Saturday, May 16, 2015.
Blue Line Breakfast. Ideal Market.
Mary Ann wants to keep up her presence on the Saturday radio show. (Except, of course, when she is in Germany.) So she meets up with me in Metairie, where the program is on remote broadcast from the new Ideal Market.
But, first, we have breakfast, in a café that has captured a lot of interest from people who like neighborhood cafes. After three years in which he brought the food at Ye Olde College Inn to the highest point I have witnessed in its history, Chef Brad McGehee left to open his own breakfast and lunch shop on Metairie Road. The name “Blue Line Sandwich Company” is a reference to a streetcar line that once ran on Metairie Road as an adjunct to the Napoleon Avenue streetcar. That’s so obscure that I’ve never heard of it, and I am a bus-and-streetcar geek.
Most of what I’ve heard about the Blue Line is that 1) it’s in the space where the Great Wall Chinese restaurant was for many years and b) the Blue Line is packed all the time. The latter was not true this Saturday morning. Only about a third of the tables were occupied. This meant that the seating scheme was confusing. Sometimes you place your order at the end of the bar, and sometimes they have full table service. Whichever, the service is not very good, perhaps by management rules. For example, coffee and tea are served without saucers, which doesn’t work for tea at all.
Corned beef hash and eggs at Blue Line.
We were saved from this by Chef Brad, who has been on the radio show with me, and whose achievements at Ye Olde were worth my noting in reviews. He came by and gave us a rundown on the menu, recommending in particular the house-made corned beef hash and eggs.
Which I order. It is a large plate of food, topped with lightly-fried eggs. I don’t often have my eggs prepared that way, but this was flawless in all of its elements. And so amply served that I would not need another full meal this day.
Eggs with cochon de lait and redeye biscuit gravy.
Mary Ann also has something good and distinctive. It’s a giant biscuit filled with cochon de lait, with a sausage red-eye cream gravy. She says it’s not exactly what she had in mind, but better than she expected.
Apple pie.
Brad brings us a slice of apple pie, as if we need something more to eat. It’s from his dinner menu, but is very good in the morning, too.
One never knows what will come next in the supermarket business. Who would have guessed that a food store with the inventory of Whole Foods would be so eagerly patronized. Or the larger Rouse’s stores. I was a consultant for about fifteen years to the National/Canal Villere/Real Superstore chain, which once was mighty. In those days, it was all about adding another tenth of a percent to the profitability of a business in which a three percent total return on investment was considered a grand slam. Because such stores wouldn’t dream of doing what Fresh Market does, they’re gone.
At this moment, Ideal Market seems poised to grab a lot of customer base. It’s a food market the size of a Walgreens, specializing in Latin American food specialties. While an unsuspecting customer can buy most of his weekly grocery shopping at the Ideal, the main appeal is to those who are intrigued by the wide range of unfamiliar meats, vegetables, herbs, breads, and dry groceries. In this era, Ethnic = Gourmet.
Five Ideal Markets are scattered around town. This new one, on the corner of Airline Highway and Clearview, is in brightly repainted former Walgreens. The spaces are a little tight, but that seems to add authenticity to the marketing.
I was certainly able to find a lot to talk about during our three-hour radio show. The butcher shop in particular was filled with variety meats. Even the familiar steaks and roasts are cut in a somewhat different way. Or marinated in concoctions that not only heighten the flavors but the colors, too. The busiest station seemed to be the open wood-burning grill at which a cook sears fajitas. Right behind him is a vertical rotisserie on whose spindle are slices of beef. Sort of like the Middle-Eastern beef specialty called shawarma.
Marco Arroyo, the general manager of all the local Ideals (there are more still in Baton Rouge), gives me a stack of twenty-five-dollar gift certificates to give away. They proved that someone actually does listen to my Saturday show. We played a secret-word game, using hispanic words like “guacamole” and “guanabana.” Each new contest brought winners into the store within seconds–and I am not exaggerating. The manager and his advertising guy were very impressed by this. I have a feeling this will not be our last remote from Ideal.
The manager pressed me to take some stuff home. I get a nice slab of fajitas meat (which looked and was great) and a half-gallon of menudo. I am the only one in our house who will eat that wonderful Mexican tripe stew. I need no other supper. This stuff is great.
Sunday, May 17, 2015.
Brunch @ Annadele’s Plantation.
Probably because we had no supper last night, Mary Ann and I have brunch this morning. We go to a restaurant I’ve not been to lately: Annadele’s Plantation, the closest brunch restaurant to the Cool Water Ranch. The dining room is not very busy, but the staff is. They have two weddings today, one of them for well over 200 people. This is a great place for nuptials, especially at this time of year. The flowers are coming up, the trees are fully green, and the the antique buildings with their big dining rooms are decidedly local in design. They date back to the times when Covington was just a railroad station and a marketplace for cattle.
Crawfish risotto.
Mary Ann starts with a very rich, large (it could have been served as an entree), and scrumptious (to use MA’s exact word) risotto of crawfish. We both like it and pack it away. The soup of the day, a chicken and tortilla soup with no noticeable tomato, is in too small a coffee cup to be served without disappointment. But my bites of the big risotto fill the gap.
Soft-shell crab and beans.
Poached eggs with potatoes and crabmeat.
Her entree is a nice-looking fried soft shell crab with green beans and a buttery sauce. Mine is a pair of poached eggs that really stand up proudly, with crabmeat, mushrooms, and creamed spinach. Exactly what I am in the mood for.
Lost bread or bread pudding?
But my favorite part of this brunch is a dessert I deconstruct from an unlikely entree: lost bread with pecans and syrup and a side of smoked sausage. I asked for this sans the sausage, which transforms it into a bread pudding. Which is wonderful.
We are no sooner back home than it starts raining, and not long after that than a hailstone-riddled, frog-strangling deluge dumps it load. So much for taking a nice hour-long walk, let alone cutting the grass.
Mary Leigh, who for a change has no big baking assignments, makes a batch of brownies. She get the recipe from a little pastry shop where she worked for awhile. She says that the chocolate component could hardly be richer, but the texture–imagine a crunchy-skinned soufflee–makes it seem light. I will wheedle this recipe from her sooner or later.
Annadele Plantation. Covington: 71518 Chestnut St. 985-809-7669.
Shrimp Scampi With Pasta
The scampo is a hard-shelled crustacean native to the Adriatic Sea. It looks like a small version of the tropical lobster, and its meat tastes a lot like that, too. This is the specific animal to which the dish “shrimp scampi” refers. In other words, shrimp cooked in the same way you’d cook scampi. When white shrimp are in season, this is a great dish to make with them, but any local shrimp will work. If you serve them with pasta, you can use small shrimp.
2 lbs. whole heads-on shrimp, 20-25 count
3 green onions
1 tsp. black peppercorns
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbs. chopped garlic
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
3 Tbs. chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup chopped green onions
1 cup white mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 Tbs. softened butter
1/4 tsp. salt
8 oz. (precooked weight) cooked bowtie or shell pasta
1. Peel and devein the shrimp. Rinse the heads and the shells and put them into a saucepan with just enough water to cover, along with the bulb ends of the green onions and the peppercorns. Bring the saucepan to a bare simmer and hold there for about a half-hour. Strain and reserve the stock.
2. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet. When hot, add the peeled shrimp and cook while agitating the pan (so the shrimp will turn over) until the shrimp are pink. Remove the shrimp from the pan.
3. Add the garlic, crushed red pepper, parsley, green onions, and mushrooms to the skillet. Cook about another minute.
4. Add the wine and one cup of the shrimp stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a light sauce consistency, then remove from the heat. Whisk in the softened butter, and add the salt.
5. Return the shrimp to the pan and cook about two minutes more, until firm. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.
6. Add the pasta to the pan and toss it around with the sauce and shrimp. Serve garnished with fresh oregano and fresh chopped parsley.
Serves four entrees or six to eight appetizers.
Zuppa Filippa @ Ristorante Filippo
The house soup in this well-hidden and excellent Italian trattoria in Metairie is named for chef-owner Phil Gagliano’s mother. So it had better be good, and it is. So good, in fact, that you may well be tempted to have a second helping if you ordered a cup of it. A bowl, as a light lunch entree or as the start of a big dinner, is not a bad idea. It’s a fish soup made with big pieces of fresh local crabmeat, shrimp, and oysters, in a lusty fish broth with a little cream and just enough red pepper and herbs to create complexity without getting in the way of the seafood.
Ristorante Filippo. Metairie: 1917 Ridgelake. 504-835-4008.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
May 21, 2015
Days Until. . .
New Orleans Wine And Food Experience Begins Today
Greek Festival 1
Annals Of Service
This is National Waiters and Waitresses Day. One of the four major elements in the restaurant organism (cooks, management, and customers are the others), service people probably contribute more to the personality and success of a restaurant than any other force. Every survey ever done on the matter has shown that service is more important to restaurant diners than anything else. If you want to get better service, make up your mind never to give less than a twenty percent tip. A server can smell that fact about you, and will respond in a way that will be worthy of that gratuity.
Today’s Flavor
Today is Southern Wild Blackberry Day. At this time of year in the New Orleans area, blackberries and the closely related dewberries are ripening all over. There’s a frustrating aspect to this. Even though we always find lush stands of dewberries everywhere around us, they are rarely on our own property. You have to walk down the road to an open field to find the really good berry-picking grounds. We have a few blackberry vines, too, producing juicier berries, but not many of those either. But we still have lots of fun going out there and picking the berries, eating as we go. We never seem to find enough to outpace our eating.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Rib Mountain is a long ridge rising some 700 feet above the otherwise nearly flat terrain in central Wisconsin. It’s the main feature of Rib Mountain State Park, and is near the Big Rib River, a challenging stream for canoers. The hardest part is Rib Falls. All of this is just west of the city of Wausau, which is where you’ll have to go if you’re looking for something to eat. Try Fazoli’s, a mile away from the mountain. It’s on US 51, which is a direct 1171-mile route back to New Orleans.
Deft Dining Rule #320
If you have to choose between ordering breakfast a la carte or getting it from the buffet, the presence of fresh blackberries on the latter tilts the decision toward the buffet.
Edible Dictionary
haricots verts, French, n., pl.–Literally, “green beans.” However, when this expression is used on a menu in America, it almost always denotes unusually thin pods of green beans, always eaten without shelling, and usually cooked only long enough to take the snap out of them, while still remaining squeaky when you chew them. They’re also known as “French green beans,” to distinguish them from the many varieties of snap beans in bigger pods. The words are often incorrectly used in the singular form on menus, seemingly indicating a serving of one single bean. (It’s like saying “red bean and rice.”)
Gourmets On Television
Today is the birthday, in 1917, of actor Raymond Burr. He began his career in radio westerns (!), but became a superstar on television as Perry Mason, attorney. He went on to star in other big programs. As could be told by his growing size, he was a dedicated eater. He liked New Orleans, visited often, and was a regular at Commander’s Palace until not long before his death in 1993.
Philosophy Of Eating
The Greek philosopher Plato was born today in 427 B.C. his theories about the ultimate expression of a state of being gave rise to Richard Collin’s expression “platonic dish” in his New Orleans Underground Gourmet, the city’s first critical restaurant guide, in the 1970s. The term was so original that it is still used, often by people who have no idea where it came from. Some of the dishes he deemed platonic were oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s, shrimp remoulade at Galatoire’s, crabmeat St. Francis at LeRuth’s, and eggs Hussarde at Brennan’s.
Restaurants Through History
Today in 1923, Delmonico Restaurant in New York City closed. It is regarded the first modern restaurant in America, opening almost a century earlier. Prohibition was blamed for its demise. Delmonico’s was the kind of place one went for the most lavish of meals with celebratory quantities of wine and spirits. It just didn’t seem right without the beverages, but styles were changing too. Delmonico’s and the Jazz Age didn’t really fit together well. It would later reopen, close, and reopen again (it’s on now). Its intermittent past allows Antoine’s to claim to be the longest-running restaurant in the country. Many restaurants around the country used the Delmonico name even when there was no connection at all. The one here, for example.
Food Namesakes
Today in 1955, Chuck Berry recorded Maybelline, the song that pushed the accelerator of his career to the floor. . . Oil executive Armand Hammer, who had no connection with the baking soda of the same name, was born today in 1898. . . Jazz pianist and composer Fats Waller was born today in 1904. . . Tabasco Cat won the Preakness today in 1994. . . British social reformer Elizabeth Fry came into the cold world today in 1780. . . Chris Raab, comic actor in the Jackass series and others, jerked out today in 1980.
Words To Eat By
“Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue.”–Plato.
Words To Drink By
“The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house. But the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind.”–H.L. Mencken.
And Other Arcane Restaurant Rules.
This identifies the two most uncomfortable tables in the place.
Click here for the cartoon.
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