Four Courses, $48, Tomatoes Galore.
For the past eight years Muriel’s has mounted a celebration of Creole tomatoes. Those big, red, juicy, local love apples form the core of a four-course, $48 dinner that runs through the end of June. It’s a natural, pairing tomatoes with everything from a softshell crabs to pork tenderloin, and even turning tomatoes into a dessert ingredient. Here’s Chef Erik Veney’s Creole Tomato menu:
Creole Tomato Gazpacho
Gulf shrimp and fried caper salad
Creole Tomato Salad
Prosciutto, shaved parmesan and pickled red onion
Blackened Black Drum
Jumbo lump crabmeat and Creole salsa, sriracha cabbage and crispy tortilla strips
Wood Grilled Pork Tenderloin
Creole tomato fried rice, grilled bok choy
and sweet and sour sauce
Creole Tomato & Strawberry-Mojito Popsicle
Rosemary shortbread and tomato jam sandwich cookies
The entire dinner is $45. The menu will run throughout June, with a few changes to keep it fresh. They also have the entire a la carte menu available, as well as their nightly table d’hote three-course repast for $32. This is the first of several summertime menus Muriel’s favors us with, at prices we locals appreciate. Especially from a restaurant on Jackson Square.
Muriel’s
French Quarter: 801 Chartres. 504-568-1885. www.muriels.com.
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Wednesday, June 17, 2015.
Velvet Cactus.
Mary Leigh and I are enduring the absence of Mary Ann all this week. While MA continues her idyll in her beloved Langham Hotel in Pasadena, ML and I try to get together for lunch or dinner, to slake the loneliness. Her work schedule and mine don’t coordinate well, but she doesn’t work every day.
We meet up for supper at the Velvet Cactus in Lakeview. I recall that she said she liked it. She corrects me on that. She says that she found the menu appealing, but the realities were less impressive.
Inside the dining room at Velvet Cactus. They also have outdoor tables.
I’m glad she and I get together for this review. As soon as I enter, it’s clear to me that the Velvet Cactus is aimed at a much younger audience than my generation. The premises, the music, and the service style seem more appropriate for twenty-somethings–ML’s age. She is a fan of Americanized Mexican restaurants since she was a little girl, with a long memory of all the salsas in town.
Our dinner at Velvet Cactus tonight is the most disappointing meal I’ve had in awhile. Everything about the place makes me hope that I’ve replaced myself as NOMenu’s critic before it’s time to review it again. I have no doubt it will still be around. The place is packed all the time. The wait for a table tonight is a half-hour. But that’s better than previous attempts to dine here, when I couldn’t find parking within four blocks.
Whatever the magic is in the Velvet Cactus’s appeal to its customers–and I have no idea how it works–the management has made the most of it. What I find here is mind-numbing music, an ambient sound level that makes it nearly impossible to carry on a conversation with the person sitting next to you, a menu whose length is an illusion created by using most ingredients in many different dishes, a rushed service routine that seems calculated to turn tables as quickly as possible, and thoroughly uninteresting food.
About the only aspects of the place I can get my head around are the low prices for massive portions, and a clever interior and exterior design. It looks like a New Orleans version of Angkor Wat, an old, disused facility abandoned long ago to the vines and weedy-looking plants growing up all around the place. Actually, the restaurant was built from the ground up a few years ago.
Nachos.
Here’s how it went after the half-hour wait passed. The eager waiter came over to suggest margaritas or beer. Failing that, he suggests we get an appetizer while we’re looking over the menu. The urgency in his pitch persuades me to get guacamole. It comes out with the expected rapidity, a ball of mostly-avocado that appeared to have been rendered with an ice cream scoop. Not terrible, but below average. When the waiter brings it, he presses us for a decision on the entree. After all, we’ve been sitting in one of his tables for a full four minutes. But I actually read menus, and I wasn’t quite ready. To calm the waiter down, I ask for a plate of the house nachos. And here they are, with two-thirds of the guacamole still left to be eaten. The nachos are mountainous in portion, and not worth eating.
Quesadillas.
But by then we manage to choose entrees. ML has beef quesadillas. For me, the cochinitas pibil. They both arrive with some ninety percent of the nachos remaining, and over half of the guac. I issue my usual question when this happens: which dish should I allow to get cold while eating the other?
Cochinita pibil.
The presence of the pork pibil gave me hope. It’s a Yucatan specialty, made with slow-cooked, tender pork with a sharp marinade involving peppers and pineapple. I’ve always liked it–particularly in Cozumel, where I have it almost every time my ship docks there. I should have known that knowledge of the authentic dish from the place if its birth would be a handicap at Velvet Cactus. The pork is shredded into an unidentifiable mash. The rice underneath the pork is the better part of the dish. I lost interest after three bites (or six percent by volume).
The waiter, to prove that he is on top of things, analyzes the quantity of uneaten food on the table. “Do I like the cochinita?” he asks. No, I say. Within the next sixty seconds he checks with the floor manager, who picks up the dish and erases it from the check, even though I didn’t ask for such a drastic move. But they seem to be completely amenable to making it good.
Mary Leigh, who lately has picked up some of her mother’s adoration of leftovers, asks to have the pibil and the nachos, and–oh, well, while you’re at it, half of the quesadilla–packed up to go. I roll my eyes. I was hoping never to see this stuff again.
Good lord, this music is awful. The many avid customers, laughing and yelling to be heard, will pick up the slack from my not coming back anytime soon. This restaurant, I keep thinking, is not made for people like me.
Tres leches cake at Velvet Cactus.
But I check one more thing. Tres leches cake. Mmmmm–no.
Velvet Cactus. Lakeview: 6300 Argonne Blvd. 504-301-2083.
Eat
French Quarter: 900 Dumaine. 504-522-7222 . Map.
Nice Casual
AE DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Among the most delightful but least-discussed eateries in the French Quarter are the cafes catering to people who live there. That population has seen a long decline, as more residences become businesses. The result is that many of the old neighborhood places have shifted to the visitor trade, with the expected results. Eat has held off this unfortunate trend so well that it has a substantial following among both locals and people who visit New Orleans frequently.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
Although no New Orleans neighborhood has a bigger or better community of eateries, there’s a big gap between the joints selling poor boys, pizza and basic seafood and the big-deal gourmet restaurants. Eat is one of the few restaurants that fill that breach, with middling prices to match..
WHAT’S GOOD
Eat cooks with no pretenses about setting the standard for New Orleans cookery or reinventing the cuisine. Its menu is easy to get one’s head around, even for people with very basic tastes. The most adventuresome cooking is found on the weekend brunch menu. The food is dominated by Creole flavors, with more attention to delicacy and presentation than usual. Fried dishes–even fried chicken–are better than I expected.
BACKSTORY
This corner has hosted neighborhood, breakfast-intensive restaurants for decades. a long time. The Quarter Scene was here for about twenty years until Katrina. Not long after the storm, Eat took over the space. It’s one of a small local restaurant group that also includes Vacherie, Cafe on the Square and Between The Bread. The chef at Eat is Jarred Zeringue, a native.
DINING ROOM
Nearly everyone who has ever reported to me on Eat begins with the same sentence: “It’s a cute little place.” Cute: perfect for those looking for an escape from New Orleans funkiness. Little: it’s really little. Tables and chairs fill the maximum amount of space without becoming inconvenient.
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
Brunch
Banana fritters
Omelettes to order
Eggs de Provence (baked in a black iron skillet with cream, herbs, bacon)
Eggs Dauphine (poached, country ham, fried green tomatoes, hollandaise)
Eggs Dumaine (veal grillades, poached eggs, hollandaise
Pulled pork cake, mustard greens, poached eggs, creole hollandaise
Two-egg breakfast, bacon or sausage, grits, biscuit or toast
Shrimp and grits
Starters
Blue cheese and fig torte
Hog head cheese
Spicy deviled eggs with bacon or smoked salmon
Fried chicken livers with pepper jelly
Chicken and andouille gumbo
Roasted beet and goat cheese salad
Blackened catfish sandwich
Pork tenderloin, caramelized onions, baked macaroni and cheese
Barbeque shrimp
New York strip, herb compound butter
Roasted stuffed bell peppers
Chicken and dumplings
Eggplant and shrimp casserole
Chicken fried chicken
Fried catfish
Cochon with mustard greens
White beans with ham
Butterbeans with shrimp
FOR BEST RESULTS
Not a place to come in a hurry. Arriving early in the meal period might get a prized window table. Because of the proximity of St. Louis Cathedral School, this location will never have a liquor license. So bring your own wine: no corkage fee for the first bottle, $15 a bottle thereafter).
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The biggest problem here is the relaxed pace of service. I think this may owe entirely to the kitchen’s minute size. I can’t say it bothers me, but it always takes about ten minutes longer to eat here than it seems like it should.
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
Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Open Sunday lunch
Good for children
Reservations accepted (dinner only)
Red Snapper With Artichokes and Mushrooms
Redfish with a sauce of artichokes, capers, mushrooms, and butter appears on the menus of quite a few New Orleans restaurants. It’s delicious far beyond the promise of its description or even appearance. Trout, redfish, flounder, lemonfish, sheepshead, or striped bass also work for this recipe. So do really big oysters or shrimp.
The dish was invented at Brennan’s, where it still can be had (with fish or veal) under the name Kottwitz. The best practitioners, however, are the Impastato brothers Joe (at Impastato’s in Metairie) and Sal (Sal And Judy’s, in Lacombe). As an option, they will take the idea another step beyond and add crabmeat, shrimp or both. The resulting dish bears the name of the current Saints head coach.
4 red snapper, trout, redfish, drum, or sheepshead fillets, 6-8 oz.
Juice of 1/2 lemon, strained
1 cup flour
1 Tbs. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper
3 eggs, beaten
4 Tbs. butter
Sauce:
2 fresh artichoke bottoms (or canned)
8 artichoke hearts, quartered
1/3 cup dry sherry or white wine
2 cups sliced white mushrooms
2 Tbs. sliced green onions
1/4 tsp. chopped garlic
1/2 tsp. chopped French shallots
1 Tbs. smallest possible capers
2 Tbs. freshly-squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 sticks butter
Fish with mushrooms and artichokes with sherry sauce.
1. If using fresh artichoke bottoms for the sauce, poach until soft in water with a little lemon juice and 1 Tbs. salt. Cut the artichokes into eighths and set aside.
2. Sprinkle the lemon juice over the fish fillets. Stir the salt and pepper into the flour with a fork, and dredge the fillets in the seasoned flour. Shake off the excess flour, dip the fillets in the beaten eggs, and dredge through the flour again. Knock off the excess flour.
2. Heat the 4 Tbs. butter over medium-high heat in a large, heavy skillet and sauté until the fish is cooked–about three minutes per side. Remove the fish and keep warm.
4. To make the sauce, add the white wine to the pan in which you sautéed the fish, and whisk to dissolve the pan juices. Bring to a boil until the wine is reduced by two-thirds. Lower the heat to medium and add all the remaining sauce ingredients except the butter. Cook until the mushrooms no longer break when flexed.
5. Lower the heat to almost off, and add the butter, a tablespoon at a time, agitating the pan until the butter has blended in completely.
6. Place the fish on serving plates and top with the sauce.
Serves four.
Crabmeat au Gratin @ Bon Ton Cafe
The Bon-Ton is best known for its crawfish dishes. With good reason. However, it is also one of the three or four best restaurants for the eating of crabmeat. They prepare it many different ways, but the star is their crabmeat au gratin. It’s the best version of that dish I’ve had anywhere. The crab is jumbo lump, comes out in a ceramic baking dish bubbling and aromatic, spooned onto your plate by the waitress.
It’s very rich, but–and this is what’s so good about it–it’s not especially cheesy. The sauce is a bechamel with just a touch of cheese, and it comes out a little crusty on top. They always have it, but if you order it when crabmeat is out of season, please don’t let on that you heard about it from me.
Bon Ton Cafe. CBD: 401 Magazine. 504-524-3386.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
June 25, 2015
Days Until. . .
Fourth Of July 9
Food Calendar
Today in 1987, President Ronald Reagan declared June 25 National Farm-Raised Catfish Day. Farm-raised catfish has the advantage of being available all the time at a consistent price. Restaurants love that, because wild-caught fish are so unpredictable. It’s pretty good, but the trend in recent years has been to allow the catfish to grow bigger and bigger, which for catfish is not an improvement. Also, some fish farms have environmental issues. Wild-caught fish from good sources is better. But rolled in corn meal, fried till golden, splashed with hot sauce. . . it’s a treat. Makes a good poor boy sandwich, too.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Egg Mountain is in the Anzo-Borrega Desert State Park in southernmost California, about twenty miles from the Mexican border. It’s a 102-mile drive from San Diego. Egg Mountain is well named. From Bow Willow Creek, a dry wash just west, it does look like an egg half-buried in the sun-bleached desert. At 902 feet, the egg rises about 300 feet above the wash. If you have water and a trail map, hike thirteen miles through a canyon along the south end of the Sierra Blanca Mountains to Laguna, for lunch at the Blue Jay Lodge.
Edible Dictionary
airline chicken breast, n.–Half a chicken breast with the upper section of the wing still attached. I say half, because strictly speaking there is only one breast on a chicken. (Even more strict is to note that chickens don’t have breasts at all, but never mind.) The whole breast is usually split down the middle to give two identical pieces, each a mirror image of the other. If it’s an airline chicken breast, the drummette part of the wing is still there, making a substantial portion and a good look for serving. Airline breasts are expensive enough that they are most often found in white-tablecloth restaurants. The “airline” reference is strictly an industry note. It may have been used aboard planes at one time, but that use is almost non-existent now. Nobody is quite sure how the name got started. A whole breast with both drummettes might look a little like an airplane, but that’s hardly even a theory.
Annals Of Food Writing
Food adventurer Anthony Bourdain was born today in 1956. He grew up in a bourgeois New York family and was well educated. But he went his own way, working years as a chef. With that experience and a gift for colorful expression, he began writing. His breakthrough book was Kitchen Confidential, published in 2000. In it he showed a side of the cooking profession few people (other than those engaged in it) realized. He went on to write other books about the restaurant biz, along with a few crime mysteries. He became a big star when his No Reservations television show on The Travel Channel became a phenomenon. Bourdain became famous for his willingness to try almost anything in both the culinary and other sides of the worlds he visited. He’s genuinely entertaining, seeing facets of the world most people miss and commenting with offbeat humor about all of it.
World Food Records
The world’s largest lollipop was certified on June 25, 2002. it weighed 4,031 pounds (with stick), measured 18.9 inches thick and was more than 15 feet tall with stick (about as tall as a giraffe). Can you guess the flavor of the world’s largest lollipop? That’s right.
Deft Dining Rule #110:
A restaurant offering “lamb lollipops” is best advised to limit them to the small plates section of the menu. And they had better include a thick, very good sauce.
Unusual Foods
The discovery of a previously unknown mammal called the saola was announced today in 1994. Also known as the Vu Quang ox, it lives along the border between Vietnam and Laos. An ungulate that somewhat resembles cattle, it was classified in its own genus. It weighs about 200 pounds and has sharp horns. There are only a few hundred of them in existence, living in steep mountains covered with jungle. However, the natives have killed and eaten them, and say it tastes a lot like bo.
Food Namesakes
Football player Bob Griese retired from the game today in 1980. . . Pro basketballer Dell Curry (he used to play for the Hornets) tipped off today in 1964. . . Harold Roe Bartle, former mayor of Kansas City, was born today in 1901.
Words To Eat By
“Fettuccine Alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.”–Mitch Hedberg, American comedian.
Words To Drink By
“To your good health, old friend,
May you live for a thousand years,
And I be there to count them.
—Robert Smith Surtees, British writer of the middle 1800s.
Why Squabs Are Bigger Than Grown Pigeons.
Squabs are the most delicious edible bird that you might run into in a restaurant. They are juvenile pigeons, fed by their parents until they are actually larger than their progenitors. Here is a fine example.
Click here for the cartoon.
Recent Back Editions
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5-Star Back Edition TH 6/25/15
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