Diary 12|18, 19, 20|2015: Caroling At The Tea Room. La Provence .

Friday, December 18, 2015. Two Parties.

I have a burned-out headlight on the PT Cruiser. I pick up a new bulb--just $12, I was surprised to find. I search the internet to see how to perform the replacement. I encounter four videos on the subject, all with the usual jokey hosts. The first of these tells me that I have to remove the bumper. What? Another says that step is only for 2004 and newer models. I have a 2003, the procedure for which is to jack the car up, remove the wheel near the bad bulb, remove a panel inside the wheel well, then--a bright light illuminating a cave-like passage--unscrew the old one (only one quarter-turn), screw in the new one, replace the panel and the wheel, and lower the car. I can probably do all that myself, but I decide it's one step over my aggravation threshold. I bring the PT to Superior Tires in Covington, which has serviced this car dozens of times in the past. Mary Ann follows me there and we have breakfast, after waiting a few minutes for a table. Mattina Bella is as busy as it deserves to be. Best breakfast on the North Shore. I have basic soft-scrambled eggs with bacon and a single multi-grain pancake. Yum, yum. MA has her standard every-meat-in-the-house omelette. Owner Vincent Riccobono (not the one who owns the Peppermill, but a cousin who, confusingly, used to manage the Peppermill) comes over and we show him pictures of our first grandchild. He has four grandkids. His son is managing the door of Mattina Bella today--I think he usually cooks. His mother (Vincent's wife) is here but taking the day off, sitting down to breakfast with friends. We show her the kid pictures, too. It's an old-time family operation in an old-time part of Covington. Perfect place to be a week before Christmas on a cold day. The radio station is drifting into a torpor. It is very difficult to sell advertising time the week before Christmas, so nobody has a lot of extra work to do. I go into town anyway, because my party schedule is full. The radio cluster's annual holiday party is tonight at the Hard Rock Café. It's been a few years since I've attended this. Not because I have any reason to avoid it, but because of conflicts with Eat Club dinners and the like. In fact, I like going to the station Christmas party. I always meet a lot of co-workers who I don't really know. We have six radio stations, each with its own staff. I always discover that for every person I don't know, there are three who know me very well, many of whom step up and tell me flattering things. I am very lucky that they have such things to say. Ours is a very tight, well-organized operation. The food is mostly pretty good. I begin with a shooter of chicken-andouille gumbo, good enough that I return for two more shots. Miniature Buffalo wings circulate, as do sliders, shrimp remoulade, cheeses, and roast prime rib carved to order. The bar in our private room is minimal, but when I ask for a Manhattan, instead of telling me that it was over the complexity limit, the bartender goes to the main working bar of the restaurant and comes back with the drink. I win a new golden Cross pen from Boudreaux's Jewelers in a raffle. I don't use ball-points, so I will go to Boudreaux's to see whether they will accept an upcharge for the fountain pen version. I know that it exists, because I saw an article about it in Esquire. I wind up staying longer than I expected. But I have another party on my agenda, this one at the home of Mary Ann's brother Lee. He and his wife Valarie--who seems to be the style-setter--also put on a magnificent party a year ago for Jude and his bride. They found a great caterer for that: Palate New Orleans, which created another superb spread tonight. I have at times described The Restaurant Critic Diet in this space. The essence of it is that if you eat different food in different eateries every day, you will wind up losing a lot of weight. Here's a new corollary to the diet: If you become famous as a food authority, you will find that the other guests at a party will keep walking up to you with reports about the food, and you will never be able to break away from them long enough to sample the eats yourself. Thereby, you eat less. A good thing, especially when the food is as fine as it was this night.

Saturday, December 19, 2015. Caroling. Commander's Palace.

My Saturday radio show was due to return to the air for the first time in months today, but a shift in LSU's athletic schedule erased me from the log again. That was a good thing, because it allowed me to join three other MPAS singers in Christmas carols at the English Tea Room in Covington. This is a charming little place that not only serves dozens of varieties of teas, but maintains a menu much like you'd find in a real British tea café. Scones, ploughman's lunches, shepherd's pie, and little sandwiches with vegetables inside. Our quartet--sometimes in four-part harmony, but mostly not--gave forth with two half-hour programs of song, religious and secular, magnificent and absurd, separated by a light lunch. (Tomato basil soup and a savory scone for me.) It was a delightful way to spend a midday. And the customers seemed to like it, too.

English Tea Room. Covington: 734 E Rutland St. 985-898-3988. [divider type=""] Dinner tonight with friends at Commander's Palace. I will report on that tomorrow, Diary Time. I need to look for some wayward photographs I took that night. But now, if you will. . . [divider type=""]

Sunday, December 20, 2015. La Provence With The Gourmet Cellist.

Over the years, a number of people who I met through their calls to the radio show became friends outside the radio universe. The first of these was Charlie Lawlor, who sat with us for dinner at Begue's during my second date with Mary Ann. (She was still on the air then, and Charlie called her, too.) The most recent radio-voice-to-live friend is Daniel Lelchuk, to whom I gave the sobriquet "the Gourmet Cellist." He's a guy about Jude's age, and already a man of good culinary tastes, both in his restaurant experiences and in his home cooking. He has traveled throughout Europe and knows it well. His regular gig is as the second-chair cello for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. But I have heard him deliver solo parts that seem virtuoso to me. We've had a few dinners with Dan, and tonight we have another. His brother Saul is in from the West Coast, and they are making assiduous rounds of the New Orleans restaurant scene. Daniel wanted to take his bro to La Provence, to which he has not been himself. He didn't have to talk me into it, and the four of us meet at six-thirty. La Provence is busier than usual. But it is an ideal venue for Christmas-season dining. In fact, it has a Reveillon menu--the farthest-flung of all the Reveillons. It goes for $49 as a prix-fixe--no choices. This sounds good to most of us, but the Lelchuk boys have really been stuffing it in. Doris Metropolitan last night, for example. [caption id="attachment_20819" align="alignnone" width="400"] Pate and croutons at La Provence.[/caption] We go through two crocks of La Provence's chicken liver pâté before the first courses arrive. I persuade Dan and Saul to get the oysters ooh-la-la, which to my tastes is the best baked oyster dish around. Crab fat, saffron, a little red pepper, a little bread crumbs, all on the shells. They were slightly underbaked, but that might have been intentional to keep the oysters plump. Still spectacular, in any case. We have some soups and salads: turtle soup from the Reveillon menu for me, and crab bisque for Saul. Daniel is lucky enough to get the butternut squash ravioli, which appears to be a signature dish when the squash are in season. Mary Ann has a butter-lettuce salad, about which she says she should have stopped there. The most interesting entree is the porchetta, made using piglets from Chappapeela Farms. La Provence owner John Besh has been a strong supporter of the Chappapeela guys and their superb local products. Daniel has the porchetta, made by reworking parts of the pig into a sort of roast. Quite a plate of food, enough for at least two and with a new flavor in every bite. This is rivaled by Saul's pick, a stunning half of a duck, looking only slightly better than it tastes--and that is saying something. Less impressive are the two fish dishes. One was a pompano with a pan-glaze of parmesan cheese, and sunchokes on the side (second time I've encountered that rare vegetable in a week). This melange is overly complicated for a fish like pompano, which stands alone in its flavor. The swordfish, on the other hand, must have come from a very large specimen, for which the cooking made it dry. It comes covered with shredded parsnips. Not my favorite use of that carrot-like, mildly-starchy root vegetable. Few desserts are ordered. I have the upside-down apple cake, and find that likable enough. I have coffee, and we discuss whether it's French press coffee or not. I say now, because I liked this coffee. We spend a long time here. The pleasures of La Provence in winter is hard to pull away from.

La Provence. Lacombe: 25020 US 190. 985-626-7662.