finely diced
- 1/4 cup fresh spinach, coarsely chopped
- 1 pkg. wonton wrappers
- 1/2 cup chicken stock
- Vegetable oil for deep frying
Sauce:
- 4 oz. cream cheese
- 2 oz. tomato and basil flavored goat cheese
- 2 Tbs. Tabasco soy sauce (or regular soy sauce, plus a few drops of Tabasco)
- 1/4 cup chicken stock
1. Rinse, pat dry, and lightly pound the chicken. Slice it into three or four thin pieces. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.
2. Heat 2 Tbs. of the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the chicken slices and brown them on both sides, until just barely cooked throughout.
3. Add remaining olive oil to the skillet and cook onions and mushrooms over medium heat, adding just a little chicken stock as needed to keep mixture from sticking.
4. Cut chicken into quarter-inch dice. Add it to the pan, along with the peppers and spinach. Cook until the peppers have softened and the chicken has merged into the sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.
5. Brush a wonton wrapper with chicken stock and place a tablespoon of stuffing in the center. Fold over the wonton and seal the edges with a fork to make dumplings.
6. Pour enough vegetable oil into a skillet to make it about a quarter-inch deep. Heat until almost smoking. Fry the dumplings for about a minute on each side, until lightly browned. Drain on paper towels.
7. Heat goat cheese, cream cheese and soy sauce in a microwave oven at 30% power, stirring after a minute, until it's warm and smooth. Thin the mixture with chicken stock until it has the consistency of a dipping sauce.
Serve three dumplings with dipping sauce. Serves six.
