Among the most delicious of special summer attractions is the Coolinary menu put forth by Frank and Marna Brigtsen at their fine bistro in Riverbend. Not only because the food is great, but because the dining room is a little looser than the packed house in season. The program: three courses, for $28.
Which is seven geets back from last year’s price. What gives? Good news here too. The early evening menu (5:30-6:30 p.m., Tuesday-Friday) is made up largely of the most popular and best dishes created during Frank and Marna’s experiment at Charlie’s Seafood in Harahan. Almost as soon as the Brigtsens left Charlie’s, customers began asking for some of the home-style cooking from that venue.
And here it is:
Caesar Salad
Romaine, baby spinach, & homemade croutons
~or~
Italian Salad
Tomato, artichokes, olive salad, parmesan, boiled egg, vinaigrette
~or~
Seafood Okra Gumbo
Shrimp, oysters, & andouille sausage
~or~
Crab & Corn Soup
~or~
Shrimp Calas (Creole Rice Fritters)
Homemade Tartar Sauce
~or~
“Dirty Boy”
Dirty rice mix (no rice) on buttered French bread
~~~~~
Seafood Salad
Organic greens, tomato, egg, boiled shrimp, crabmeat, broccoli, & pesto balsamic vinaigrette
~or~
Catfish And Grits
Mustard & cornmeal fried Des Allemands catfish with cheddar cheese grits & Creole sauce
~or~
Seafood Stuffed Eggplant
Shrimp & lemon parmesan sauce
~or~
Grilled Gulf Fish, Sautéed Vegetables
Shrimp & crabmeat bordelaise (add $5)
~~~~~
Lemon Ice Box Crème Brulée
~or~
Bread Pudding du Jour
~or~
Pecan Pie with Caramel Sauce
Brigtsen’s
Riverbend: 723 Dante. 504-861-7610. www.brigtsens.com.
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Monday, June 9, 2014.
Homemade Red Beans And Italian Sausage.
Just about the time I go on the air today, Mary Ann asks whether I’d like red beans and rice for dinner. Her timing is deliberate, I believe. She knows that I can’t do any involved cooking in the middle of the show. And that I have a thing for red beans on Monday. And a few Italian sausages bought from Vincent Riccobono a few weeks ago.
I have no choice but to let her do it. What would be left out this time? She got the beans and the seasonings right, but she starts without any significant oil, rendered bacon fat, or anything else necessary give red beans that distinctive flavor. But she’s trying to lose some pounds, and gives the light touch to everything. I drizzle some extra-virgin olive oil over my plate, and that works fine.
The only other item on the table is a big salad. I am getting to the bottom of a big bottle of demi-remoulade I made about two years ago. It’s made of olive oil, red wine vinegar, a little garlic, a lot of Creole mustard and paprika, and enough water to make it emulsify.
I love that “remoulade” is becoming a standard salad dressing in most restaurants. Another New Orleans uniqueness!
Tuesday, June 10, 2014.
Coffee Beans, Alligators, And A New (Sort Of) Seafood House.
Almost two inches of rain fall overnight and this morning. I half expected to find the road covered with water from the overflowing branch. But the only battle was with about eight miles of downpour on the Causeway.
The Round Table Radio Show (some day I will decide how this ought to be capitalized) brought Brian and Brooke Zar from Restaurant Des Familles. That restaurant, on the edge of the Jean Lafitte National Park, in a definitive bayou environment, was already good when the Zars took over a few years ago.
It’s even better now. An Eat Club we held over there about a year ago remains a nice memory, starting with as fine an alligator sauce piquant as I’ve eaten. Okay, I haven’t eaten more tha a handful of versions. But this was quite a dish by any standard. Brian brought some of it for our guests in the studio, where he says that the dish has become a signature item for him. Complete with the possibility of live alligators climbing out of the swamp and up to the restaurant’s windows.
Danette Murret, the owner of Nola Beans in Lakeview, was there to talk about coffee. The shop is good and busy in the mornings, but we got to talking about the rest of the day. Turns out this is not a concern: Danette’s other job is as a CPA.
Mary Ann seems always to include on the Tuesday show a restaurateur whose place I haven’t tried yet. About a year ago Key Orleans picked up where Shuck ‘n’ Jive left off–in a seemingly good location in Mandeville. But the place has a record of devouring its occupants after just a few years, even when the food is very good.
At Key Orleans, Chris Binnings takes a different tack from those of his predecessors. As the name suggests, he mixes some South Florida flavors with the New Orleans seafood menu. The menu is appealing. I think we’ll try it sometime soon. The North Shore never has enough good seafood houses.
After three hours of miscellaneous radio work and my usual nap, I head out to Harahan for dinner at the year-old Happy Italian. Lenny Minutello–a food pro I’ve known for a long time–took over the former Nuccio’s, expanded it, and installed a much bigger menu than I expect to find. I also am surprised to see how far he deviates from the standard New Orleans Italian selection.
Baked ziti with garlic sauce, Gorgonzola, and walnuts.
It’s so different that I ask him what I should order. He says that the baked ziti (not something we see around here often) is made with Gorgonzola (Italian blue) cheese, a garlic sauce, and walnuts. “404–Dish not found!” my memory reports. I’d better try it. It comes to the table bubbling in a big crock holding enough for at least two. Very rich. It would make a great side for Lenny’s seafood dishes.
Italian salad for. . .one?
It’s possible that my inability to finish the pasta dish owed to the size of the Italian salad. I asked for the small one, and was brought a collection of greens, tomatoes, olives, salami, ham and cheeses big enough to split. “But that is the small one,” the waitress says.
I am mainly curious about Lenny’s pizza oven, having heard him talk about it in a radio commercial. It’s a conveyor-belt contraption–the bane of classic pizza. But it has an interesting difference. Instead of open grates carrying the pizza through, the conveyor belt is made of thick, wide, long slabs of granite, heated up to about 550 degrees. I order a pie to sample and take home for Mary Ann. The gizmo works, but needs fine-tuning. The top and rim of the crust are nicely toasted, but the bottom–even though it’s in constant contact with the hot rock–comes out pale. I’m just guessing, but I think that slowing down the passage of the pizza would help.
Lenny wants me to see his addition to the restaurant, a room full of tables covered with red-checked tablecloths. It’s more homey than the somewhat severe lines of the main room. But he uses it mostly for big parties. Harahan is a family town, and I’ll bet he gets his money’s worth out of that new resource.
Departing the Happy Italian, I drive around St. Rita’s Church and School. It’s where I spent three happy years in sixth through eighth grades. Where I was confirmed, and where I was when JFK was assassinated. First place I danced with a girl or played on a sports team. I never cease to be amazed by how little the complex has changed. I feel as if I could step inside the school building and walk directly to my eighth grade desk, there to see the gentle, wimple-framed face of Sister Ann Michelle, who started me on my New Yorker Magazine habit and encouraged my literacy in other ways.
Hey! It occurs to me that it’s only a few days since the fiftieth anniversary of my graduation from that wonderful school! I wonder if there was a reunion.
Happy Italian. Harahan: 7105 Jefferson Hwy. 504-305-4666.
Basin Seafood
Uptown: 3222 Magazine St.. 504-302-7391. Map.
Casual.
AE DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
During the past year or two, New Orleans restaurateurs and their customers are showing a much-expanded interest in primitive fish dishes. Whole fish in particular is, for the first time in many decades, a serious drawing card for restaurants willing to take the substantial trouble to maintain such a menu item. A lot of the increase can be blamed on the Restaurant Depot, a wholesale store that makes whole fish much more easily available for restaurants than it has been in a long time.
The most celebrated vendor of whole and very basic fish is the new Peche, recently called the best new restaurant in America by James Beard’s ghost. While we’re waiting for the effects of that to calm down, we can move uptown on the same street (Magazine, home of 75 restaurants now) to Basin Seafood, which opened around the same time Peche did, and is almost as good–particularly with the whole fish.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
Basin is your basic utilitarian seafood house en every way except one. Although it plies the flow of Louisiana fish and shellfish to build its menu, this is not the place if you’re hungry for a fried seafood platter. The techniques of cooking and the flavors that result from them are from a different cookbook, although not one that is likely to puzzle any eater for long. Sauces, even the ones that sound as if they make a strong statement, step aside to let the fish take over.
Whole red snapper at Basin.
WHAT’S GOOD
The less complicated the dish, the better it’s likely to be here. The whole fish dish of the day is made with first-class piscines, as evidenced by the two appearances of red snapper, which is about as good as fish gets. With only one exception (the frying, here for those who recognize no other way to have fish cooked), the fish is cooked a point, such gossamer textures that it comes right off the bone. The menu shows three times as many starters and entrees, a cue as to how to play the game.
BACKSTORY
Chef Edgar Caro, the Colombian native who made a big hit up Magazine Street with Baru Bistro, opened Basin in late 2013, with a couple of partners with deep roots in the seafood world. They took over a historic space: the former Flagons, in the 1980s the city’s first wine bar.
Grilled oysters at Basin Seafood.
DINING ROOM
Basin replaced a worn-out old pizza joint and didn’t do much to alter it. Except for the many people whose idea of a real New Orleans place is Jacque’s-Imo’s or Uglesich’s, the place needs a deep renovation. The open kitchen fills the room with good aromas from the stove. Tables are not entirely out of the kitchen traffic. The most popular seats are on the sidewalk outside, which blend with the outside tables of neighboring Amici and Salu. Or the ones on the small patio behind the restaurant.
ONLINE MENU LOCATION
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Starters
»Raw oysters
»Tuna tartare, watermelon, cucumber, avocado
»Octopus ceviche, habanero, avocado, lime, cilantro, jicama
Charbroiled oysters
Crab and crawfish beignets
Duck breast poppers, cream cheese, jalapeño, bacon
»Royal red shrimp, garlic butter
»Oyster mushroom risotto
Fried kale, cherry tomato & basil salad
Roasted brussels sprouts, bacon, sweet chili glaze
Cajun fries, bacon, trio of sauces
»Seafood gumbo
Soup of the day
»Arugula and pickled beet salad, goat cheese croquette
Fried oyster Caesar salad
~
Entrees
Fried catfish, grits, braised kale, tasso, creamed crawfish
»Grilled tuna steak, shaved brussels sprout salad, ginger aioli
»Bacon wrapped swordfish, oyster mushroom risotto
Seared duck breast, mashed potatoes, bacon, beurre rouge
»»Whole grilled fish, roasted jalapeño chimichurri, dirty rice
~
Poor Boy Sandwiches
»Fried oyster, shrimp, catfish or combo
»Cochon de lait
FOR BEST RESULTS
The ultimate meal here is to split the whole fish two ways, after preceding it with at least two runs of appetizers. On Tuesdays, raw oysters go for fifty cents each through the early evening. The interesting assortment of craft beers are perfect for the food.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The place is quite a bit worse for wear, and someday will need a thorough renovation. If they take the trouble to serve fresh-cut fries, why do they not also fry them to order?
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 +1
Wine & Bar
Hipness +2
Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Sidewalk tables
Open Sunday dinner
Open Monday dinner
Historic
Oyster bar
Difficult curbside parking; you may have to walk a few blocks.
No reservations
Crawfish Pie
I don’t really like crawfish pie the way it’s usually made–as a thickened crawfish etouffee baked in a little pie shell. This version is a bit richer, more herbal (with an up-front garlic tinge), and less red-peppery. It’s also folded into a triangle of phyllo pastry, and comes out looking like a Middle Eastern spinach pie. That eliminates the worst part of the standard crawfish pie–the fat-logged crust. You can also make these using small vol-au-vents (“patty shells”).
Crawfish are running low at the end of the season, but picked crawfish tail meat is in good supply now. One more thing: resist the temptation to add cheese of any kind.
2 cups Louisiana crawfish tails
1/2 stick butter
4 Tbs. flour
1 tsp. fresh, finely chopped garlic
3/4 cup half-and-half, warmed
2 eggs, beaten
4 slices bacon, fried crisp, drained, then crumbled
1 tsp. lemon juice
10 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, leaves only, chopped
1/2 tsp. dill
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cayenne
1 tsp. paprika
Phyllo pastry sheets
Crawfish pie in phyllo pastry (vol-au-vent).
1. If the crawfish tails are very large, cut them into two or three pieces.
2. Heat the butter over medium heat in a saucepan until it bubbles, then stir in the flour and make a blond roux. Don’t allow the roux to brown.
3. Add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds. Lower the heat to the lowest setting and add the warmed half-and-half. Whisk until the sauce thickens to the texture of light mashed potatoes. Add half of the beaten egg and whisk until blended in.
4. Add add the crawfish and all the other ingredients except the phyllo and the remaining beaten egg. Simmer, stirring once or twice, for about two minutes. Remove from the heat.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
5. Unfold the phyllo pastry and separate ten sheets. Wrap the remainder and return to the box and the refrigerator. Cut the phyllo sheets into three strips, four to five inches wide and twelve to fourteen inches long. Dampen a clean towel and keep it on top of the phyllo you’re not yet using to prevent its drying out.
6. Spoon about two tablespoons of the crawfish mixture onto one end of two thicknesses of phyllo strips. Brush lightly with egg at the other end. Fold the phyllo over the filling at a 45-degree angle, and keep folding over till the end. Seal the edges with your fingers. Set the finished triangles on a greased baking sheet and continue making more until all the filling is gone.
7. Bake the triangles in a 400-degree oven until browned and crisp. Serve immediately, or keep warm for an hour or less.
Serves eight to twelve.
Stuffed Shrimp In Phyllo @ Maple Street Cafe
Big, peeled, butterflied shrimp, broiled to near-sizzling and served with a butter sauce–that’s a familiar appetizer on menus around town. Some of those involve some kind of stuffing. The version they do at this pleasant little café in the Maple Street commercial district is the best I’ve had. The crabmeat stuffing is light and moist, and kept that way by being wrapped with a few layers of phyllo–the flaky pastry widely used in Middle Eastern cooking. The creamy-looking lemon butter finishes off a very good dish. Match a few of those up with the restaurant’s excellent oysters amandine and eggplant cakes with crabmeat, and you have a unique and different seafood platter for an entree.
Maple Street Cafe. Riverbend: 7623 Maple. 504-314-9003.
West End & Bucktown: 124 Lake Marina Drive. 504-304-0811.
This dish is ranked #79 in NOMenu’s list of the 500 best dishes in New Orleans restaurants.
June 17, 2014
Days Until. . .
Eat Club Dinner @ Bombay Club1
Tales Of The Cocktails 29
Observances
On June 19, 1910, Father’s Day was celebrated for the first time. The place was Spokane, Washington. It’s only recently that Father’s Day has become a serious dining day. This is because, really, nobody cares about pleasing Dad. If you forget Mother’s Day, that’s a capital offense. Forget Father’s Day? Eh. (You should have seen the cards I got from my family yesterday, all of which were hilarious but essentially insulting.) I think the reason more people are taking their fathers and grandfathers out to a meal on that day is that the wives and kids want to go out, and Father’s Day is a fitting pretext. I also believe that most fathers, given their true wishes, would stay home while everyone goes out, as long as nobody tells him what to do. For a change.
Food Calendar
Today is Eat Your Vegetables Day. Because it’s good for you, reduces incidence of mustache cancer, etc., etc. Most of us actually like vegetables. I could be a vegetarian if I didn’t like steak so much. It’s easy to understand why some people don’t like their vegetables. It’s because diners expect to get a vegetable side dish with their entrees at no added cost. Because it’s free, restaurants and cooks feel little pressure to give the sides much attention. This is true even in some expensive, allegedly gourmet places.
Some restaurants, fortunately, take a different tack. They buy unusual vegetables (baby turnips, salsify, broccoli raab, pea shoots). They don’t treat these with particularly more care than the neighborhood cafe does its peas and mashed potatoes, but it at least creates an illusion that they care. At the lower end of the prices spectrum, the few restaurant that try to make their vegetables special usually do so by melting cheese all over them.
If you don’t believe all of this, ask a vegetarian how tough it is to get a good vegetable plate in most restaurants. Such a thing is a collection of afterthoughts.
It is getting better. A few restaurants are going after locally-grown vegetables with much greater interest. But the problem remains: the typical diner is much more interested in the protein on the plate, which must be done well. He won’t pay extra for vegetables (except, curiously, in a steak house, where the vegetables are no better than in the places where they’re free). And so the pressure is down on the vegetables.
Deft Dining Rule #52:
A restaurant with excellent vegetable side dishes probably does everything else excellently.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Soup Creek runs through the arid wilderness of northeast California. The nearest city of any size is Reno, Nevada, and that’s 174 miles away. The creek runs about fifteen miles generally southward from Soup Spring, a camping area in the Modoc National Forest. The spring is at almost 7000 feet; Soup Creek’s water drops 2000 feet until it winds up in Mill Creek, then the South Fork River, and finally Mud Lake. These rivers usually do carry water, so you might come up with some steelhead trout to grill. If not, the likeliest place to eat is the Likely Cafe in the town of the same name, a hike of about ten miles from Soup Creek.
Edible Dictionary
phyllo, [FEE-low], Greek. n., adj.–Also spelled filo. A layered pastry dough made by either stacking or folding paper-thin sheets of buttered pastry. Created by the Turks in medieval times, it is now common in all the cuisines from the Southern Balkans through the Middle East and across North Africa. Phyllo is the distinctive pastry used to make baklava, spinach pie, tiropitakia, and many other distinctive Greek and Middle Eastern dishes. It has also become popular as a wrapper for many dishes outside those cuisines.
Music To Eat By
Jimmy Buffett’s song Cheeseburger In Paradise hit its high point on the charts today in 1978 at only Number Thirty-Two. It gets played a lot more than bigger hits of the time. It’s the food reference, I tell you. . . On this date in 1972, the song Brandy was released by a one-hit wonder called Looking Glass. Brandy, I know you’ll recall, was a fine girl. . . The last major hit on the pop charts by a classic big band–that of Jimmy Dorsey, no less–made it to Number Two on this day in 1957. It was a song about how to cook a steak: So Rare.
Whiskey In The Funnies
This was the day in 1919 when the comic strip Barney Google premiered. It evolved over the years into Snuffy Smith, which is still being published. I hear that Snuffy lately has turned his skill at distilling “corn squeezin’s” into making small-batch bourbons aged in oak for twelve to fifteen years. But he still refuses to pay the “revenooers,” so it’s still illegal. I haven’t tried the stuff myself.
Famous Restaurant Names
Mumtaz Mahal died today in 1631, from complications during childbirth. Her husband spent the next twenty years and a lot of his wealth (he was the Mughal emperor, so no problem) building her tomb. It is the Taj Mahal, one of the most photographed sites in the world. Its name has been applied to hundreds of Indian restaurants, including one here in New Orleans. The Taj Mahal on Metairie Road serves good food, but gives no hint of its namesake’s grandeur.
Alluring Dinner Dates
While we’re in India, let’s ask Amrita Rao–model and actress–if she’d mind joining us for dinner at the Taj Mahal. She was born in Mumbai today in 1981.
Food And Wine On The Air
Today was the premiere, in 1942, of the greatest radio mystery series of them all, Suspense. The scripts, stars, and production were good enough that the shows still hold up today. It ran weekly for twenty years, until the last day of radio drama on CBS. For a long time its sponsor was Roma Wines, the biggest-selling wines in America at the time. It was generic plonk from California, made before California winemakers realized how good their wines could be. . . This is the day in 1994 that police followed O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco around Los Angeles. The chase was on live TV, and it wound up in a fantastic trial that we ran gavel-to-gavel on WSMB. It constantly pre-empted my radio show, but it brought many new listeners to the show who had never heard of me.
Food Namesakes
David “Stringbean” Akeman, who played the banjo and did corny comedy on “Hee Haw,” was born today in 1915. . . Actor Mark Linn-Baker stepped onto the Big Stage today in 1954. . . Jello Biafra, the lead singer for the Dead Kennedys on their album Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, was born today in 1958.
Words To Eat By
“An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.”–Will Rogers.
“Approaching the stove, she would don a voluminous apron, toss some meat on a platter, empty a skillet of its perfectly cooked a point vegetables, sprinkle a handful of chopped parsley over all, and then, like a proficient striptease artist, remove the apron, allowing it to fall to the floor with a shake of her hips.”–Bert Greene, American food writer.
Words To Drink By
“With small beer, good ale and wine,
O ye gods! how I shall dine!”–Unknown.
Profiling In The Dining Room.
Are you being served a certain way just because of the way you look?
Click here for the cartoon.