Tuesday, August 24, 2010
1111 Restaurants Open Around Town
Coolinary And Other Special Summer Menus Now In Play
After eight weeks of special menus highlighting the cuisines of the Med, Vega Tapas Cafe is winding up its annual vicarious tour with an imaginary stop in Spain. That's the country that inspired the tapas revolution, so why not? Through the week, you get seven tapas courses for $27. Another $15 will bring wine pairings. Ah, summer! How delicious it is! Here's the menu:
Tortilla Espanola
Potato omelet with onions and peppers
Pa Amb Tomaquet
Tomato toast with jamon serrano
Escalivada
Roasted summer vegetable salad
Croquetta de Bacalao
Salt cod fritter with alioli
Pulpo de Gallega
Tender sautéed octopus with paprika
Albondigas al a Planxa
Grilled spicy pork meatballs
Sangria Congelado
Frozen sangria
The Spanish menu goes on through Saturday, August 28, ending one of the more attractive and imaginative summertime promotions around town.
Vega. Old Metairie: 2051 Metairie Rd., 504-836-2007.
Thursday night (August 26), Mr, B's is offering a wine dinner featuring the California wines of Joel Gott. It's another in the series of "We Live To Eat" dinners, a promotion encouraged by the Louisiana Restaurant Association. This one has everything Mr. B's is known for except the gumbo ya-ya and the barbecue shrimp (which you've eaten often enough, anyway). That crab cake is, I think, the best in the city.
Reception: Passed Hors d'Oeuvres
Duck Springrolls with ginger dipping sauce
Fried Oysters with horseradish hollandaise
Panko Crusted Shrimp with Crystal beurre blanc
Seared Scallops drizzled with white truffle oil
Wine: Joel Gott Washington State Riesling
Mr. B's Crab Cake
Pan sauteed jumbo lump served with classic ravigote sauce
Wine: Joel Gott Chardonnay
Sauteed Redfish
Butter sauce
Rack of Lamb
Dijon mustard herb bread crumb crust
Wine: Joel Gott "Alakai" Proprietary Red
Chef Michelle's Special Chocolate Creation
Wine: Joel Gott Six Cabernets
The dinner begins at 6:30 with a reception and passed appetizers. The price is $90, inclusive of tax, tip, and wines. To reserve, call Julie at 504-523-6441.
Mr. B's. French Quarter: 201 Royal, 504-523-2078.
All 30 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.
Sunday, August 15. Thai Thai. A real steambath today, with temperatures in the 100s, followed by the usual suddenly-dark afternoon rainstorm. But that worked out fine, because I spent the whole day working on the new website tools. I should have done this long ago.
Lunch at Thai Thai. I ordered the same dish I had on Tuesday at Thai Orchid in Slidell: pad prik king, with beef, green beans, peppers, and onions. The sauce had an almost musky flavor that seemed to come from a mix of garlic and peanuts. It was not nearly as good as the one in Slidell. But I think Ricky may have been a little overwhelmed today. The dining room was nearly full, and the open tables looked recently used. I've never seen the place so busy. Well, the soup was good as usual.
And so ends my "vacation." Instead of a week in California, I stayed here and worked. Still, the break from the radio show relieved a lot of stress. And it's only a month or so until the train trip to Chicago.
Thai Thai. Covington: 1536 US 190. 985-809-8905. Thai.
Monday, August 16. The Marys Return. Vacation's Over. The Best Dinner Ever At Fausto's. My wife and daughter arrived from Los Angeles on separate non-stop flights, at about the same time in the afternoon. They somehow finagled a way to turn the ticket I would have used into one for Mary Leigh, and then to get that one-stop flight switched to a non-stop. This sounds like Jude at work, but Mary Ann said it was just a dice roll that came out a seven.
They also got lucky with the weather. If their flights had come in one hour later, they surely would have been delayed by a black, windy downpour that washed across the city during the last hour of my radio show.
We reunited over dinner at Fausto's. I learned that I missed nothing much that I would have liked in California. The Marys' greatest indulgence was a night at the Del Coronado Hotel off the coast of San Diego. They used to say that they wanted to go there some day. Now they're going there every time they're within a few hundred miles of the deluxe old place.
Jude drove them around for a week and let them stay in his apartment. He is looking for a house, and the girls assisted with that. He has something else exciting in the works. A film production outfit hired him to manage the completion of a halfway-done project, working out of Paramount Pictures. Jude now has an office and a parking space at Paramount, and has been asked to stay on for the next year. As a result, he's talking about dropping out of USC at least temporarily, so much work does he have coming up.
By the time the appetizers came out, the focus had shifted to this week's life-changing event. Mary Leigh will move into her dormitory at Tulane this Saturday. The logistics are heavy, but the emotional load is even heavier. Except for the post-Katrina interlude, she has lived her whole life at the Cool Water Ranch. And now she's moving out. Hello, so-called empty nest. (How can it be empty with us two big people in it?) Mary Leigh, however, can hardly wait. She has only one downer to deal with: she may not have her beloved Audi on campus until next year.
Even with all this fervent conversation, the food on the table kept grabbing our attention. We started with crabmeat-stuffed mushrooms, which moved far above the ordinary by being served on a stew of tomatoes, peppers, and onions, herbal and peppery.
An oversize Caprese salad's tomatoes and mozzarella cheese were abetted big-time by prosciutto. A couple of tomato-topped bruschetti parked alongside that stack. I guess if I wanted to complain about something I could say that the tomatoes were a shade underripe. But I don't. Mary Ann was equally pleased with a crab cake atop a salad (below) with a sort of white remoulade over all.
Veal Rolando is named for Fausto DiPietro's brother, who also manages the restaurant (and was running it tonight). A dish named for a restaurant's owner is probably pretty good. (The only better bet in an Italian restaurant is a dish named after the owner's mother.) This was that magical combination of mushrooms, artichokes, white wine, olive oil and herbs you find under many other people's names around town. Fausto's version was on the soupy side, which was fine with me. Really great with me, in fact.
Mary Leigh stayed conventionally red-saucy with chicken parmigiana. She gave that a full thumbs up. A good sign; she's very picky about and loves good red-sauce dishes.
But the dish of the night went to Mary Ann. A fried soft-shell crab atop a half-dozen ravioli stuffed with crabmeat, awash in Alfredo sauce? How could that go far wrong in a restaurant that starts with good ingredients (which they emphatically do here)?
The girls were itching to leave, but I had a slice of Angelo Brocato's spumone with a hazelnut-puree-stuffed Pirouette cookie leaning against it. None of that made in house, but how do you top Brocato's or Pepperidge Farm?
On the way out, I committed a spoonerism. I told Rolando, "That was the best meal I've ever had here, and I've had nothing but bad meals here!" What I meant to say was that I've never had a bad meal there, or that I've had nothing but good meals there. But both phrases tried to get out at the same time, and they got mixed up. They say the brain is the second thing to go, and the first thing has already left.
But this really was the best of many good meals I've had at Fausto's over the years. Mary Leigh, who was here for the first time and who is leery about new-to-her restaurants, even gave her stamp of approval.
Fausto’s. Metairie: 530 Veterans Blvd. 504-833-7121. Italian.
Click here for the Dining Diary entry before the ones above.
Click here for an index to the last five years of entries.
Sushi. Japanese.
Mandeville: 590 Asbury Dr.. 504-727-1532. Map.
Lunch and dinner continuously seven days.
Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
For a long time, Little Tokyo was the only sushi bar in Mandeville (or Covington, too, for that matter). Having a lock on the market didn't prevent it from becoming one of the best places for sushi and Japanese basics in the entire metro area. Now, even with much more competition, Little Tokyo remains very busy, for the best of reasons: it's still excellent.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The sushi chefs here are not only skillful--they're fun. The regulars joke around with them a lot, and newcomers are included in the chumminess. Meanwhile, the chefs cut sushi from a bigger selection of fish than seems possible in such a small restaurant. The proportions, temperature, moisture content, and everything else is just about perfect. Even the more involved rolls--which in most sushi places are more for effect than flavor--are delicious.
BACKSTORY
This is a franchise of the Little Tokyo in Metairie, opened in 1997. It began with the style and standards of the original place, but over the years has added to it, so that it's now may be the best of the restaurants under the Little Tokyo banner.
DINING ROOM
The sushi bar and dining room are crammed into a converted residential cottage. It doesn't look at all like a sushi bar, inside or out. At standard dining times, it's always a full house, and the brisk take-out business makes the area around the front door sometimes logjammed. The restaurant is a little hard to find. The best instruction is that it's about two blocks behind the K-Mart on the old US 190, at the only traffic signal along that road.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Edamame
Baked salmon
Lettuce wrap (for two; shrimp, mushrooms and vegetables)
BBQ tuna
Baked mussels with creamy smelt roe sauce
Squid steak
Snowcrab calamari
Seafood and vegetable tempura
Sesame chicken
Yaki tori (broiled, skewered chicken teriyaki)
Gyoza
Tofu steak
Hamachi kama (broiled yellowtail)
Baked seafood
Miso soup
Seaweed salad
Squid salad
Cucumber with seafood salad
Scallop or snowcrab with avocado
Sushi specials:
Angel roll (spicy tuna and snow crab inside, escolar, avocado, wasabi tobiko outside)
Baked salmon roll
Boston hand roll (shrimp, snow crab, avocado, seaweed paper, no rice)
Box sushi (salmon, yellowtail, tuna, and/or eel)
Burning man roll (spicy tuna inside, pepper tuna, avocado, green onion, hot sauce outside)
Cajun pepper tuna sushi / sashimi
Calamari crunchy roll
Chef special roll (yellowtail, salmon, tuna, asparagus, avocado, seaweed paper)
Cowboy roll (beef, lettuce, avocado and snow crab)
Cucumber roll
Dancing tuna roll (spicy salmon, sliced tuna, avocado)
Devil roll (salmon, tuna, yellowtail, cucumber, Japanese yellow mustard)
Dynamite roll (salmon , tuna, wasabi)
Fresh salmon roll
Jazz roll (BBQ eel, avocado, spicy tuna)
Lettuce wrap roll (shrimp, snow crab, avocado, lettuce wrap--no rice)
Louisiana roll (spicy crawfish and avocado)
Mandeville roll (whitefish, snow crab, asparagus, smelt roe, seaweed; whole roll fried)
Manhattan roll (fried soft shell crab, BBQ eel, snow crab, avocado, smelt roe)
Old school roll (scallop, tuna, salmon, yellowtail)
Rainbow roll (California roll inside, tuna, salmon, yellowtail outside)
Rice paper roll (tuna, salmon, crab stick, carrot, lettuce, asparagus, cucumber, avocado, rice paper, chili sauce)
Scallop and asparagus roll
Smoked salmon roll
Special eel roll (BBQ eel, cucumber, avocado, smelt roe, sesame, eel sauce)
Spicy tuna roll
Tiger roll (yellowtail, tuna, smelt roe, BBQ eel, salmon, avocado)
Tropical roll (coconut, avocado, mango)
Tuna tataki (sliced seared tuna with ponzu)
Vegetable roll
Yellowtail roll
Noodle dishes:
Tempura udon (shrimp and vegetable tempura)
Nabeyaki udon (seafood noodle)
Yaki udon (pan fried udon noodles with seafood)
Seafood tempura
Steamed fish
Chicken teriyaki
Beef teriyaki
Chicken katsu
FOR BEST RESULTS
Strike up a light, smiling conversation with the sushi chefs. Avoid most of the noon hour and early dinner, when the place is busiest. The limited nature of the cooked side of the menu should tell you something.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Only a move to a bigger place could make this place significantly better, but I'd be wary that it would change the dynamics too much.
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 +2
- Service +1
- Value +2
- Attitude +2
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness +1
- Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Open Sunday lunch and dinner
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open some holidays
- Open all afternoon
- Quick, good meal
- Easy, nearby parking
- No reservations
Potato Chips
Homemade potato chips can't be beat. They may not look as good as the ones from a bag, but they sure do taste better. And you eat them hot! We start making chips at the end of a batch of French fries, using the ends of the potatoes.
The challenge is in slicing them, for which you absolutely need a machine of some sort. We have two. I use the mandolin (also known as "The French Widowmaker," for it's ability to slice off the ends of fingers if you're not careful). My wife uses a Ronco gadget she and her siblings bought for their mother in the 1970s. It's called "The Kitchen Magician," and it indeed slices excellent thin chips.
Buying the right potatoes is critical. Get the largest Idaho russets you can find in the bin. Scratch the skin lightly with your fingernail. If there's even a hint of green between the brown of the skin and the white of the flesh, put that one back. Check all the potatoes you buy for frying this way.
The main issue in frying potato chips is that the starches get dark fast, especially around the edges, and make the chips fry unevenly. So you get chips that are crisp around the outside but still flaccid in the center. The tricks that seem to avoid this are rinsing the potatoes in two changes of water right after slicing, and frying at a lower temperature than most recipes call for.
- 3-5 russet potatoes, the larger the better
- Vegetable oil (I use organic canola, the lightest in flavor), enough to fill a deep pot about three inches deep
- 3 Tbs. salt
- 1 tsp. salt-free Creole seasoning
1. Peel the potatoes. Slice them as thin as you can get them without tearing, with uniform thickness. Immediately place them into a large bowl of cold water.
2. When finished slicing, swish the potatoes around in the bowl, then dump out the water. Fill the bowl with cold water and let them stand a few minutes. Swish them around again, then drain.
3. Spread the chips out on a large towel (we use a bath towel for this). Fold it over, and press out all the water. Keep the chips covered until the oil comes to temperature.
4. Heat the oil to 325 degrees, measured on a fry thermometer. Drop about a handful of chips into the oil, and with a slotted spoon stir them around so they don't stick to one another.
5. The chips are perfect when they're light brown (they will be darker than the commercial ones in the bags) and are no longer bubbling much. If they get much darker around the edges than in the center, lower the heat a little.
6. Drain the chips in a basket lined with the inexpensive, bowl-shaped kind of coffee filters. Season with salt and Creole seasoning, then move them far away from the frying pot. You need to start on the next batch, and prevent the entire population of the house from walking up next to you.
Makes not quite enough, no matter how many potatoes or how few people you start with.
