Saturday, June 21, 2014.
Courtyard Breakfast: Non-Starter. Tractor: Starter. Welcome To Your Fifth Star, Pardo’s!
I had a few more stops to make on my Saturday rounds, putting me in a familiar neighborhood at breakfast time. I have not been to the Courtyard Café since the Marriott management ripped out its familiar, comfortable and good mini buffet and replaced it with a stiff new concept called “The Bistro.” The name should be “The Discomfort.” You stand in line at a counter and order from a short list of breakfast combinations, all of them with contrived, corporate-promotion names. And pay half again as much as breakfast had been here in the good old days.
The same staff is still there. I didn’t ask them what they thought about the new menu, and they didn’t tell–although I think I may have picked up a vibe. It seems to have been devised to run people through breakfast as fast as possible, with no attention to pleasure. It offends me and the memory of dozens or hundreds of wonderful breakfasts here with my kids when they were little. I’ll not darken their door again.
When I get home, a surprise is waiting. Our old lawn tractor, after a week and a half in shop, sits in the driveway–not just repaired but washed and and shiny.
“It’s unbelievable!” Mary Ann says. “You turn the key and it starts!” The key hasn’t made that happen for at least seven years, and even jump-starting it stopped working last year.
I had a radio show to do at noon, after which I go out there, turn the key and, indeed, hear the engine come to life without hesitation.
The grass is high and the going is slow. It takes two hours without a break to shave the Cool Water Ranch’s front acre. I have to stop when it starts raining, but the obvious part is done. I found it nostalgic, and happy for the rebirth of this old unit, which the kids gave me for Father’s Day some twelve years ago. They chose this particular model because they liked the face made by the front grill and the headlights.
After cleaning myself up and taking a nap, I and MA go to dinner at Pardo’s. We are taking a risk by going without a reservation, but on the other hand if we are able to get a table, it’s a sign that this dinner is meant to be.
Almost as soon as we sit down, I have the feeling that we are in for a dinner at yet higher a level than the excellence we’ve found at Pardo’s in the past. I’m not sure why this is, but I go with it. Osman Rodas, who owns the place, says that he’s hot on the lamb, and recommends either the lamb cheeks on the main menu, or a special of chops. I get to talking with Chef Marvin Tweedy, who says the same thing. How about a half-order of both the lamb dishes? I ask. He thinks that’s a great idea.
Mussels with curry.
I already have the rest of the dinner figured out, and start with mussels, made with a yellow curry sauce thicker than the typical mussel broth. This is so good that I make a mental note to add it to the 500 Best Dishes list on Monday. The fresh-cut fries make a thatched roof over it all.
Parfait of crabmeat and shrimp.
Mary Ann has an intriguing starter. The menu calls it a parfait, the layers starting at the bottom with a puck of panneed eggplant, crabmeat above that, avocado, green chili remoulade, yellow tomato jam on the roof, and a savory green herb finial at the top. She says it’s terrific, and proves that by giving me not even a bite of it.
I get a salad of arugula with fresh mozzarella and herbs. I reaffirm: arugula is the best salad green in the world.
Filet mignon (tournedos, really) at Pardo’s.
Mary Ann is in a steak mood, and gets a tournedos cut into two pieces. Undercooked for her, of course. Its easy to understand why asking for a well-done steak in a place like this is met with disbelief by the chef. But that’s my wife. It’s seared some more and all is well.
Chops and cheeks.
And here are the two manifestations of lamb. I’ve had veal, beef, and pork cheeks, but lamb cheeks are new to me. The sauce is a lamb demi-glace (I think), the cheeks have a blob of tomato sauce on top, with baked sweet potato forming an understratum. It is as interesting and enjoyable as I was expecting. Offering a combination of both contrast and similarity at the same time are two grilled lamb chops, with a meatier texture than that of the soft, melt-in-the mouth lamb cheeks.
The lamb is further abetted by a Chateauneuf du Pape–Osman’s response to my request for something from the Rhone or Australia by the glass. Somewhere in the second glass, I commence to thinking about other dinners I’ve had that compared with this one. Not many. And given the loss of two five-star restaurants in recent weeks, I begin asking myself and Mary Ann for reasons Pardo’s shouldn’t get my top rating. Mary Ann loves Pardo’s so there is no resistance there. I ask for an espresso to sharpen my mind.
Mango and sorbet.
We have a dessert of thin, cold slices of mango fanned out on a platter and topped with a ball of raspberry sorbet. Mary Ann doesn’t like desserts, but has to force herself to try a slice of of cheesecake with sliced peaches and strawberry coulis.
Osman sits down and says that he’s been waiting for someone to come in with an appreciation for a dark, unctuous sherry that he wanted to try. I rationalize that lots of frequent customers get after-dinner drinks on the house, not just restaurant critics. I accept. The sherry is marvelous. I dismiss myself from the table so Mary Ann and Osman can talk about his young children–MA’s favorite subject. I make my way to the kitchen and tell Chef Marvin that he’s just earned for Pardo’s a fifth star. He looks at me as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.
Pardo’s. Covington: 69305 Hwy 21. 985-893-3603.
Sunday, June 22, 2014.
Riding Around.
We have dined well the past several nights, and Mary Ann is determined to put a stop to that today. I use up my time working on a tedious, long project that will make it easier for my readers to find recipes, which are notoriously difficult to index. I wish I had someone on staff who will do things like that, but I don’t seem to have a gift for hiring people.
Once the temperature drifts downward in late afternoon, I finish the lawn mowing I didn’t get to when it started raining yesterday. I do get it all done, even the big meadow in the back, whose highest stalks of grass are three or four feet high. The old lawn tractor with the cute face runs perfectly, save for a flame- throwing backfire when I turn it off at the end of the project.
Like many other businesses appealing to the general public, restaurants usually have distinctive logos, and sometimes an animated character designed to made ads and menus distinctive. Here is a list of the twelve most interesting of those around New Orleans. Leading the league in this regard is the Brennan family, which seems to feel that mascots are essential. The oldest of those was the tipsy-looking, sword-wielding military mariner that once fronted Commander’s Palace. (He seems to have gone into retirement.)
1. Brennan’s. : 417 Royal. . We will soon know just how valuable is the colorful rooster logo used for decades by the former Brennan’s on Royal Street. The mascot and all the other trademarks will be auctioned shortly. Chanticleer (the official name of the rooster) has no chance of disappearing from public view. It’s too good. Oddity: I saw the identical cartoon covering a wall in a hotel restaurant in Moira, New York in 1983.
2. Cafe 615 (Da Wabbit). Gretna: 615 Kepler. 504-365-1225. A rabbit who is clearly a relative of Bugs Bunny is waiting to serve you, smiling from his old highway sign. This is the best neon mascot of them all.
3. SoBou. French Quarter: 310 Chartres St.. 504-552-4095. The most fun-loving of all the restaurant mascots, SoBou’s elephant even has a name: “BarBar,” a take on the famous book character. I told owner Ti Martin (she of Commander’s Palace) that some people might take a political statement from the elephant. She said that wouldn’t happen, because being both pink and dressed in white tie and tails, BarBar is obviously gay, and probably not a member of the GOP. That’s credible.
4. Antoine’s. French Quarter: 713 St Louis. 504-581-4422. Antoine’s mascot, like everything else at the restaurant, is very old. It depicts a stereotypical French chef with a few years on him. You see it here and there on promotional materials for the restaurant, but not a lot anymore. Maybe he’s retired.
5. Cafe Adelaide. CBD: 300 Poydras St. 504-595-3305. The stylized painting of Adelaide Brennan in her youth is more a namesake than a mascot, but it’s distinctive enough to serve as both.
6. Red Fish Grill. French Quarter: 115 Bourbon. 504-598-1200. A slightly goofy-looking, grinning fish–the brainchild of designer Luis Colmenares–is emblazoned everywhere in Ralph Brennan’s seafood restaurant.
7. Drago’s. Metairie 2: Orleans Line To Houma Blvd: 3232 N Arnoult Rd. 504-888-9254. ||CBD: 2 Poydras. 504-584-3911. Drago’s invented its mascot at a time when it was casting itself as a lobster house–right before the char-broiled oysters transformed the restaurant. But oysters don’t have a face, really, and the lobster said “Cheese!”
8. Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse. French Quarter: 716 Iberville. 504-522-2467. A bull of apparently high pedigree has a somber expression as he holds up a sign with his logo.
9. Pascal’s Manale. Uptown 3: Napoleon To Audubon: 1838 Napoleon Ave. 504-895-4877. A shrimp playing an accordion. Well, that does capture the essence of Manale’s, calling to mind both its most famous dish and its Italian heritage.
10. Johnny’s Po-Boys. French Quarter: 511 St Louis. 504-524-8129. Johnnie’s drawing of a workingman on a lunch break about to take a big bite from a poor boy sandwich is identical to one used in ads for something called “poor boy studs” by Hill-Behan Lumber Company in the 1950s and 1960s. Who had it first, I don’t know, but Hill-Behan isn’t here anymore, and Johnnie’s still makes the best poor boy sandwiches in town.
11. Juan’s Flying Burrito. Metairie: 2018 Magazine. 504-581-3866. The original meaning of “burrito” was “a small wild horse.” So what does a flying burrito look like. Like the restaurant’s mascot, of course.
12. Ralph & Kacoo’s. French Quarter: 519 Toulouse. 504-522-5226. A catfish stands on his dorsal fins, grinning and wearing a sailor’s cap. Indeed, R&K’s made its reputation with fried catfish long before it became an all-purpose seafood house.
Guacamole
This is a little more complicated than most guacamole recipes, and probably not authentic, but it sure tastes good. If you have fresh chili peppers available, chop about two tablespoons’ worth and substitute it for some or all of the Tabasco jalapeno. Don’t cut the avocados until absolutely everything else is chopped and combined. Doing this will prevent the avocados from browning. The hard part is getting avocados at the perfect point of ripeness. That would be when the little button at the top, left over from the stem, pops off with light finger pressure.
At this point, I’d like to apologize for the ketchup. But blind tasting doesn’t lie: the ketchup adds a nice little something.
1 medium white onion
10 sprigs cilantro, leaves only
Juice of one small lime
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 large clove garlic
3 Tbs. Tabasco jalapeno pepper sauce
3 large, very ripe tomatoes, seeds and pulp removed (or leave them in if you like)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. ketchup
4-6 Hass avocados (depending on size)
1. Put the onion, cilantro, lime juice, olive oil, garlic, and jalapeno pepper sauce into a food processor and chop finely, but don’t let it become a slush. Put this into a plastic or china bowl.
2. Chop the tomatoes coarsely and add to the bowl. Add the salt and ketchup.
3. Cut the avocados in half. Remove the pits. With a spoon, scoop out the flesh into the bowl, avoiding any discolored or stringy parts.
4. With a large wire whisk, mash and mix everything together. The guacamole should be on the chunky side, not a puree. Add salt and more Tabasco to taste. Serve with tortilla chips.
Serves ten to fifteen.
Oysters Rocketfire @ RocketFire Pizza Co
You can’t assume you know what a dish is about until you taste it. Here we have oysters on the half shell, topped with the spinach-artichoke dip–the kind served by chain restaurants the world over–and put on a pizza pan in the coal-fired pizza oven. Oysters and spinach come together well, and so do oysters and artichokes. That wins the game. These things, dusted with some parmesan cheese at the end, are hard to stop eating. The pizzas at RocketFire are good enough that we lamented the restaurant’s passing from the North Shore. (They quickly opened another location in Metairie.) But those oysters are the great dish.
RocketFire Pizza Co. Metairie 2: Orleans Line To Houma Blvd: 612 Veterans Memorial Blvd. 504-828-8161.
This dish is ranked # in NOMenu’s list of the 500 best dishes in New Orleans restaurants.
June 30, 2014
Days Until. . .
Fourth Of July 4
Tales Of The Cocktail 19
Today’s Flavor
Today is National Ice Cream Soda Day. This sounds like one of those hot dogs-apple pie-baseball kinds of things, but when’s the last time you had an ice cream soda? Even ice cream parlors rarely have them anymore. The reason: the lack of the kind of soda fountain making an ice cream soda requires. It mixed carbon dioxide with water, then shoots it in a thin, string stream into the other soda ingredients. And that you don’t see too much since around 1980.
Here in New Orleans, an ice cream soda is very likely to be a nectar soda. The flavor “nectar” is unique to this city. A pink syrup best known these days as a sno-ball flavor, it blends the flavors of almond and vanilla with a little citric acid to produce a distinctive and delicious hybrid.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Nectar, Alabama is a town of 372 people forty miles north of Birmingham. It’s in a very picturesque, prosperous farming and orchard area, in the foothills of the Great Smokies. Nectar is surrounded by a big, looping bend of the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River, far upstream. A long, historic covered bridge crossed the river at Nectar until 1993, when it was burned down by vandals. Its memory lives on at the Covered Bridge Grill, three miles away from the center of Nectar.
Edible Dictionary
skordalia, [skor-dahl-YAH], Greek–n., adj.A thick, spreadable sauce, served at room temperature, whose primary ingredient and flavor is garlic. The rest of the ingredients spread the garlic out without adding much competition in the flavor department. The two most common texture agents are potatoes and wet bread. They’re rarely both used at the same time. Almonds are another common ingredient of skordalia. Olive oil is added to add smoothness. Vinegar or lemon occasionally come into play to balance off the flavors. The resulting sauce is most commonly used with fried seafood, fried vegetables or (oddly enough) cooked beets in a salad. Skordalia is thick enough to use as a dip. Simple though the recipe is, the stuff is delicious.
Food Inventions
Today in 1896, James Hadaway received a patent for the first electric stove. Electric stoves are roundly derided by those who cook with gas, and there’s no doubt that gas is preferable. However, those of us who are forced by circumstances to cook on electric stovetops soon learn to adapt to its operating quirks. I am one of these unfortunates, and I’d say that I cook as well on an electric element as I could on gas. The worst problem: skillets and saucepans must have absolutely flat bottoms. As for electric ovens, I prefer them to gas.
Deft Dining Rule #188
The best table in most restaurants is the one that’s most isolated one in the main dining room, especially if it’s next to a window.
Music To Drink Martinis By
Frank Sinatra’s career went into high gear today in 1939, when he made his first appearance with the Harry James orchestra. Harry James discovered a lot of great talent. He was also the great-uncle of Clark, the Gourmet Truck Driver, a regular visitor to my radio show.
Annals Of Food Research
The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt. It was the first time any serious standards were brought to bear on the food supply in this country. Although its effect was overwhelmingly salubrious, it did ultimately remove from the market certain gourmet items that involve an above-average risk. A modern example of that would be raw milk and cheeses made from it.
Eating Around The World
Today in 1755, the government of the Philippines–which was more or less controlled by that of Mexico and, in turn, by Spain–declared that all Chinese food vendors owned by non-Catholics (which would be most of them) must close. It was the Far Eastern version of the Inquisition.
Food Namesakes
Shirley Fry, an Australian tennis player who won her share of the major tournaments, was born today in 1927. . . On this date in 1967, Cookie Rojas pitched in relief for the Phillies. Afterwards, he could say that he’d played all nine positions on the team. . . Frankie Lymon of the rock group the Teenagers was born today in 1942. Later they would make Sprite out of his namesake fruit.
Words To Eat By
“Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos.”–Don Kardong, writer and running enthusiast.
Words To Drink By
“Man being reasonable must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication;
Glory, the grape, love, gold–in these are sunk
The hopes of all men and of every nation”
–Lord Byron.
A Missing Control On A Juice Extractor.
If it gets you worked up or frustrated, just use the juice to make a hurricane.
Click here for the cartoon.