Tuesday, August 31, 2010
1111 Restaurants Open Around Town
Coolinary And Other Special Summer Menus Now In Play
Tujague's Throws A Big Feast To Help Shuckers
Steve Latter--the owner of the venerable French Market dining fixture Tujague's--figured he had to do something for the oyster shuckers. The large staff of P&J Oyster Company was laid off a month ago when the BP oil spill forced the closing of most of the oyster beds where P&J gets it bivalves. P&J and Tujague's have both been feeding New Orleans people since the 1800s, and have a long relationship.
Thursday, September 16, Tujague's will fill all its rooms for a dinner the likes of which I don't remember ever having been served in that establishment. Steve Latter rounded up donations from other local food providers to make the evening a memorable one. The price is $125 per person, inclusive of tax, tip, and wines throughout the dinner. The entire amount will go to the out-of-work P&J oyster shucking team and their families. Here's the menu:
Hors d'Oeuvres
Blackened shrimp with mango and cucumber
Grilled lamb chops with roasted corn cake, Worcestershire glaze
Lobster egg rolls with Asian dipping sauce
Steamed Mussels And Foie Gras
Garlic crostini
Mixed Green Salad
Fried Vidalia onions, toasted pumpkin seeds, warm bacon vinaigrette
Filet Mignon
Stuffed with sun dried tomato and goat cheese, with oven roasted potatoes, mushroom bordelaise
~or~
Potato Encrusted Drum
Curry tomato broth, avocado creme friache
White Chocolate Cheesecake
Fresh raspberry coulis
"They are an integral part of our food culture and desperately need our help," says Steve Latter about the oyster shuckers. "These hardworking men and women have lost their income yet still have families to support. We want to let them know that we support them, that they are not forgotten."
Indeed not. I'll see you there, I hope. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will begin at 6:30, with dinner at 7:15. Reservations 504-525-8676.
Tujague's. French Quarter: 823 Decatur 504-525-8676. Classic Creole.
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 24. Gott Gourmet. I'm back in the radio studio for the first time in a week. The five grand it cost me for the gizmo on which I do my radio show from home has, I think, paid for itself in gasoline expenses alone. If it ever dies, I'll buy a new one immediately. (They're a lot less expensive now.)
After two failed attempts, I ate supper at Gott Gourmet tonight. It's in a stretch of Magazine Street with so many restaurants that a special report on the whole area would be interesting. Especially since a lot of the restaurants are new since the hurricane.
My impression of this restaurant from talking to others made me think there was more to the place than there is. Sandwiches form the bulk of the menu, with salads and a few platters filling out the rest. Nothing wrong with a menu like that, of course. But the Law of Expectations was in force:
s = p/x
Where s is the degree of satisfaction a person derives, p is the actual performance of the restaurant, and x represents the person's expectations. (All of these values are further defined as being greater than zero.)
I studied the menu a long time, to get my mind around it and adjust my expectations. Hot dogs are a major specialty. In fact, two of the four specials were hot dogs. More in line with my pre-arrival idea of the place was a bowl of gumbo that included ingredients from both the seafood and chicken isotopes of gumbo. I ordered the gumbo and one of the hot dogs.
When will I learn? If I want to have first one dish, then another after I'm finished the first one, I must make that desire known to the server, no matter how obvious it seems that the two of them should not be served simultaneously. After what seemed like a long time to fetch a bowl of soup, the server came out with the gumbo in one hand and the stuff-covered hot dog in the other.
I used to ask at moments like this, "Which of these dishes do you suggest I allow to get cold while I eat the other one?" I stopped asking that when I saw that servers still didn't get the point. But in this case, it didn't matter anyway. Both the soup and the hot dog were tepid when they arrived.
That said, and the equation above applied, I enjoyed the rest of the repast. The cool gumbo had a nice, dark roux, a delicious broth, and a lot of stuff in it. The hot dog was a premium tube steak--great flavor--and was covered with a pile of small diced fried potatoes, corned beef, sauerkraut, and mustard. No person with a mouth smaller than Joe E. Brown's could possible have picked this thing up and eaten it, but fork and knife delivered it well enough.
Dessert? "We don't usually have any," said the server, who went on to say that they didn't have any tonight. "There are lots of places in the neighborhood with great desserts." Maybe so.
Okay. They use first-class product in making their sandwiches and salads and such. But that's about the end of the range. I'll remember that next time I come.
I was parked about a block away, on the corner of Eighth and Constance. I've never been paranoid about walking around the French Quarter or Uptown or anywhere else at night. For some reason, tonight the image of the mugging I received in Belize City in February welled up. New Orleans is not Belize City, but I was spooked anyway until I encountered a well-dressed woman standing alone, talking real estate on her cell. If it's okay for her, it's probably okay for me, I thought, and pushed Belize out of my mind.
Gott Gourmet Cafe. Uptown: 3100 Magazine. 504-373-6579. Breakfast. Sandwiches.
Click here for the Dining Diary entry before the ones above.
Click here for an index to the last five years of entries.
Mexican.
Garden District: 2018 Magazine, 504-569-0000. Map.
Mid-City: 4724 S. Carrollton Ave.. 504-486-9950. Map.
Lunch and dinner continuously seven days
Very Casual
AE DS MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
It's a hybrid of a Mexican cafe with the related but different Southwestern American burrito shop, using good ingredients in dishes that show more imagination than adherence to tradition. (They call themselves a Creole taqueria.) Clearly aimed at a twenty-something crowd that wants to eat inexpensively and amply but reasonably well.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The careless style of the front end diverts attention from the kitchen, which takes its work seriously. It buys good groceries to make both familiar and way-out-there dishes. Both kinds are successful, sometimes far beyond expectations. The specials are of particular note. This is one of the few local restaurants that actually takes the time to post its specials online every day.
BACKSTORY
Juan's opened in the middle 1990s, at the tail end of a brief but intense vogue for a new style of burrito, filled with a far wider variety of ingredients than the traditional Mexican meat, beans, lettuce and cheese. (The similar wrap sandwiches were part of this craze.) Juan's created a menu pairing those with the food of the new (to New Orleans, anyway) taquerias, with their flour-tortilla-wrapped grilled meats. They did all this better than most, and in its Sleazy Chic style (always a local favorite) caught on well enough to open a second restaurant right before Katrina.
DINING ROOM
Juan's Uptown location looks like a deep dive from the outside. Once you're inside (that might take awhile, especially at lunch), you find a junkyard of a dining room--not shabby, but raffish, with unusual original art exhibited on the walls. It's managed by a bohemian service staff that relates to diners in a way rather different from that found in other restaurants. It takes a little getting used to, but you will. The Mid-City restaurant is much more family-friendly in its environment and service style, with a utilitarian but pleasant dining room.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Starters:
Chips and salsa
Guacamole and chips
Queso dip
Beans and rice with chips, cheese, salsa, sour cream, and jalapenos
Nachos: Cheese, ground beef, pork, chicken, beans, guacamole, sour cream, salsa and jalapenos (or any combination)
Kamehameha applewood smoked bacon nachos (pulled pork, grilled mango, pineapple salsa, chipotle sour cream, cilantro and jalapenos
Taco salad
Tijuana Caesar (with grilled chicken and avocado)
Jerk shrimp and mango salad
Juaha roll (chicken, spinach, avocado, salsa, cheese)
Shrimp juaha roll
Burritos: beans and rice with salsa, hot sauce, cheddar and jack cheese, plus chicken, ground beef, pork, steak, shrimp, sour cream and guacamole, or any combination)
Burrito al pastor (slow-cooked shredded pork, pineapple salsa, sour cream, jalapenos, cilantro, beans and yellow rice
Super green burrito (vegetarian)
Enchiladas (most of the above possibilities in soft corn tortillas)
Enchiladas pollo verde (grilled chicken with green chile sauce)
Shredded pork enchiladas with red chile sauce
Flying enchiladas (steak, chicken, and shrimp grilled together)
Quesadillas:
Bacon azul quesadilla (ground beef, bacon, blue cheese, jack and cheddar cheese, grilled onions and mushrooms)
Luau quesadilla (shrimp, bacon, pineapple salsa, jack and cheddar cheese)
Tacos (grilled with beans, cheese, lettuce and salsa; plus ground beef, chicken, pork, steak, shrimp or vegetables)
Pork ‘n’ slaw tacos
Mardi Gras Indian tacos (roasted corn, beans, squash, cheese. spicy slaw)
Fish tacos
Blackened redfish tacos
Carne asada tacos
Fajitas
FOR BEST RESULTS
The food is better at lunch than at dinner Uptown, but the same all the time in Mid-City. If you're older than 40, come here with a curiosity about what the kids are up to these days.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Not enough focus on the part of the waiters. The beans taste good but are always a little dry.
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 -2
- Consistency +1
- Service -2
- Value +2
- Attitude -1
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness +2
- Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Open all afternoon
- Quick, good meal
- Good for children
- Easy, nearby parking
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
The original Magazine Street Juan's looks like a deep dive from the outside. Once you're in the door (and the place is usually so busy that this might not happen right away), however, you'll discover that your initial impression is not diminished a bit. Then it will strike you as strange how many of the diners are dressed in nice business attire. You might even wonder why they're not worried about their clothes.
They must know something, right?
Well, yes, they do. The food here is some of the best West-Coast-style (as opposed to Texas-style) Mexican food around. No ethnic Mexicans are in evidence, but never mind. The food is convincing, ample, fresh, and good. Particularly exciting to the palate are the grilled-meat dishes. They typically get wrapped up in flour tortillas, but not always.
The casualness is a bit much, though. Portions are usually plopped into a red plastic basket lined with waxed paper. So it's about at the level of a poor-boy joint for creature comforts. On the other hand, prices are very low. Getting a table at lunchtime sometimes involves a wait. And the service style seems chaotic. But all this is paid off on the food end.
Squid with Spicy Creole Vinaigrette
One of the best ways to serve squid is as a salad. This is sort of that, although it really fits into the same part of the culinary universe as shrimp remoulade and crabmeat ravigote. The best squid are the small ones, about three to four inches long.
- 2 lbs. small squid
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
- 1/4 tsp. cracked black peppercorns
- 1 sprig fresh thyme
- 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 1/2 Tbs. Creole mustard
- 1 1/2 Tbs. lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. chopped garlic
- 1/2 cup thinly sliced white onion
- 1 tsp. chopped fresh oregano
- 3 Tbs. small capers
- 1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, leaves and stems
- 1 rib celery, chopped
1. The only difficulty with squid is cleaning it, and even that is easy if you remember that the undesirable parts are where the tentacles meet the body. Cut out the quarter-inch section that includes the beak and the eyes. Then carefully remove the ink sac and the cartilage "pen" from the body, and rub off the dark, thin skin. On the tentacle part, make sure there is a clear ring you can see through, and remove any thin skin that may be there. Then slice the body into rings about 1/2 inch thick.
2. Poach the squid in a saucepan with half the vinegar, wine, 1/3 cup water, crushed red pepper, pepper, and thyme. Cook for about three minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to cool for about two more minutes.
3. While waiting, combine the rest of the vinegar and the olive oil, mustard, lemon juice, salt, and 2 Tbs. water in a large bowl. Whisk to blend. Add the squid and all the other ingredients, and toss to combine.
4. Chill until serving time, but serve at cool room temperature. This is best made about four hours before you serve it.
Serves four.
