A Summary Of What Went Down The Year Just Past
The re-establishment of Brennan’s on Royal Street overshadows the story of dining in New Orleans in 2014. Like the only comparable development in recent history (Katrina, and I’m not exaggerating), Brennan’s departure and return pose many questions about the states of both business and cuisine in the New Orleans restaurant industry.
Twenty million dollars? “That’s Terry’s number,” Ralph Brennan tells me. He and Terry White are the main motive forces in the renaissance of Brennan’s. Ralph was a CPA before he got into his family’s restaurant business, so he looks at such figures with a critical eye. “I know what the real number is, but I don’t want to think about it,” he added. He didn’t tell me what the number was.
Whatever that means, of this there is no doubt: Brennan’s reconstruction–which went down to bedrock and DNA–is by many leagues the most expensive restaurant project ever undertaken in New Orleans.
The new main bar at Brennan’s.
On the other hand, in its peak years (1960s-1980s) Brennan’s was the most profitable single-location restaurant in the world. It had the uniquely favorable quality of opening three hundred seats at eight in the morning, then serving a full house at top menu dollar figures straight through until late evening. Question #1, then, is Can this magic be wrought all over again, after over a year’s absence from the scene?
Here’s a followup question: Is this really Brennan’s, or a new restaurant? The façade is the same, and the legendary breakfast menu. But the chef is as near the cutting edge of local cookery as the former kitchen was traditional. Looking over the menu, we find a selection that is only sprinkled with the dishes for which Brennan’s was famous. And even definitive dishes like the turtle soup and the eggs Sardou have been reformulated. Trout Nancy was your favorite dish? Maybe it will run as a special.
I dined at the old Brennan’s enough times that I knew my way around the historic building. (Late 1700s, old even by French Quarter standards). Even so, I guessed wrong most of the time when I tried to orient myself throughout the heavily (but very authentically) restored structure. Even the battered wood floor on the second level proves to have come from another historic building.
All those posers asked, there is no question that New Orleans diners and even familiar visitors to the city are intrigued and delighted by the new Brennan’s. Ralph knows that people will get used to the new layout and the new menu. In exchange for patience, we get fresh surroundings, a courtyard open for dining (it seldom was before), a major menu update for the first time in decades, and (get this!) somewhat lower menu prices.
So what is something like that worth in the market? Enough to make back the nut? Good enough that a meal at Brennan’s will once again be on everyone’s A-list? This will intrigue us for years to come.
Here’s one early indicator. On December 16, the New Orleans Eat Club (an ad-hoc gathering of my readers and radio listeners) put on tuxedos for an eight-course, $150 dinner at Brennan’s. The whole 56-guest room sold out in a few days–without anyone’s even knowing what the menu or wines would be.
Someday, someone (not me, although it’s tempting) will write a book called “The Brennan Family Restaurant Saga,” explaining how and why all this happened. It would be fascinating to you and me. But the Brennans aren’t interested.
So. . .uh. . . what else went on this year? Let’s do the numbers. On December 15, 2013, my list of open restaurants showed 1383 of them. On the same date this year, we have 1405. The peak of this census was in the spring, when the count was 1414. Although most restaurants report that they had a pretty good summer, we had more closings than openings from August through October. That’s typical, but usually it’s followed by an uptick. But the fall restaurant count was flat. That was the story of the whole year on the North Shore, where there was more turnover in terms of percentage than on the South Shore.
When I first began this annual year-end analysis in 1980, it contained a list of the best restaurants in town at year’s end. That list included no small number of perennials like Commander’s and Galatoire’s. Now such an approach–regardless of how much sense it makes–seems antediluvian. Now the dining public is much more interested in the best new restaurants of the year. (Not counting Brennan’s, which is sort of is new.)
1. Square Root. Uptown: 1800 Magazine St. 504-309-7800. It took a lot of guts for Chef Phillip Lopez to open Square Root in the spring of 2014. It’s sixteen seats at a counter in a see-through, dark space on Magazine Street. The menu of the day encompasses a dozen or more courses, most of which require detailed explanations from the chef. The “cooking” process may be still in progress as he places the “plate” in front of you.
Foie gras with pickled blueberries.
I have a low tolerance of contrivances at the dinner table, and I went into my three dinners at Square Root not wanting to like it. But I can’t say anything but that the eating is as viscerally enjoyable as it is thoughtful and complicated. I have some questions about the business model. Restaurants with small customer counts, even when the customers are spending in three figures for their dinners, are difficult to manage. But if anyone can do it, it’s the brilliant Chef Lopez, and my thinking is that parts of his concept will evolve into the next new phylum of restaurant practice in New Orleans.
Wine racks in Marcello’s dining room.
2. Marcello’s. CBD: 715 St. Charles Ave. 504-581-6333. Much closer to the earth but interesting enough to be Second Best New Restaurant is Marcello’s. It’s an offspring of a wine store in Lafayette, serving what they call Sicilian food (really, the inspirations come from all parts of Italy) with highly contemporary twists and local ingredients. The wine program is brilliant. You pick a bottle from the racks running through the restaurant, take it to your table, and are charged an alarmingly small percentage markup.
Danny Millan in the bar at Cava.
3. Cava. Lakeview: 789 Harrison Ave. 504-304-9034. Unlike the previous two restaurants, Cava is entirely traditional. Owner Danny Millan comes out of the dwindling fine-dining category, with stints at Brennan’s (!), August, and the Sazerac. He brings a taste for traditional cooking and intensive service to the restaurant-rich Harrison Avenue in Lakeview.
4. Mopho. City Park Area: 514 City Park Ave. 504-482-6845. Chef Michael Gulotta left the exec-chef job at Restaurant August to open this place, in which Vietnamese ingredients and flavors are given a new spin, with a few New Orleans components. It is wildly popular with other chefs, as well as the growing audience for Southeast Asian cooking.
Bun noodles with everything at Namese.
5. Namese. Mid-City: 4077 Tulane Ave. 504-483-8899. This is the first major restaurant from the second generation of Vietnamese people in New Orleans. If you always eat pho with brisket when you dine on the food of Vietnam, you will find it done well here. But if you are up for something a little different (or even a lot), that is here too. All credible, delicious and very fresh.
Looking for trends (beyond the clear Vietnamese movement above), we find John Besh still opening more new restaurants. I can’t remember the last year in which he did not, and he already has one in the works for next year. Johnny Sanchez–a cooperative venture with another star chef with a television show–is a Mexican restaurant that stretched the boundaries about as much as did Mizado, 2013’s expansion of the Latin American offerings. We will see more of this in the coming years.
Good news: we may have reached a point beyond which there is no room for another gourmet hamburger specialist, regardless of its quality. Meanwhile, the growth in the market for Naples-style, wood-burning-oven pizza does not seem to have slowed. The best of these in 2014 were Oak Oven and Happy Italian, which not only bake great pizzas but do so in Harahan, a part of town that is finally getting the restaurant community it never had.
Finally, those of us who lament the de-emphasis on any kind of formality in dining, even when the check passes a C-note per person, decried this deterioration further during 2014. The dress codes disappear in lockstep with tablecloths. But I may see evidence that this may show signs of ending. It involves the opening of a beautiful, formal restaurant called Brennan’s.
Monday, December 22, 2014.
An Ordinary Day Before Some Big Ones.
Mary Ann spends her day hanging with friends, leaving me at home alone almost all day. It’s after dark before I get around to red beans and rice with smoked sausage at New Orleans Food and Spirits. I can indulge in this late overload because there is no chorus rehearsal tonight. I an very poorly rehearsed for the madrigal dinner NPAS will present three weeks from now.
One job I do manage to get done is the purchase of a prime rib roast for Christmas dinner. I find more or less what I’m looking for at Rouse’s. They have prime, aged tomahawk steaks, so named for their close resemblance to that indigenous weapon. It looks like a lamb chop, but is four or five times as large. The single-bone jobs in the display case are big enough for two people each. I persuade the butcher to cut me a roast three ribs wide. Even after they trim off the excess bones, this beautiful slab of beef tips the scale at about eight pounds. The cash register chokes on the price: $137.23. They had to get a supervisor to make that figure go through.
I have one more stop, to collect a ham from Aquistapace, which has the best price in town on the Chisesi VIP boneless ham. (The definitive spec for any major work done with ham in this town.) I think we have enough meat for the dozen and a half people coming over in their imaginary sleighs this Thursday.
Tuesday, December 23, 2015.
The New Strategy At Antoine’s.
An all-day downpour is enough for flood warnings here and there. But I must drive into town through the monsoon, because Antoine’s head Rick Blount and his public relations guy Larry Lytle want to have dinner with me. Last week they presented their plans for the upcoming year–the restaurant’s 175th–to a group of journalists. I couldn’t go–our Eat Club at NOLA created a conflict. But they say that I am such an important person that they want to run through the whole plan for my inspection. Flattery is a useful tool in the marketing kit.
The Christmas tree in the big red dining room at Antoine’s.
To avoid getting caught in another wave of thunderstorms, I go to Antoine’s about an hour early. I park myself at a table right next to a gin and tonic and read a magazine, returning to a habit of most of my adult life, but one that has fallen into disuse in the last few years. I dine alone much less often now than I once did, and that’s where and when I did my reading. Nowadays, most of my meals are in the company of one or both of the Marys. I may have to get into the habit of reading at home. I wish MA would let me get a recliner.
Rick and Larry show up right on time. Rick orders a bottle of Chassagne Montrachet. He tells how well the restaurant is doing, but always about a few big issues or two looming overhead. That is the lot of a man who manages a business that is also a major cultural institution, situated in an historic building. I lighten things up by noting how superb was Jude’s wedding rehearsal dinner, upstairs in the Roy Alciatore room two weeks ago. We go through a pile of souffle potatoes and the wine as Rick talks about the generations of management whose work he inherited, and I season it with stories I have heard. These are topics that require much exposition.
We have a few appetizers. It comes up that the word “appetizer” was created by Roy Alciatore (Antoine’s grandson) himself, for a contest put on by the National Restaurant Association in the 1950s. Rick talks about Eiswein, and I persuade him to try an Auslese (German late-harvest, botrytis Riesling), which I would say is even better. I don’t know whether I convert him, but he is much impressed by the $145 bottle.
Antoine’s new history and cookbook, by Roy Guste, Jr.
After a long time, we get down to business. Antoine’s 175th anniversary will be much bigger than its 150th. (Which I recall as having been hardly recognized at all.) Already accomplished: the publication of a big, heavy new book. It combines the recipes that Roy Guste, Jr. published in two editions of Antoine’s Cookbook with an entirely new history of the restaurant, also written by Roy Jr. He was Antoine’s “proprietor” (defined loosely as the top-ranking family manager of the restaurant) in the 1970s and 1980s. He and Rick Blount are cousins, in the same generation. Roy Jr. has been largely absent from the business in recent decades, although he has kept busy with writing books and the real estate business. He and I are near-exact contemporaries, and attended Jesuit at the same time.
I am glad to see that Roy Jr. is involved in the anniversary. He is almost certainly the most knowledgeable person alive on the subject of Antoine’s history. What I’ve read of the new book is almost entirely new to me and very interesting.
Rick says that the anniversary will trigger changes in the menu, with the idea of addressing actual customer needs instead of fealty to little-knowm traditions. Antoine’s will finally recognize that the incomprehensible all-French menu–and even the translated menu that followed it–made dining at Antoine’s a challenge for first-timers. He also notes that the unadorned entrees that Antoine’s sends out now come across as ungenerous and stark. Those are just two adjustments we will see.
To make sure everybody knows that Antoine’s is passing a milestone, not a kidney stone, the restaurant will stage a grand dinner at the James Beard House this year. That’ll show ‘em that the old place is still very much alive and headed into a newly-defined future.
Entrees arrive. Rick and Larry have different fish dishes. I am similarly tempted–waiter Charles Carter says the pompano is large and pretty–but what I really am hungry for is lamb chops. They seem to have changed the source of the lamb. Rick admits that it is not the Colorado lamb I remember. It is, however, eminently edible and in a trencherman’s portion. Covering that are both sauces from chicken Rochambeau (a sweet brown sauce from a hundred years ago, and bearnaise from an even earlier time).
To walk off a little of this big dinner, we get up to take a look at some reconstruction behind the Rex Room. A new passageway from the cluster of private dining spaces now leads to new rest rooms and, past an auxiliary kitchen, to a place where one can enter the wine cellar. Rick suggests that it might be possible to serve dinners in the wine cellar, but not all the pieces have been put together.
Rick admits that he is not a gourmet in the way his maternal grandfather was. The grandiosity that Roy Alciatore applied to everything at Antoine’s is clearly passé in this age when dress codes, tablecloths, and classical cooking are becoming extinct. Rick saw how far he could go at Antoine’s when he opened the Hermes Bar, which every night is filled with a drinking and music scene that might have moved Roy Alciatore to call the cops.
And then Rick releases a shocker–sort of. The Japanese Room–originally built a century ago, shuttered from December 7, 1941 until the mid-1980s–has passed into history. Nobody could make the connection between the oldest restaurant in New Orleans and a room decorated with a Japanese leitmotif. The paintings of flowers on the crown molding inside will be the last vestige of a peculiar story.
Also part of the souvenirs of the anniversary year will be a red, leather-covered blank book. The 1948 novel Dinner at Antoine’s was written by Frances Parkinson Keyes in just such a notebook, the original of which was found in recent times. I get the impression from Rick that what he’d like would be for authors to write fictional works whose setting is at least partially in the restaurant. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, I am working on the plot of my own contribution to this. I have my red book. . . my pen is filled with ink. Maybe this is something I can do while lunching in the Dungeon during the 175th. Maybe the radio station management will see this as a valid reason for moving the radio show back to late afternoons.
Antoine’s. French Quarter: 713 St Louis. 504-581-4422.
Brabant Potatoes
In most restaurants, these are nothing more than cube-shaped French fries. But if you take the extra step outlined below–drizzling them with garlic butter and then running them through the oven for a few minutes–you’ll have a side dish so incredible that you’d better make a lot of them.
4 large white potatoes, very starchy (no green)
2-3 cups vegetable oil (preferably canola or peanut oil)
2 cloves garlic, minced very fine
1 sprig parsley, minced very fine
1 stick butter
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 tsp. Creole seasoning
1. Scrub the outsides of the potatoes under cold running water, or peel if you don’t like potato skins. Cut into large dice about 1/2 inch on a side, wash again, and drain well. Allow 5-10 minutes for the potatoes to dry.
2. Meanwhile, heat vegetable oil in a large saucepan or deep skillet to 375 degrees. Put the potatoes in and fry until they’re a very light brown. Remove them from the oil with a skimmer and drain on paper towels.
3. Arrange potatoes in one layer on a baking pan or dish. In a skillet over medium-low heat, melt the butter in the olive oil. When butter is hot, add the garlic and parsley and cook just until the garlic is fragrant.
4. Remove butter from heat and spoon over the potatoes. Put the pan of potatoes into the oven and bake for five to seven minutes–until edges becomes a crisp, medium-dark brown. Sprinkle with Creole seasoning and serve with a little extra garlic butter, if you have any left.
Serves four.
Couscous @ Jamila’s
Couscous is the national dish of Morocco and popular across Northern Africa. It’s been catching on here, with the little orts of pasta steamed over a savory broth of lamb, beef, chicken, or vegetables. Jamila’s makes couscous a form truer to the ethnic style than I’ve seen anywhere else, using a real couscousier and mixing it with vegetables and meat. It’s deceptively light as you dig in, but stays with you.
Jamila’s. Uptown: 7806 Maple. 504-866-4366.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
January 2, 2014
Days Until. . .
Twelfth Night–4
Mardi Gras45
Happy New Year!
This is the last time I’ll wish you a Happy New Year in this space. But you and I will keep on saying that to people we meet for at least a couple of weeks. When do you stop saying “Happy New Year!”? I asked that question on the radio about fifteen years ago. It became a contest, to guess the last consecutive day on which someone would say “Happy New Year!” on the air. The date was May 17. “Happy New Year!” became a catchphrase on the show, reaching its ultimate expression in 2010, during which someone said the phrase every day of the year. That has persisted every year since. New listeners must be puzzled to hear not one but numerous people say “Happy New Year!” in August on the program.
The Eighth Day of Christmas
Eight maids may show up a-milking. In other versions of the same song, we’re alerted to the fact dat you ate by your mama’s, have gold and silver tinsel for your tree, received an indoor plastic birdbath, and ate (our own lyrics) eight links of sausage.
Food Calendar
Back to those eight maids a-milking: The first of them brings skim milk, which tastes terrible but keeps your bones strong. The second has one per cent milk–too weak for coffee, but you can make good Creole cream cheese from it. The maid sells two-percent milk, which is tolerable for cereal, but not for mashed potatoes or bread pudding. Maid Number Four has whole, three-and-a-half-percent milkfat milk. Good old regular homogenized, which these days sells less well than two-percent. Behind her is a maid with four-plus-percent milk, made by smaller dairies like Smith’s Creamery. You have to shake it, because the cream still rises to the top of the bottle, like in the old days. This stuff is fantastic for making cafe au lait. Milkmaid Five has light cream–also known as coffee cream. That’s is hard to find around New Orleans, although it’s common in the Northeast. For most purposes, instead of that we’ll have to use what the next maid has: half-and-half. Half cream and half milk, with about the milkfat content of light cream but not quite as good. (It’s about fifteen percent.) Now here’s the milkmaid with whipping cream at around thirty percent, good enough for making whipped cream. But for sauces, what we want is the offering of Milkmaid Eight, who has heavy whipping cream–forty percent butterfat. Put it in a jar and shake it, and you can make your own butter.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Blackeye Creek–which sounds like the perfect place to eat in the days around New Year’s–runs for about two miles through the Vinegar Hill Indian Rock Scenic Area, in the northeast corner of Oregon. The creek begins at a spring on the southeastern slope of Black Butte, near the Little Doe Mine. It ends at the Granite Boulder Creek. All of this is in the well-forested Blue Mountains, a beautiful place to hike–if probably on the cold side on New Year’s. It’s such wild country that you have to drive thirty-one miles to Prairie City, to dine at the Hitchin’ Post Cafe.
Edible Dictionary
Wensleydale, n., adj.–A cow’s-milk cheese made in Yorkshire in England. It’s one of the most popular cheeses in that country, but not often seen here. The more traditional form of Wensleydale is a veined blue cheese, richer, smoother, and far less tangy than Stilton, another famous British blue cheese. But white Wensleydale has become more common in recent times, perhaps because of the influence of Cheddar on the market. It’s crumbly, broken into chunks rather than sliced.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
Here’s how to open a coconut. Buy a quarter-inch drill bit and wash it. Use it only for this purpose, and store it in a kitchen drawer. With a cordless drill, drill into one of the eyes, and drain out the coconut water. Drink it! It will be sweet and it’s very healthful. Then take the coconut outside and put it on concrete. Hit it hard with a hammer until it cracks open. A good fresh coconut’s meat will fall from the shell. If it doesn’t, use an oyster knife to separate it. Be careful! It’s easy for your hand to slip while doing this.
Eating Around The World
Today in 1492–which would prove a big year for the country–the last stronghold of the Moors in Grenada fell to the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella, and modern Spain was born. The long Islamic domination of the Iberian peninsula blended with the previous Roman influence to create a rich and unique Spanish culture. Its food, architecture, and music are among the world’s most influential, from Latin America to the Phillippines. In this country, we’re just beginning to learn about the goodness of Spanish cooking, but we never seem to get any farther along than that.
Eating Across America
Georgia, the Peach State, became the fourth of the United States on this date in 1788. It was the first Southern state to ratify the Constitution.
Clear-Air Dining
Today in 2007, smoking was banned in Louisiana restaurants, a move that a majority of people have wanted for years. Among them: most restaurateurs, who found the enforcement of smoking and non-smoking sections made both sides angry. Any fears about lost business don’t seem to have come to pass. . . Coincidentally, today in 1966 was the first day on which cigarette packages were required to carry health warnings, the first step along the way to destroying the addictive popularity of what even smokers call “coffin nails.”
Deft Dining Rule #222
The era of the two-course dinner in gourmet restaurants is now officially underway. Any more than that is now considered a major feast. This rule is in conflict with another one that says that the era of small plates is in force.
The Saints
Today is the feast day of St. Basil the Great, a Greek church leader in the Fourth Century, one of the few saints with a food name. We also celebrate St. Macarius of Alexandria. Before he became a monk in 335, he made and sold pastries, candies, and fruit confections. For that reason he is the patron saint of bakers of fancy pastries.
Annals Of Overindulgence Remedies
Aspirin was first sold in tablet form on this date in 1915 by the drug’s inventor, the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. Too bad. They really needed it the day before, the morning after a wild New Year’s Eve party. (Or maybe not. This was right in the middle of World War I.)
Food Namesakes
Defrocked TV minister Jim Bakker (pronounced “baker”) was born today in 1939. . . Perfect-game pitcher, Cy Young Award winner David Cone stepped onto the big mound on this date in 1963. . . Nathaniel Bacon was born today in 1647. He led a power struggle that became known as Bacon’s Rebellion in the early Virginia colony. . . On this day in 1929, Evelyn “Bobbi” Trout set a new women’s world record for flying endurance by being airborne for over twelve hours. . . Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a British explorer of the Antarctic and the author of the well-named Worst Journey In The World, left on his life’s journey today in 1886.
Words To Eat By
“My illness is due to my doctor’s insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.”–W.C. Fields.
“The human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for dogs’ milk, horses’ milk, or giraffes’ milk.”–Michael Klaper, M.D.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t mind trying all of those!
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Trans-Fats Can Be Funny.
Today is Anti-Trans-Fat Day, when the ingredient was banned in new York City a couple of years ago. It was tried before, and see what happened.
Click here for the cartoon.