Bastille Day Grand Dinner, Le Foret, Monday
July 14, Bastille Day, is to France what the Fourth of July is to the United States. Although the years that followed were horrible for the French–the birth of the republic was long and difficult, and the Bastille was a prison–it’s always celebrated by French people and Francophiles everywhere else in the world.
Le Foret’s name alone points to a French heritage, but it’s very much a New Orleans restaurant, too. Think of it as a modern-day Antoine’s or Arnaud’s. They are holding a truly spectacular French feast–including exclusively French wines–for Bastille Day, with Chef Brandon Felder presenting this menu:
Caramelized Onion Tart
Duck ham and duck rillettes
Wine: Brüt Rosé, Cremant De Bourgogne, Vineaut-Alberti
Court-Bouillon En Papillote
Gulf fish, seared shrimp, oysters, mussels and seasonal vegetables
Wine: Bourgogne, Saint Veran, Joseph Drouhin 2012
Escargots
White wine, garlic and fresh herbs
Wine: Bourgogne, La Combe Chardonnay, Domaine Maroslavac, Puligny Montrachet 2011
Rustic Rabbit Cassoulet
Mirepoix, offal, tomato confit
Wine: Bourgogne, Vieilles Vignes, Maison Roche De Bellene 2011
Steak Au Poivre
Cognac pepper sauce, truffled steak frites
Wine: Chateauneuf du Pape, Domaine De Le Solitude 2010
Fromages de la Belle France
Wine: Bordeaux, Listrac-Medoc, Chateau Clarke, Baron Edmond De Rothschild 2009
Blueberry crepe
Vanilla ice cream
The dinner is Monday, July 14, 6:30 p.m. The price for NOMenu readers is $140 per person, inclusive. That’s up there, but relative to the food and especially the wines, it’s better than a fair deal. I am pulling a small table for the Eat Club, and if you’d like to join me please let the restaurant know at the number below. Reservations are required.
Le Foret
CBD: 129 Camp. 504-553-6738. www.leforetneworleans.com.
NOMenu invites restaurants or organizations with upcoming special events to tell us, so we might add the news to this free department. Send to news@nomenu.com.
Blue Crab
West End & Bucktown: 7900 Lakeshore Dr. 504-284-2898. Map.
Casual.
AE DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Of all the depredations laid down by hurricane Katrina to the New Orleans restaurant community, the worst was surely the total destruction of West End Park. With a history of dining as long as any other part of town but the French Quarter, the seafood restaurants along the shoreline predated the Civil War. Louis Armstrong’s first great record was “West End Blues.” Getting out there by way of boats, streetcars, and finally automobiles, every year at this time New Orleanians were pulled to West End for a platter of boiled and fried seafood. It truly was a rite of spring–one we can honor again. Sort of.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
New Orleans aches for restaurants with views of Lake Pontchartrain. All we had for years after the storm was the chain Landry’s, with a fine lake vista but unconvincing food. The Blue Crab is more like we remember from Bruning’s, Fitzgerald’s, Swanson’s and all the other great West End seafood houses. Both in its food and its environment, everything about the place shouts localism. Noisy dining rooms, open decks, a great look at the sunset, and big piles of seafood make it the most nostalgic new restaurant in town.
WHAT’S GOOD Blue Crab’s menu includes all the dishes we remember from the glory days: boiled seafood in its season, gigantic piles of fried everything, the famous West End-style whole flounder, and a good seafood gumbo. But where the old West End places stopped, Blue Crab keeps going: grilled and blackened fish, great raw and pretty good grilled oysters, seafood pastas with creamy sauces and salads surmounted by seafood. And it may be the only old-style seafood house with fresh-cut French fries.
Raw oysters.
BACKSTORY
The Blue Crab towers twenty feet above the spot where Bart’s stood for decades, alongside what’s left of the New Basin Canal, where private boats line up at their berths. At the Blue Crab’s own dock, mariners can have food brought to their boats, or they can climb up to the dining room. The Blue Crab opened in July 2013, almost two years after the first announcements of its coming. It was the third eatery to appear on the canal since Katrina, following Landry’s and Brisbi’s.
Deck at the Blue Crab
DINING ROOM
The building, being outside the levees and right on the water, rises some 20 feet in the air. (There’s an elevator.) This affords most diners a view of something or other. The outer deck looks across the phalanx of yachts and the Southern Yacht Club itself, with the Causeway and that lake underneath it framing the sunset at the appropriate time. These are, for obvious reasons, the most popular tables in the house, but the indoor dining rooms also give airy views..
ONLINE MENU LOCATION
Seafood platter at Blue Crab.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Starters
Onion rings
Jalapeño hush puppies
»Barbecue shrimp
»Blue crab cakes, remoulade sauce
Blue crab and spinach dip
»Parmesan fried calamari
»Fried eggplant spears, marinara sauce
Crab claws–marinated and chilled, sautéed in butter, or fried
Buffalo shrimp or oysters
»»Oysters on the half shell
»Char-grilled oysters
Oyster shooters
»Crab & corn bisque
»Oyster & artichoke soup
»Seafood gumbo
Chicken andouille gumbo
Gulf salad (greens, vegetables, fried oysters, shrimp or catfish)
Italian salad
»West End Cobb salad
Caesar salad
Wedge salad
~
Entrees
»Fried platters: shrimp, oysters, catfish or any two
»Stuffed crab platter
»Fried soft-shell crab platter
»Fried seafood platter (big enough for two)
»Barbecue shrimp & grits
»Whole stuffed flounder
»Fresh Gulf fish of the day (grilled, blackened or fried, with lemon butter, meuniere or amandine garnish)
Pontchartrain pasta (shrimp or chicken, Alfredo sauce).
Grilled chicken breast, grilled vegetables.
Salisbury hamburger steak, onions, mushrooms and brown gravy
Red beans & rice
Ribeye steak
~
Sandwiches
»Shrimp, oyster, catfish, or soft-shell crab poor boy (fried or grilled)
Hamburger
Chicken breast (fried or grilled).
Smoked sausage poor boy
Roast beef poor boy
~
Desserts
Bread pudding
Cheesecake
FOR BEST RESULTS
If you go out on the deck on a hot day, you will be thankful for the Bali Ha’i-style tropical cocktails the bar makes so well and generously.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
If they’re going to make a big deal of its local fresh fish of the day, they need to apply a bit more quality control in its purchasing and preparation.
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 +2
Consistency
Service+1
Value
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar
Hipness -2
Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Courtyard or deck dining
Romantic
Good view
Open Sunday lunch and dinner
Open all afternoon
Historic
Oyster bar
Unusually large servings
Good for children
Easy, nearby parking
No reservations
Thursday, July 3, 2014.
N’Tini’s Jumps. Life Looks Good.
A new development in our daughter’s life. The Boy–who for the past month or so has been living with his parents in Pittsburgh and Baltimore–has decided it’s time to strike out entirely on his own. It would be a breach of his privacy to explain his motivationa, but I will say that it’s the right move. He’s twenty-two, out of college, and has a major military commitment coming up in six months. He’s ready to move on, and he should. I think young people ought to be out of the house by twenty-one, anyway. (Jude was gone at sixteen.)
The Boy is moving back here. Mary Leigh is ecstatic about this. Mary Ann, only slightly less so. I think it’s fine. We like The Boy too.
My daughter and I talk about it all over dinner tonight at N’Tini’s. We haven’t been there in some time, and she agreed to the idea after only a half-hour of cogitating on the possibilities.
Our longtime waitress, Helen, has moved on to real estate. However Karen, a server with an equally friendly personality, has accepted call status on our table. She said that we were there on a lucky night, because they had three-dollar martinis. I was planning on having one–martinis are off my drink rotation, and I indulge only once every couple of months now. But then I learned it was a promotion for some kind of vodka. I don’t do vodka, and quote my old friend Paul Labruyere: “When it comes to vodka, I’d as soon dump it down the sink then hit myself over the head with the bottle.”
So it was full price for a gin martini. On the other hand, it was a double, served with pickled ginger a la sushi bar, instead of the olive. This was actually suggested by Karen, who said that the idea came from N’Tini’s new chef, Mark McInnis.
Is he here? That’s great news. Mark turned up most recently during a good period at the Lakehouse, whose schedule is too erratic for a steady recommendation. N’Tini’s is, by contrast, a steady operation.
Peppered, seared tuna at N’Tini’s.
I learn that Mary Leigh loves baked potato soup, made with all the things you load a spud with: bacon, sour cream, cheese, and green onions. My starter is seared tuna served sashimi-style, with a great sauce and–sure enough–some of the pickled ginger like in the drink.
N’Tini’s evolves ever in the direction of a steakhouse. It’s always offered more and better than most restaurants on the North Shore, to the point that owner Mark Benfatti installed my “New Orleans Cut” idea. (It’s an extra-thick strip sirloin cut into two round, thick steaks.) I mention this as a possibility for me, but Karen learns that the kitchen no longer cuts it that way. I give her the spiel about what a superior steak comes out of that presentation, but all the sirloins are already cut.
Filet mignon with peppercorn sauce and fried onions
So I have a thick filet mignon with a creamy peppercorn sauce, encrusted Pittsburgh style in honor of the return of The Boy. It is the best steak ever at N’Tini’s, surpassed only by Keith Young’s and Gallagher’s Grill on the North Shore. ML has her cherished wedge salad. She says that her taste for the wedge is diminishing lately. She’s never afraid of moving on when the time comes.
During all this eating, ML and I have a lighthearted, long conversation about life, where it’s going, what makes us happy, and how all of this might play in the looming future. She has many irons in the fire, all of them promising. I feel that she has no need to worry about anything, but that she will, and that’s what life is all about. It’s not often we’ve had a talk so enjoyable, and we both head home feeling good.
N’Tini’s. Mandeville: 2891 US 190. 985-626-5566.
Blue Crab. West End & Bucktown: 7900 Lakeshore Dr. 504-284-2898.
Blue Crab
West End & Bucktown: 7900 Lakeshore Dr. 504-284-2898. Map.
Casual.
AE DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Of all the depredations laid down by hurricane Katrina to the New Orleans restaurant community, the worst was surely the total destruction of West End Park. With a history of dining as long as any other part of town but the French Quarter, the seafood restaurants along the shoreline predated the Civil War. Louis Armstrong’s first great record was “West End Blues.” Getting out there by way of boats, streetcars, and finally automobiles, every year at this time New Orleanians were pulled to West End for a platter of boiled and fried seafood. It truly was a rite of spring–one we can honor again. Sort of.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
New Orleans aches for restaurants with views of Lake Pontchartrain. All we had for years after the storm was the chain Landry’s, with a fine lake vista but unconvincing food. The Blue Crab is more like we remember from Bruning’s, Fitzgerald’s, Swanson’s and all the other great West End seafood houses. Both in its food and its environment, everything about the place shouts localism. Noisy dining rooms, open decks, a great look at the sunset, and big piles of seafood make it the most nostalgic new restaurant in town.
WHAT’S GOOD Blue Crab’s menu includes all the dishes we remember from the glory days: boiled seafood in its season, gigantic piles of fried everything, the famous West End-style whole flounder, and a good seafood gumbo. But where the old West End places stopped, Blue Crab keeps going: grilled and blackened fish, great raw and pretty good grilled oysters, seafood pastas with creamy sauces and salads surmounted by seafood. And it may be the only old-style seafood house with fresh-cut French fries.
Raw oysters.
BACKSTORY
The Blue Crab towers twenty feet above the spot where Bart’s stood for decades, alongside what’s left of the New Basin Canal, where private boats line up at their berths. At the Blue Crab’s own dock, mariners can have food brought to their boats, or they can climb up to the dining room. The Blue Crab opened in July 2013, almost two years after the first announcements of its coming. It was the third eatery to appear on the canal since Katrina, following Landry’s and Brisbi’s.
Deck at the Blue Crab
DINING ROOM
The building, being outside the levees and right on the water, rises some 20 feet in the air. (There’s an elevator.) This affords most diners a view of something or other. The outer deck looks across the phalanx of yachts and the Southern Yacht Club itself, with the Causeway and that lake underneath it framing the sunset at the appropriate time. These are, for obvious reasons, the most popular tables in the house, but the indoor dining rooms also give airy views..
ONLINE MENU LOCATION
Seafood platter at Blue Crab.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Starters
Onion rings
Jalapeño hush puppies
»Barbecue shrimp
»Blue crab cakes, remoulade sauce
Blue crab and spinach dip
»Parmesan fried calamari
»Fried eggplant spears, marinara sauce
Crab claws–marinated and chilled, sautéed in butter, or fried
Buffalo shrimp or oysters
»»Oysters on the half shell
»Char-grilled oysters
Oyster shooters
»Crab & corn bisque
»Oyster & artichoke soup
»Seafood gumbo
Chicken andouille gumbo
Gulf salad (greens, vegetables, fried oysters, shrimp or catfish)
Italian salad
»West End Cobb salad
Caesar salad
Wedge salad
~
Entrees
»Fried platters: shrimp, oysters, catfish or any two
»Stuffed crab platter
»Fried soft-shell crab platter
»Fried seafood platter (big enough for two)
»Barbecue shrimp & grits
»Whole stuffed flounder
»Fresh Gulf fish of the day (grilled, blackened or fried, with lemon butter, meuniere or amandine garnish)
Pontchartrain pasta (shrimp or chicken, Alfredo sauce).
Grilled chicken breast, grilled vegetables.
Salisbury hamburger steak, onions, mushrooms and brown gravy
Red beans & rice
Ribeye steak
~
Sandwiches
»Shrimp, oyster, catfish, or soft-shell crab poor boy (fried or grilled)
Hamburger
Chicken breast (fried or grilled).
Smoked sausage poor boy
Roast beef poor boy
~
Desserts
Bread pudding
Cheesecake
FOR BEST RESULTS
If you go out on the deck on a hot day, you will be thankful for the Bali Ha’i-style tropical cocktails the bar makes so well and generously.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
If they’re going to make a big deal of its local fresh fish of the day, they need to apply a bit more quality control in its purchasing and preparation.
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 +2
Consistency
Service+1
Value
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar
Hipness -2
Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Courtyard or deck dining
Romantic
Good view
Open Sunday lunch and dinner
Open all afternoon
Historic
Oyster bar
Unusually large servings
Good for children
Easy, nearby parking
No reservations
Crawfish Season Is Over
Q. I went to the seafood joint where I usually buy boiled crawfish, and I was shocked when he told me there were no more crawfish for this year. Is there a crawfish shortage? Was it because of the oil spill?
A. No, the season for crawfish is counterintuitive. The rough start and finish are Thanksgiving Day until the Fourth of July. But that would be in a good year. More often, the first crawfish of the year either have scrawny tails (in December) or aren’t there at all (until as late as early March). The peak of the season is Jazz Festival time–April and May. In the summer, they get themselves ready for parenthood, with the shells getting hard and all the fat going into spawning needs. This happens suddenly, usually in mid to late June. Crawfish tail meat continues to be available from the picking plants, which have a lot of mudbugs until the dropoff in the hot season. After that, it’s all frozen.
The good news in this is that when the crawfish return in the early spring, we miss them so much that it’s cause for celebration. More than if we had them all the time.
As for the oil spill, it didn’t affect crawfish. They live exclusively in fresh water environments, which were never touched by the oil.
T. Pittari’s Crab Bisque
For all its fame for wild game and lobster, the best food at the extinct, famous T. Pittari’s was its Creole cooking. Whenever I went there I hoped the soup of the day would be their crab bisque. It wasn’t the creamy concoction that goes under that name now, but a brown-roux potage with claw crabmeat. The waiter brought the bowl to the table, and dropped in two just-fried crabmeat croquettes. I have only rarely encountered anything that compared with this.
Bisque:
4 lbs. crab claws
1 bay leaf
1 cup flour
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 ripe green bell pepper, seed and membranes removed, chopped
2 cloves garlic
6 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1/2 cup tomato sauce (preference: a good prepared marinara sauce, your own or from a jar)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cayenne
Crab boulettes:
3 Tbs. butter
1 cup chopped onions
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 ripe green bell pepper, seed and membranes removed, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. cayenne
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. thyme
2 Tbs. lemon juice
6 inches of stale poor boy bread, cut into cubes, with all crumbs
2 green onions, thinly sliced
10 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, leaves only, chopped
3 Tbs. butter
1. Pick the meat off the crab claws. Divide the crabmeat into two equal portions and set both aside.
2. Put the shells into a food processor and grind them for about ten seconds. Scrape the processor contents and the bay leaf into a saucepan with a half-gallon of cold water. Bring it to a light boil, then lower to a simmer. After 45 minutes, strain the stock into a clean large saucepan. Reserve 1/2 cup for the boulettes. Bring to a simmer.
3. In a saucepan make a roux, stirring constantly, with the flour and vegetable oil. When it reaches a medium-dark, old-penny color, remove the pan from the heat and quickly add the onion, bell pepper, garlic, and parsley. Cook, stirring, until the vegetables are soft.
4. Stir in the tomato, sauce, salt, and cayenne, and about 1/2 cup of the crab stock. Stir until the stock disappears.
5 Add the roux mixture to the simmering crab stock and whisk until blended. Cover the pan and keep on the lowest heat setting.
6. Now, make the boulettes. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the butter until it bubbles. Add the onions, celery, bell pepper, and garlic, and cook until the vegetables are soft.
7. Stir in the Worcestershire, black pepper, cayenne, salt, thyme, and lemon juice. Cook while stirring until all the ingredients are combined.
8. Wet the bread cubes with the reserved crab stock. Add them and half of the reserved crabmeat to the pan contents. Stir until everything is well mixed and the mixture is starting to get noticeably drier. Lower the heat and allow to cool for five minutes.
9. Stir the parsley and green onions into the crabmeat mixture. With a round soup spoon, scoop up balls of the crabmeat mixture about an inch in diameter. Roll them gently with your hands to make them uniform.
10. Heat the butter in a skillet over medium heat until it bubbles. Add the crab balls, a few at a time, and roll them around until browned all over. (You can also bake these for about 15 minutes in a 375-degree oven.)
11. Check the seasoning of the crab bisque and add salt, pepper, or Tabasco to taste. Add the remaining reserved crabmeat. Let it simmer another minute or two, then ladle the bisque into bowls or cups. Drop one or two crab boulettes into each bowl at the table.
Serves four entrees or six to eight preliminary courses.
Carpaccio @ Ristorante Del Porto
Carpaccio is a slice of raw beef either sliced or pounded so thin that you can almost see through it. It’s served cold as an appetizer, and is one of the specialties of Harry’s American Bar in Venice, Italy. Not enough restaurants offer it here, but the best of those is Del Porto, whose style is Tuscan and whose heightening of flavors is skillful. The beef slices come with truffled creme fraiche–just a little.
Ristorante Del Porto. Covington: 501 E Boston St. 985-875-1006.
This dish is ranked #183 in NOMenu’s list of the 500 best dishes in New Orleans restaurants.
July 10, 2014
Days Until. . .
Tales Of The Cocktail 7
Satchmo Summer Fest 20
Today’s Flavor
Today is National Buffet Day. No restaurateur would serve a buffet if he could avoid it. But some restaurants can’t get away from the all-you-can-eat curse. The Chinese restaurant category, for example, is going wholesale to buffet service.
The appeal is clear: quantity attracts a wider range of potential customers than quality does. Many diners suspend all their standards of goodness in order to let the all-you-can-eat miracle happen. But put the same food on a regular menu, and they stop coming.
It’s possible for infinitely large meals to be good. But it’s not likely. Cooked dishes are at their best the minute they come off the stove. Then they go rapidly downhill as they cool and and dry out. Few dishes survive the stem table. (Red beans and soups are among those rarities.) And when quantity is the main draw, the added expense is made up for by depressing the intrinsic merit of the food. You don’t see prime beef or organically grown vegetables much on buffets.
There are some good buffets. They’re lavish in their cold dishes. They have roast-carving stations and setups where some dishes (eggs, most commonly) are cooked to order. The rest of the hot food is prepared in small batches. The desserts–which are made ahead in most restaurants anyway–are spectacular. But that kind of buffet is rare, and almost always more expensive than what you’d pay if ordering from a menu.
Service is rarely at its best in buffet restaurants. Servers in buffets are undertipped by their customers, who believe that, because they’re fetching their own food, the tip should be lower. In fact, it should be higher than usual, because a) the server is doing everything he or she would do in an a la carte restaurant except getting the food and b) buffet diners eat much more and create more used serviceware than they would if ordering the same dollars’ worth from a menu. No good waiter stays in an undertipping situation long.
Finally, there is the matter of overeating. Look at the waistlines of buffet fans. Is that above-average girth just a coincidence? Then get back to where the portions are controlled, the food is better, and the experience more pleasant.
Deft Dining Rule #28
Food served buffet-style will never be as good as the same food from the same kitchen served on a plate at your table by a waiter.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
Except red beans and rice, which will be better on the buffet.
Edible Dictionary
Olympia oyster, n.–A small, thick-shelled bivalve oyster of the Ostreola genus. Its native habitat extends along the Pacific Coast from at least San Francisco into Canada. Its common name comes from its best and most productive beds near Olympia, Washington, in Puget Sound. Olympia oysters were much enjoyed by the Native Americans (who left immense piles of oyster shells around San Francisco) and the settlers who came in the 1800s. The environmental changes brought about by the Gold Rush killed most of the beds around San Francisco, but the oysters are making a comeback. The meat of an Olympia oyster is only about the size of a quarter, but they are prized for a flavor which even the uninitiated describe as “coppery.” While that may sound unappetizing, these are indeed very good oysters to eat raw. Whether the flavor makes up for the number of oysters one must eat to be satisfied is another question.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Butcher, Missouri is in gently rolling farmland about 125 miles south-southeast of Kansas City. All there is to it is a rural crossroads, and the only occupant is an old cemetery. So we won’t find much pate and charcuterie made around Butcher. The nearest eats are at Becky’s 254 Cafe, five miles east.
Great Food Moments In Literature
Today is the birthday, in 1871, of Marcel Proust. He is the author of the seven-volume Recherche du Temps Perdu–usually mistranslated as Remembrance Of Things Past. The seemingly endless work (set aside a year at least to read it) is the reflective, image-laden, occasionally perverse recollection of the protagonist’s past life. All of the memories are famously triggered when he has tea with the shell-shaped cookies called madeleines.
Food On The Air
American inventor Nicola Tesla was born today in Serbia in 1856. He was a mad genius who invented many of the major machines and concepts now used routinely in electronics today. His most famous contribution was alternating current, which makes it possible for you to read these words. He also was as important a figure in Marconi in the development of radio. So he’s indirectly responsible for that program I do on 1350 AM every afternoon.
Annals Of Soft Drinks
Following a tremendous uproar from customers, today in 1985 the Coca-Cola Company returned the original formulation of Coke to the shelves, under the name Coca-Cola Classic. It quickly shoved New Coke off the market (except in New Coke’s disguises, such as Cherry Coke, and Diet Coke, which still have the new flavor).
Brewmasters
Adolphus Busch, who founded Anheuser-Busch, the world’s biggest maker of beer, was born today in 1839. I wonder how he would feel about the efforts of a Belgian brewer to take over his baby.
Music To Eat Dinner In The Diner By
Arlo Guthrie, who came to prominence with the rambling recording of the song-saga Alice’s Restaurant, was born today in 1947. His biggest hit was The City of New Orleans, about the train of the same name.
Food Namesakes
Bernard Buffet, French artist and designer, was sketched out today in 1928. Interesting that his birthday coincides with National Buffet Day. . .Jason Orange, singer and dancer in the group Take That, was born today in 1970.
Words To Eat By
“I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.”–Marcel Proust, born today in 1871.
“Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals.”–Finley Peter Dunne, born today in 1867.
“I went to this restaurant last night that was set up like a big buffet in the shape of an Ouija board. You’d think about what kind of food you want, and the table would move across the floor to it.”–Steven Wright.
Words To Drink By
“Fill up the goblet and reach to me some!
Drinking makes wise, but dry fasting makes glum.”
–William R. Alger, “Wine Song of Kaitmas.”
The Necessity Of Caring For Chef’s Self-Esteem
But, really–isn’t all of life about getting approval from your parents/children?
Click here for the cartoon.