Arnaud’s
Arnaud’s menu is mostly traditional, with some flights of fancy courtesy of Chef Tommy Digiovanni. That fits right into the concept of the Reveillon. The restaurant is rife with Christmas decorations, among the two or three grandest and most tasteful in town, with an emphasis on gold rather than red and green.
Four courses, $45.
Crab And Shrimp Stuffed Mirliton
Slow-roasted, Creole sauce
~or~
Daube Glace
Stewed beef chilled between layers of jellied consommé, garlic croutons
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Creole Onion Soup en Croûte
~or~
Butter Lettuce Salad
Roquefort cheese & Champagne vinaigrette
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Slow-Roasted Chicken Chasseur
Wild mushroom & hot house tomato-infused bordelaise sauce
~or~
Pork Tenderloin
Green peppercorn demi-glace & cassoulet
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Chocolate Pot de Crème
~or~
Baba au Rhum
French Quarter: 813 Bienville. 504-523-5433.
FULL REVIEW
All the Reveillon menus can be perused here. We’ll feature one every day throughout the Reveillon season, which runs in most of the Reveillon restaurants until December 31.The snowflake ratings are for the Reveillon menu, not the restaurant in general. Dishes marked with the symbol » are my recommendations.
Click here for our Christmas Lists for 2014.
I’ve checked it twice, and the thing I am most certain of is that more restaurants will announce that they’ve decided to open between now and Christmas Eve. When they do, we will add them to this list. We update it right down to Christmas Eve, so keep checking back if you still haven’t made your plans.
Sunday, December 7, 2014.
The Best Day Of Her Life.
Those whose birthdays or wedding anniversaries fall on a memorable date are lucky. Today is, in addition to the day that has lived in infamy since 1941, Mary Ann’s birthday. The number on it she takes in her stride. But that’s how it goes. I didn’t mind turning 40 or 50 or 60. It was 41, 51, and 61 that were hard to take, because they all established trends.
Mary Ann loves birthdays, especially her own. In ordinary years, we would already have held a few special events marking her milestone. But this is not an ordinary year, even with the zero at the end of her age. Planning Jude’s wedding festival next week overwhelms everything else.
But there was nothing missing from this party. Our friends the Fowlers offered us the use of their expansive for the occasion. Mary Ann cooked all day, to make sure she had the food she liked. That started with a large tray of salumi and cheeses, about which I heard more compliments than anything else–even though it involved no cooking, just arrangement on a big tray. She made puff-pastry pinwheels stuffed with ham and cheese. Beggar’s purses with mushrooms inside. A controversial shrimp mold–her big sister’s specialty, always loved by many but questioned by a few. MA being the way she is, she noted that her meatballs were tough and her artichoke balls the worst she ever made. Despite those drawbacks, I was told by more than a few guests that they liked all of that.
My assignments were to prepare an oyster dish (I devised a baked oyster dish with a topping made mostly of parsley and potato chips that turned out well enough that I will try it again and measure the ingredients. And shrimp remoulade, and wood-grilled sausages. (No occasion involving food can be without sausage, Mary Ann believes.) She also wanted me to tend a full bar and pour wine.
Mary Leigh, of course, built one of her brilliant cakes for her mother. All chocolate, of course. The Marys love their chocolate. The cutest part was a circular pile of cookies made in the shape of the number 60.
I had two surprises for my darling wife on this big day. The first was an all-evening concert by Daniel “The Gourmet Cellist” Lelchuk and Benjamin Hart. Both are members of the Louisiana Philharmonic. Violinist Benjamin is also the associate concertmaster of the LPO. To say that this was a superb musical note for the party understates it. Mary Ann holds Daniel in an esteem matched only by the one she feels for our son Jude. I thought the music would be a big surprise, but somehow she found out about it. Which took nothing from her enjoyment.
What she didn’t know was that near the end of the party, the doorbell would ring and in would stride Jude, just off the plane from Los Angeles. She had been trying to persuade him to take a day off and come to her birthday, saying (truthfully) that if he wasn’t there, the affair would add a touch of melancholy to her mood. Jude’s story was that he had just been here for Thanksgiving and would be back in a couple of days for his wedding. And that he had some urgent work to do on one of his movie productions. In fact, he bought airline tickets for today months ago.
A problem turned up. Delta changed its schedule, forcing Jude’s arrival to late evening. That turned out to be a good thing. All night MA moped a little. And suddenly, there he was, her golden boy. Nothing on earth could have pleased her more. Both she and the other women of her generation–particularly all three of her sisters–were weepy with joy.
The party was pretty good, too. I persuaded almost everybody to try a Negroni cocktail. Our string section was the first to indulge. (Daniel preferred his without the orange slice. An epicure, he.) We had a few older (early 1980s) bottles of wine, but I forgot to bring my ah-so cork remover and we had some trouble with disintegrating corks. Michael Fowler was pleased to lend me some bottles from his stock. The Fowlers might still be cleaning up the mess we made. It’s wonderful to have good friends.
When we ascended the steps to our home, Mary Ann said, “That was the best day. . . ” She paused for two seconds. “Of my life,” she concluded. She doesn’t indulge in hyperbole, and even wonderful things have problems in her view. But not tonight. This was perfection.
Spanakopita (Spinach Pie)
Spinach pie is everybody’s introduction to Greek cuisine. That’s lucky, because one taste of spinach pie hooks you for life. Fortunately, it’s also found in most restaurants whose cuisines were touched at any time in their histories by the Ottoman Empire. Some restaurants have taken to doing this as a small turnover, but this is the original casserole style. It’s more often served as an appetizer than as a side dish.
2 10-oz. bags fresh spinach, picked of stems, coarsely chopped
3 eggs
8 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup chopped white onion
1 Tbs. chopped garlic
1 tsp. lemon juice
2 Tbs. chopped fresh oregano leaves
1/2 tsp. dried dill weed
2 Tbs. butter
6 sheets phyllo pastry
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
1. Beat the eggs and combine with the feta cheese. Toss with the chopped spinach in a bowl.
2. Heat the olive oil in a skillet until it shimmers. Add the onions and garlic and saute until the garlic is aromatic, then add the lemon juice. Pour the pan contents over the spinach mixture. Add the chopped oregano and dill. Toss to combine all the ingredients completely.
3. Coat the inside of a glass baking dish (about 11 by 7 inches) with butter, then melt the remaining butter. Cut a piece of phyllo big enough to cover the bottom and overlap the sides of the dish. Brush the phyllo with butter, then place another sheet of phyllo over it. Butter and repeat until you have four sheets of phyllo in the dish.
4. Spoon the spinach mixture into the baking dish. Fold the overlapping phyllo on top of the spinach. Cut the remaining two sheets of phyllo to fit exactly, with butter between the layers. Make six or so cuts into the pastry to let steam out.
5. Bake the pie in the 350-degree oven until the phyllo browns and the mixture is heated all the way through–25-30 minutes. Allow to cool to just warm. Cut into squares and serve.
Serves six.
Seafood Muffuletta @ Parran’s Po-Boys
Owner Al Hornbrook inherited the seafood muffuletta when he took over the thirty-seven-year-old Parran’s some years ago. He was told that it was the first such sandwich in New Orleans. For the record, I don’t think it was–another, now-extinct place farther up Veterans was the first place I saw it. Parran’s can rightly claim to have the longest-running seafood muff, though. And perhaps the best. It’s fried oysters, shrimp, and catfish on a round, seeded muffuletta bread. The standard dressing is lettuce and a spicy mayo. I like mine with toasted bread, melted butter, pickles, and my own excess of hot sauce. The olive salad for which muffulettas are famous is available but ill-advised, I’d say. This thing is big enough for two, but more than a few people eat the whole thing.
Parran’s Po-Boys. Metairie: 3939 Veterans Blvd. 504-885-3416.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
December 15, 2014
Days Until. . .
Christmas–10
New Year’s Eve–17
Today’s Flavor
Stop everything, it’s National Cupcake Day. Proving that food vogues can involved the most insignificant things, there’s a national rage around the country right now for cafes and bakeries specializing in cupcakes. At least five major cookbooks have emerged on the subject in the last few years. One wonderful thing about a cupcake: just thinking about one warms the heart. But this too will pass.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Frost is a small rural community in the junction of State Highways 42 and 63 in Livingston Parish. A cluster of about a dozen houses are at the intersection, with a couple dozen more down the road. All of this is surrounded by pine and cypress woods, the land slowly declining into wetlands. In recent geological history, this was the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River built a lot of land south of there during the most recent tens of thousands of years. The nearest restaurant to Frost is Wayne’s Real Pit Barbecue, five miles north in the town of Livingston.
Edible Dictionary
croquette, n.–A ball or oval of some kind of starch, mixed or stuffed with chopped meat, seafood, vegetables, and/or cheese, coated with bread crumbs, then fried. The most common starches are potatoes (mashed, usually roughly) and rice. The stuffings usually have a strong enough flavor to stand out. If cheese is involved, it usually is the kind which when melted, pulls apart in strings. That gives rise to the Italian expression “suppli al telefono”–telephone wires–that is the nickname for croquettes. All the options tell how generic croquettes are. They range from thumb-size to golf-ball size. Lightness is the distinguishing characteristic of the best ones.
Deft Dining Rule #73:
In a restaurant with a well-trained service staff, it will be almost impossible to empty a glass of any beverage, water to wine. The servers will refill it before you get to the bottom of it.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
If you need to measure honey or molasses or some other thick liquid, measure the oil you’ll need first. (If there is no oil, pour some into the cup or spoon and pour it back out.) The thick syrupy liquid will not stick to the spoon or the cup.
Food Through History
The first reigning king ever to visit the United States did so today in 1874. King Kalakaua of the Sandwich Islands–soon to be renamed the Hawaiian Islands–was the guest of President Ulysses S. Grant.
Food On The Road
Today in 2004, about twelve million bees were killed as they were hosed off I-15 near Las Vegas. A truck carrying them in almost 500 colonies crashed into a wall and spilled the bees–in rush hour, yet. The bees were on their way to pollinate the almond crop in California. What a tragic loss of honey!
Restaurant Namesakes
Gustave Eiffel was born today in 1832. He designed and built one of the world’s most famous structures. The tower named for him in Paris is an immediately recognizable icon for all things French. Its image appears on thousands of French menus worldwide. From the beginning, The Eiffel Tower had a restaurant about a quarter of the way up. In the late 1970s it was discovered to be too heavy for the structure, and dismantled. The pieces wound up in New Orleans. Chef Daniel Bonnot and partner John Onorio, who’d worked together at Louis XVI, reassembled what was left of the old restaurant (much of the wood had rotted). It opened in 1985 as Restaurant de la Tour d’Eiffel on St. Charles Avenue at Josephine, to a great deal of acclaim. But it only lasted a few years. The building has seen many food operations since. It’s currently called Eiffel Society.
Annals Of Popular Cuisine
Today is as good a day as any to call the birthday of the ice cream cone. A patent for a mold used to form and bake the edible containers was issued today in 1903 to Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant who sold ice cream from a pushcart on Wall Street. He served the ice cream in folded waffles that he baked himself. It was so distinctive an idea that he soon had a fleet of carts. He took the idea to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. From there, the ice cream cone took over the world.
Food Namesakes
Fats Waller, one of the seminal figures of early jazz, with a singing voice as distinctive as his piano style, died today in 1943 of pneumonia. He was only 39. Oh yes he did that man done died. (Waller always ended his songs with a rambling line like that.). . . Mike Cherry, a quarterback for the Giants, was born today in 1973. . . The classical composer August Freyer came to earth today in 1803. . . The USS Swordfish became the first US submarine to sink a Japanese ship in World War II, today in 1941–just over a week after Pearl Harbor. After the war, it was blackened.
Words To Eat By
“By and by
God caught his eye.”
–Epitaph for a waiter, by American writer David McCord, born today in 1897.
Words To Drink By
“One never knows, do one?”–Fats Waller.
The Difference Between A Casual Wine Drinker And An Oenophile.
Those who take wine very seriously show certain reflexive moves.
Click here for the cartoon.