Wednesday, August 25, 2010
1111 Restaurants Open Around Town
Coolinary And Other Special Summer Menus Now In Play
Tapas Crawl In Riverbend Tonight.
Xavier Laurentino had a great idea a few weeks ago. He's the owner and chef of Barcelona Tapas--the resurrection of Laurentino's, torn down some months ago in Metairie. The new place is where Cafe Volage used to be, on Dublin Street in the Riverbend section. He went around to the many good restaurants in that immediate vicinity, and asked whether they'd join him one night a month in a "Tapas Crawl." Customers could walk into each of the participating restaurants, get a tapas plate and a demi-glass of wine for five dollars, then move on to the next restaurant and do the same thing.
It was a big hit a month ago, and tonight we crawl again. The excitement is much enhanced by the quality of the restaurants involved: Brigtsen's, Dante's Kitchen (both in the 700 block of Dante), Hana (sushi bar, 8116 Hampson), Jazmine (Vietnamese, 614 S. Carrollton Ave., next to Camellia Grill), and Barcelona Tapas (720 Dublin).
The Crawl starts at six and ends at nine. I strongly recommend you go to the bank for a bunch of five-dollar bills, because the restaurants will accept cash only. Fun idea! Look for it on the last Wednesday of every month, with different restaurants taking part each time. Love to see this expand to other neighborhoods.
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.
Tuesday, August 17. Farewell Dinner At Arnaud's. Mary Ann thought we should ask the Tim Connells to dinner at Arnaud's tonight. Their daughter Hillary leaves for college in Memphis tomorrow. One thing you can say about our family: we get the most out of good-byes. Just a few days ago, Mary Leigh and Hillary spent the day and night together, allegedly for the final time, after dozens of sleepovers since they were very little girls.
Our two families have enjoyed many dinners together at Arnaud's. I took the then-little girls upstairs to its astonishing, beautiful, and somewhat creepy Mardi Gras Museum. Count Arnaud's daughter Germaine Wells--who operated Arnaud's for many years until Archie Casbarian bought it in 1979--was an avid Carnival ball attendee and frequent queen. All her gowns, crowns and trains are up there, along with a lot of photographs.
While Hillary and Mary Leigh looked raptly at the dresses I'd sneak into a corner where they couldn't see me. They'd find themselves alone and a little scared. Then I'd leap out, snarling. They screamed, of course, and laughed. We did this every time we went to Arnaud's. The day came when they knew it was coming, and I had to work a lot harder to scare them. Now they're grown up and just yawn at it all. But the ritual must be followed.
While waiting for everybody else, I asked Arnaud's brilliant mixologist Chris Hannah to just make me something. The first drink he handed me was the Movie Goer, named for Walker Percy's book. This was a martini variation, with gin, curacao, Averna (the hot ingredient of the moment) and lemon juice. That was great, but the second drink was even better. The Thamyris also started with gin, then one of Chris's own drams, and an ingredient I've always regarded as the world's most disgusting liqueur. Cinar is made in Italy from--of all things--artichokes. I guess I just never had it with the right mix of other ingredients. It's bitter, like Campari, sort of. (And I like Campari.)
Even more interesting was the new menu of food in the bar. They've always served soufflee potatoes. (Few things go better with cocktails than fried potatoes.) Now they have these marvelous, cloudlike cheese puffs, smoked pompano on canapes with horseradish sauce, shrimp stuffed with Brie and jalapenos, oysters en brochette, and a few more things like that. The French 75 Bar at Arnaud's gets cooler with every visit. I even like those strange brass monkeys along the walls. (And that they're properly attired.)
The Tims arrived and we headed for the table. We had a very traditional dinner. Two orders of baked oysters five ways, shrimp Arnaud (their matchless version of remoulade), gumbo (for Mary Leigh, who has taken a liking to the stuff), trout meuniere and amandine, a pork loin special, a filet mignon for my daughter, and chicken Rochambeau for me.
Chicken Rochambeau may be a disappearing dish. The idea sounds weird to begin with, and chefs are always trying to brush it up--but their changes are never improvements. On the bottom is a slice of ham, thicker than you'd put on a sandwich but not what you'd call a ham steak. Atop of that is (in the classic version) half a roasted chicken, mostly boned out. Then a brown sauce with a touch of sweetness, and bearnaise over that. The dish came from Antoine's, but ever since the storm not even they make it as well as they once did. (They now use a boneless chicken breast instead of the half.) Nobody else does it that well. I keep having to be reminded of this every time I sample it at Arnaud's or Galatoire's or (most recently) Delmonico.
Hardly what I'd call bad, though. And the company was good, as we reminisced about all the days we. . . well, you know. Here were two no-longer-baby birds about to fly from their nests, and the two pairs of parents who must now adjust to having no children in their homes. We took turns being emotional. The girls, however, could not hide their giddy anticipation of their new deal.
Arnaud’s. French Quarter: 813 Bienville. 504-523-5433. Classic Creole.
Wednesday, August 18. Eat Club Dinner At Maximo's. The rain came down in tropical torrents today. I wondered how, even with an umbrella, I would get from the nearest parking lot to Maximo's, two blocks away. And how many Eat Club diners we would lose to the weather.
But we all got lucky. I almost passed Maximo's en route to the entrance to the always-convenient French Market parking lot, but was astonished to see not one but two open, legal parking spaces right in front of the restaurant. The parking ticket machine even worked with my credit card. Unbelievable!
When there is as much heat and rain as we've had lately, even the overpowering air conditioning in New Orleans buildings sometimes is tested. You don't get as much heat exchange when the coils are pulling gallons of water vapor per hour from the air. The chill is lost as the cold water drains away. And the water insulates the coils, too. Maximo's air coolers weren't quite keeping up, and it was just barely in the seventies during the radio show and the dinner. If anyone minded this, they weren't saying so. I'm glad Mary Ann--who like Maximo's--wasn't hear. She says she's always hot these days.
We began with some very spicy grilled shrimp, paired with a cool cucumber salad. Nice touch. Then the dish of the night: wild boar ravioli, with smoked-in-house provolone cheese and a very intense, zippy red sauce. They feature a different ravioli variation every night, made from scratch--including the pasta.
Then an unusual salad of butter lettuce (it tastes almost creamy) with bacon and crabmeat. No dissenters for that course. By this time, in my peregrinations from table to table, I was sitting at the food bar. Maximo's kitchen is entirely in the open, and a counter with comfortable stools (they have backs) wraps around it. Eight of the Eat Clubbers saw, rightly, that this was the best place to be. They might have had second thoughts when the chef brigade began pan-searing the next course: Alaska halibut. A bit too much smoke got into the air. And--as I found out the next morning--into our clothes. But all chef's tables/counters are that way.
The halibut was worth the trouble. Chef Thomas Woods told me during our chat on the radio that it was his favorite fish anywhere. He made a convincing argument with this dish, served with slices of pear and sauteed spinach.
The dessert was nothing much: a chocolate mousse that seemed badly made to me (but perhaps on purpose), and a glass of champagne with raspberries floating in it.
A lot of interesting people joined us tonight. One man has been a gourmet diner long enough to tell me stories about long-gone restaurants I never heard of. I was a little concerned that the restaurants doesn't have many big tables, what with all the booths for four. People who don't know one another have no problem blending when six or eight are at the table, but four is a little uncomfortable. Nobody seemed to mind, though.
The rain was long gone when I left at ten-thirty. But I was still very happy my car was just right outside.
Maximo’s Italian Grill. French Quarter: 1117 Decatur. 504-586-8883. Northern Italian.
Click here for the Dining Diary entry before the ones above.
Click here for an index to the last five years of entries.
Pizza. Sandwiches. Pasta.
Mid-City: 125 N. Carrollton Ave. 504-483-9949. Map.
CBD: 417 S. Rampart, 504-522-7552. Map.
Harvey: 1530 Lapalco Blvd., 504-362-3657. Map.
Harahan: 5650 Jefferson Hwy. , 504-734-3333. Map.
Kenner: 3600 Williams Blvd., 504-469-4999. Map.
Mandeville: 4350 La. 22, 985-626-5252. Map.
Metairie: 5406 Veterans Blvd., 504-887-9977. Map.
Slidell: 1319 Gause Blvd, 985-661-0210. Map.
Covington: 70488 Hwy 21, 504-871-5252. Map.
Lunch and dinner continuously seven days.
Casual
AE MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The success of this burgeoning local chain of pizza shops rests on a menu that aims at a mainstream taste for a clean, pretty pizza, big portions, and flexibility in its combinations. Also here are pasta dishes, salads and sandwiches. While all are similar, some locations are owned by franchisees who might alter the menu a little, with a resulting blip in consistency. The Italian Pie is a great place for families, because the prices are low, the portions large, and a child's palate is more or less where they're aiming.
WHY IT'S GOOD
What makes everything happen at the Italian Pie is the quality of its pizza dough. It's baked to a soft, bready consistency, and accompanies just about everything on the menu. It's hard to say no to freshly-baked bread right out of the oven, and Italian Pie uses that appeal for all its worth. However, the use of conveyor-belt ovens makes the pizzas a good deal less than exciting. Too puffy for my tastes. They also have a way of overloading the pies, but again that's something that grabs Joe Average.
BACKSTORY
A local chain of pizza specialists, the Italian Pie has been expanding rapidly around New Orleans for the past few years, and is now selling franchises in other nearby cities. The first one opened in 1992 on the edge of the CBD, near City Hall, and immediately grabbed a large take-out business. The locations since then have been full-fledged restaurants.
DINING ROOM
Most of the restaurants have full service in pleasant, bright dining rooms. Most Italian Pie locations are slicker and better looking than most pizza parlors.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Baked chicken wings
Spinach and artichoke dip
Garlic bread
Salads: Grilled chicken, Italian, Mediterranean, Greek, Caesar
Wrap sandwiches: roasted chicken, roasted eggplant, spinach and artichoke, grilled chicken, barbecue chicken, meatball
Italian special sandwich
Turkey or club focaccia
Roast beef poor boy
Muffuletta
Roasted eggplant sandwich
Pizza, topped as you like or house combinations, particularly:
Spinach artichoke
Mediterranean
Roasted eggplant
Barbecue chicken
Sun dried tomato and pesto
Muffuletta pizza
Lasagna
Seafood stuffed ravioli
Four cheese ravioli
Chicken parmesan or cacciatore
Spaghetti and meatballs
Shrimp scampi
Fettuccine alfredo
Venetian chicken (panneed, stuffed with spinach and artichokes)
Gulf shrimp pasta
Calzones
Turtle cheesecake
Tiramisu
FOR BEST RESULTS
The best pizzas are the basics, as opposed to options like getting every meat in the house. The pizza is distinctly better than the pasta (which is not bad) and incomparably better than the salads and sandwiches.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Although it makes for better uniformity, the conveyor-belt pizza oven makes a much less interesting pizza than the old-style brick-floor ovens.
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 +1
- Value +1
- Attitude
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness
- Local Color
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Good for business meetings
- Open Sunday lunch and dinner
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Open most holidays
- Open all afternoon
- Unusually large servings
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
- No reservations
Roasted Chicken Aline
If I had to live on just one entree the rest of my life, this would be it. I love a good roasted chicken, like the one my mother (Aline) used to make every Sunday when I was a kid. After this chicken comes out of the oven, you can add almost any sauce or garnish to it you like, but it's very good as is.
Buy a free-range chicken or the smallest chicken you can find at the store. Feel free to vary the array of fruits, vegetables, and herbs I like to stuff inside the cavity before putting the chicken into the oven.
- 1 whole chicken, 3 to 3 1/2 lbs.
- Stems of 1 bunch fennel, cut up, or tops of 1 bunch celery
- Stems of 1 bunch parsley
- 1/2 orange, sliced
- 1 good-sized branch rosemary
- 10 cloves garlic, crushed
- Salt
- Creole seasoning
- 1/2 tsp. dried tarragon
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. If you have a convection oven, set it to convect.
1. Rinse the chicken and remove the giblets. Stuff the cavity with as much of the fennel, celery, parsley stems, orange, rosemary, and garlic as will fit inside the cavity. Season the outside of the chicken with salt and Creole seasoning or pepper.
2. Put the chicken breast side down on a broiler pan with a rack and set it in the center of the oven. Reduce the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Roast for one hour, and check the temperature of the chicken with a meat thermometer. When it reaches about 170 degrees, turn the oven up to 450 degrees, and put very small slivers of butter all over the outside of the chicken.
4. Roast another five to ten minutes. Check to make sure the juices run clear from the thigh. Remove from oven and let stand for fifteen minutes before serving.
Serves two to four.
