Wednesday, June 10, 2015.
Nightmares Of Going Back To Work.
I managed to sleep until about seven this morning, despite a very disturbing, convincing and long performance by the Dreams Division of my brain. All my worlds seem to have crashed into one big mess. It was one of those nightmares that doesn’t go right away when you wake up.
After I settle down, I get to work on the backed-up jobs that accumulated in my absence. I get the expected calls from several of the radio station’s sales people, whose efforts have been put on hold until my return. It feels good in a way that my activities affect so many other people. But in another way, it emphatically lets me know that regardless of how much I need a vacation, the rest of my world requires my presence.
It would have been more effective for me to stay at home with the radio show, but I thought I’d better show up in person. I goof up right off the bat. I rush to finish and publish today’s NOMenu Daily. But when I get to the South Shore, I see that it’s not a half-hour from showtime, but ninety minutes. I’ve run late before, but I can’t recall ever having been early by accident.
Since I have the time, I use it for lunch–a mealtime I employ rarely. I walk across Tchoupitoulas to Café Adelaide. The staff, with only a middling number of lunch customers, takes its time discussing the specials with me. The soup of the day is crawfish curry. It sounds good and is, despite a bit too much thickness in the broth and a heavy touch of tomato.
Masa oysters and grits at Cafe Adelaide.
Now I have fried oysters presented in an unique concoction. The oysters are coated with masa meal–the kind of corn meal used in Mexican cooling. These are dropped atop a pool of thick grits with cochon de lait, fennel salsa and hot sauce. If I hadn’t known about the odd ingredients, I don’t think I would have guessed them. But I wouldn’t have liked the dish any less.
Strawberry shortcake.
The server talks me into a variation on strawberry shortcake, with excellent berries–probably among the last of the season, and very ripe.
Ti Martin–who with her cousin Lally Brennan operates Café Adelaide and SoBou, not to mention Commander’s Palace–drops in and sits with me for awhile, catching up on the restaurant scene as it enters the slow time of year. I tell her that Café Adelaide is, in my opinion, an underrated restaurant. Even this short lunch lives up to that.
Then I had to get going. In our big radio complex, almost everyone whose path I cross welcomes me back from vacation. How do they know I was gone? Other than that, there is not really much going on. I have a few commercials to record. The radio show itself starts strong but finishes weak. Ah, something else that makes me hesitant to take vacations: my audience leaves when I do, and it’s tough to get them back.
The star among my fill-in hosts is unquestionably Daniel Lelchuk, “The Gourmet Cellist.” Diane Newman, my boss, is thrilled by him. “He’s a natural for radio!” she says. Daniel–who we got to know through his calls into the show during the last year or two–is indeed well-spoken and suave. The Gourmet Cellist moniker is accurate: he knows about food and wine and is widely traveled. And he is second cellist in the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. Pretty impressive for a guy in his twenties. And who would expect that he would do a crackerjack job on ad-lib live commercials? Mary Ann says he’s better than I am. Something else to keep me awake nights.
Cafe Adelaide. CBD: 300 Poydras St. 504-595-3305.
Thursday, June 11, 2015.
Must. . .Have. . . Roast Beef Poor Boy.
When we return from distant lands, our family has a tradition of stopping at a restaurant well saturated with New Orleans flavor. Usually this is the Acme Oyster House, which we can catch on our way home from the airport. But that’s not how the schedule worked this time. So, after the radio show today, I drove to the first place that came to mind for a roast beef poor boy. In this case that would be Sammy’s on Veterans, across the highway from the Lamplighter Lounge’s oversize neon sign. (I wonder what goes on in that old place. I’ll have to stop in and have a drink someday.)
Sammy’s is always nealy full when I go, and everybody there seems to be a regular. I pull into a small table in the small dining room. The sandwich is big, filling, and possessed of that distinctive flavor that turned me on to poor boys and food in general a long time ago.
I make a second eating stop, this one at New Orleans Coffee and Beignet Company, a mile or two on my way. It’s managed by the same people who own the New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company and the newer Legacy Kitchen. The latter, which seems planned for making multi-unit versions of itself, confirmed that a few weeks ago when it opened its second location, in the Renaissance Arts Hotel in the Warehouse District.
An order of beignets and a large cafe au lait at NOCoffee & Beignets.
New Orleans Coffee and Beignet offers its namesake dishes, as well as a full line of coffees and other beverages, and an assortment of muffins, desserts, and bakeries. It is somewhat spartan in its surroundings–the building used to be a Burger King–but it still easily beats the atmosphere of the Morning Call. That’s the dominant coffee-and-doughnut shop in the busy neighborhood of Veterans at Causeway Boulevard. I wonder if some recent renovations at the Morning Call were triggered by the advent of the N.O. Coffee & Beignet.
I hesitate to say it, but I must: the NOCBC blows the Morning Call’s (and, while were at it it, the Café Du Monde’s) beignets off the table. They are large, so hot out of the fryer that you must hold back before taking a bite, and very large. So large that I could have gotten by with just one. But I couldn’t stop, and wound up taking all three doughnuts down.
The chicory café au lait doesn’t have the punch of the Morning Call’s. Nor that of what I make for myself at home. But it’s not bad, and any coffee and chicory I find is cause for celebration.
Okay. Even though this is all very Creole, I have gone overboard in convincing my palate that it’s back home. All that Italian and Spanish food has my stomach hungry for more food than it got from the regimen that helped me lose all that weight last year. I will slow down. Tomorrow.
Sammy’s Po-Boys. Metairie: 901 Veterans Blvd. 504-835-0916.
New Orleans Cafe & Beignet Co. Metairie: 3005 Veterans Blvd. 504-644-4130.
Amici
Uptown 2: Washington To Napoleon: 3218 Magazine. 504-300-1250. Map.
Nice Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
The proudest boast of a majority of New Orleans Italian restaurants is, “We’re a Sicilian family, and our recipes have been passed down over many generations.” One nods one’s head at this knowing that there is as much difference between this Sicilian restaurant and that one than there would be if this one were Roman and that one was from New York. You can even break up all the local Sicilian-rooted places into Early, Middle, and Modern Sicilian. (Let’s see. That would be Frank’s, Impastato’s, and Vincent’s, respectively.)
Pizza at Amici.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
Although Amici has as extensive a menu as any, the most attractive item on it is pizza. Even in these days when new pizzerias with extraordinary stone, wood-burning ovens are seemingly everywhere, Amici is unique in having a pizza oven that burns coal, just like the original New York pizza parlors had a century ago. That oven turns out not only excellent pizza, but also a fair number of roasted meats and fish, all of which benefit from the hellish temperatures that coal can kick up.
Pappardelle, Italian sausage, and broccoli raab.
WHAT’S GOOD
Most of the menu comprises the classics of Southern Italian cooking, with unique but modest special touches in almost every dish. The sauces are particularly well made, whether they’re tossed with pasta or served over a meat or poultry dish. There’s a delicacy not often seen in the finished dishes. The menu is too interesting for only very shy diners to order anything like meatballs or lasagna.
BACKSTORY
Phil and Jack Rizzuto opened Amici in late 2013, taking over the space that previously had been the Uptown edition of Byblos. The Rizzutos and their chef Chad Matrana are relatively new to the local Italian scene, although their story is familiar: several generations of Sicilian-Creole family recipes come to the modern era. They have some sort of spiritual connection with Jasper Mirabile Jr. and his excellent, long-running Kansas City restaurant Jasper’s, and who does wine dinners at Amici now and then. The space has been a restaurant since the mid-1970s, when an attempt to revive the old Turci’s appeared briefly here. It was followed by Spaghetti Eddie’s, Monroe’s, and Byblos.
Dining room at Amici. Look out for that light fixture in the upper left.
DINING ROOM
The dining room is handsome and modern. Two lines of banquette-style tables are balanced by the long bar to the left. In the rear, the kitchen is mostly open to view. Catching sight of a pizza exiting the coal oven is enough to talk you into one of your own.
REVIEWER’S NOTEPAD
More ruminations appear in our Dining Diary. Click on any of the dates below for those reports, each written a few days after a meal at Amici.
5/6/2014 ~ 1/3/2014 ~
BEST DISHES
Starters
Flash-fried calamari
House cut fries with parmesan cheese & white truffle oil
Spiedini (grilled beef stuffed with provolone, sopressatta, scallions, roasted cipollini onions & shaved grana padano)
Mussels Amici (white wine, garlic, tomato sauce
Crab & lobster ravioli
Coal fired chicken wings
Insalata Caprese
Beets, roasted pumpkin seeds, basil oil, vincotto, gorgonzola
Entrees
Pizzas to order, or the classics
Nonna Lena’s “bruciuluni” (braciolone): pork stuffed with beef, Italian sausage & egg
Chicken marsala or parmigiana
Broccoli raab, Italian sausage, papperdelli pasta, garlic & olive oil
Veal aglio e olio, parmigiana, or marsala
Brined roast chicken, salsa verde
Piccata di pollo or vitello (chicken or chicken sauteed with Vernaccia wine, capers, lemon)
Saltimbocca (pan fried veal filet, prosciutto, sage, pan sauce Bistecca pizzaioli (hanger steak, spicy tomato sauce, spaghetti squash
Fettuccine alfredo with shrimp arrabbiata
Gamberetto fra diavolo, sauteed shrimp, spicy marinara sauce, pasta
Desserts
Cannoli
Gelato
Coconut sorbetto
Tiramisu
Lemon sorbet
Black cherry semifreddo
FOR BEST RESULTS
If a dish strikes you as being experimental or more complex than seems right, investigate it further with the waiter, particularly as regards the price. The classics are solid. Be careful of quantities: like most Sicilian restaurants, they really feed you here.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The hanging light fixtures against the wall are poorly placed. They always seem to be right in my face.
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
Service
Value +1
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar +1
Hipness +1
Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Sidewalk tables
Romantic
Good for business meetings
Open Sunday lunch and dinner
Open Monday lunch and dinner
Till 11 p.m. FR SA
Good for children
Free valet parking
Reservations accepted
Rainbow Trout With Shrimp Veloute
Rainbow trout is not often seen in New Orleans, where the word “trout” implies speckled sea trout, a salt-water fish. Rainbow trout is a member of the salmon family, and comes from fresh water streams in the West. The flavor is totally different from that of speckled trout, but good in its way. Rainbow trout and the related steelhead trout are often seen in supermarkets, and even in some local restaurants (Zea, notably). This dish is an unusual blending of the out-of-town fish with a very New Orleans stuffing. It also works very well with small whole flounder.
Shrimp stock for this recipe can be made with about two cups of shrimp heads, tails and shells, plus a half cup each of coarsely chopped onion and celery, and the stems from a bunch of parsley. Cook this over low heat with four cups of water barely at the boil for thirty minutes. Strain, et voila!
4 whole fresh-water trout with head, tail and bones removed, but skin intact
Creole seafood seasoning
Batter:
2 eggs
1 pint milk
1 tsp. seafood seasoning
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup clarified butter
Sauce:
1 stick butter
1/4 cup flour
2 1/2 cups hot shrimp stock
3 green onions, thinly sliced
1 lb. small, peeled shrimp (or crawfish, if in season)
1 Tbs. lemon juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
Scant 1/8 tsp. cayenne
Preheat the broiler to 400 degrees.
1. Wash the trout and pat dry. Season with a light sprinkle of seafood seasoning.
2. Combine the batter ingredients until smooth. One at a time, right before cooking each, dip the fish into the batter to coat uniformly but not heavily.
3. In a medium-size skillet, heat the clarified butter over medium-high heat until a tiny pinch of flour thrown into it sizzles. Saute the trout fillets two at a time, until light brown on the outside, turning once. Remove and keep warm.
4. For the sauce, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a blond roux. Lower the heat to medium-low and whisk in the shrimp stock until the mixture thickens. Stir in the green onions, shrimp, lemon juice, Worcestershire, salt and cayenne. Cook until the shrimp are pink, then remove the sauce from the heat.
5. Divide the sauce among four heat-resistant serving plates. Place two fish fillets, skin side up, atop the sauce. Run the plates under the broiler until the top of the fish browns and sizzles a little.
Serves four.
Red Beans And Rice with Chicken Drummettes @ Fury’s
Fury’s is a small, old-style neighborhood restaurant that never got away from the slow-service, cooked-to-order style of such restaurants in the past. That slows the service down, but makes the food delicious. Their Monday red beans and rice special comes with a choice of more meats than one usually finds. You can get hot sausage, a panneed veal cutlet, or even fried oysters. But the best of all are the fried chicken drummettes (that’s the meatiest part of the chicken wing). Fried chicken and red beans are a natural combination. Fury’s regular fried chicken platters (“that’ll take twenty-five minutes, honey!”) are terrific in their own right, but here’s an even better way to enjoy them. The beans are good, too.
Fury’s. Metairie: 724 Martin Behrman Ave.. 504-834-5646.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
June 22, 2015
Days Until. . .
Fourth Of July 12
Today’s Flavor
This is Seared Fresh Tuna Salad Day. The timing is perfect. The heat has emphatically set in, and even though eating cold food doesn’t actually lower your temperature, the sensation of eating chilled, nearly-raw fish with crisp, cold greens and perhaps some avocado seems a perfect antidote to the weather. The best fresh tuna salads are made with vividly fresh tuna, seared on a very hot grill or pan to a noticeable crust on the outside, but still completely rare on the inside. The color contract between the interior of the tuna (sliced after the searing, of course) and the greens is dramatic and appetizing.
Today is also National Chocolate Eclair Day. The original chocolate eclairs were made with choux pastry–the same stuff creampuffs are made from–and stuffed with pastry cream and topped with chocolate. Now you mostly find a big rectangular doughnut, filled with Bavarian cream and topped with chocolate frosting. Shouldn’t be eaten by anyone over sixteen.
Edible Dictionary
passionfruit, n.–A native of Brazil, passionfruit is now grown in most tropical areas in the New World. Its flavor and aroma are so alluring that even though most people couldn’t identify it blindfolded, it’s almost the definitive tropical fruit flavor. You might say that it reminds you of Hawaiian Punch, in which it is in fact the outstanding flavor. In is indeed much liked in Hawaii, where it’s called lilikoi. The fruits are the size of plum tomatoes, with a purple skin. It’s packed with seeds, to which the yellow pulp is attached. A juice extractor does the best job of getting the good parts out. They’re available in the summer. The best are the heaviest ones. Passionfruits grow on a vine whose flowers are culturally important. Parts of it are said to represent the passion of Jesus, including the nails, crown of thorns, and the Apostles.
Deft Dining Rule #183:
You can tell a lot about a restaurant by the size of the capers in the salade Niçoise. The bigger they are, the less the place spends on ingredients.
Food Through History
Today in 1847, the doughnut was invented when Hanson Gregory watched his mother struggle to get her fried cakes fully cooked in the center. He suggested that she cut a hole in them. It worked! Which explains why beignets are often doughy in the center. If they had holes, they wouldn’t.
Great Restaurant Addresses
This is the birthday in 1837 of Paul Morphy, who many chess experts consider the greatest grandmaster of all time. He lived on Royal Street in the building that now houses Brennan’s. He also has a street named for him. In his day–and still, among chess enthusiasts–he was a major celebrity in New Orleans.
Music To Eat Bacon And Beans By
On this date in 1959, people around the country had these lyrics running around in their heads: “They took a little bacon and they took a little beans, and they fought the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.” Johnny Horton’s record The Battle of New Orleans was a million-seller and at the top of the charts.
Food And Drink At War
Back in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, six American ships landed at Cuba’s coast. From there the Rough Riders, led by Theodore Roosevelt, invaded the town of Daiquiri. (I suppose they picked up a few in go-cups and rode on.) . . . In another great moment in history, on this date in 1815, Napoleon threw in the towel for the last time after being defeated at Waterloo four days earlier. He abdicated and went into exile, but only after stopping at the Napoleon House for a muffuletta.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Roll is a small farming community on the high plains western Oklahoma, 150 miles due west of Oklahoma City, and 13 miles east of the Texas state line. Enough people live here to make you notice their homes in the vastness of the open fields. No restaurant, though. The nearest one is the Rockin’ S Steak House, twelve miles south in Cheyenne. Hope the rolls are good.
Food Namesakes
Gary Beers, bass player and singer for the rock group INXS, was born today in 1957. . . Operatic tenor Peter Pears was born today in 1910. . . Danny Baker, a radio comedian in England, gave his first laugh today in 1957. It would be nice if we had more radio comedians here. . . Stephen Chow is a comedian, too–as well as a film producer and director in Hong Kong. He jumped onto The Big Stage today in 1962.
Words To Eat By
“Many people have eaten and drunk themselves to death. Nobody ever thought himself to death.”–Gilbert Highet, Scottish-American author, born today in 1906.
Words To Drink By
“Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.”–Mark Twain.
Big Eaters Never Really Enjoy Food.
They attack the grub with gusto, but they next thing they know they have indigestion, with pleasure never becoming part of the experience.
Click here for the cartoon.
Recent Back Editions
Click on any date below to see the entire 5-Star Edition for that day.
5-Star Back Edition MO 6/19/15
5-Star Back Edition FR 6/19/15
5-Star Back Edition TH 6/18/15
5-Star Back Edition WE 6/17/15
5-Star Back Edition TU 6/16/15
5-Star Back Edition MO 6/15/15
5-Star Back Edition FR 6/12/15
5-Star Back Edition TH 6/11/15
5-Star Back Edition WE 6/10/15
5-Star Back Edition WE 5/21/15
5-Star Back Edition WE 5/20/15
5-Star Back Edition TU 5/19/15
5-Star Back Edition MO 5/18/15