Broussard’s
The fourth member (after Antoine’s, Galatoire’s, and Arnaud’s) of the grand-dame French Quarter Creole-French restaurants, Broussard’s received a renovation and a culinary rethinking during the past few years. Current Chef Neal Swidler is younger and more inventive than his predecessors, and that has made special menus like this more appealing. (On the other hand, we will all regret the passing of the German Christmas menu that longtime owner-chef Gunter Preuss favored us with for twenty years.) This year marks a return to the Reveillon for Broussard’s after two years off. The courtyard we missed especially.
Pistachio pâté campagne, brandied duck liver mousse & pork rillettes
House pickles & mustard sauce
❉Gravlax dill cured salmon
Choupique caviar-deviled egg, truffle, leek & wild mushroom salad
❉Turtle soup au sherry
Butternut squash bisque
Cranberry smoked cheddar grilled cheese
Burgundy braised lamb shank
Blue cheese risotto & pepper jelly haricots
❉Yellowfin tuna ”Diane”
Roasted garlic whipped potatoes, wild mushroom duxelles, brandy green peppercorn cream
❉Sticky toffee bread pudding
Eggnog sauce anglaise
❉Pumpkin cheesecake
Chocolate graham cracker crust, toasted marshmallow
French Quarter: 819 Conti. 504-581-3866.
FULL REVIEW
All the Reveillon menus can be perused here. We’ll feature one every day throughout the Reveillon season, which runs in most of the Reveillon restaurants until December 31.The snowflake ratings are for the Reveillon menu, not the restaurant in general. Dishes marked with the snowflake symbol ✽ are my recommendations.
Friday, December 18, 2015.
Two Parties.
I have a burned-out headlight on the PT Cruiser. I pick up a new bulb–just $12, I was surprised to find. I search the internet to see how to perform the replacement. I encounter four videos on the subject, all with the usual jokey hosts. The first of these tells me that I have to remove the bumper. What? Another says that step is only for 2004 and newer models. I have a 2003, the procedure for which is to jack the car up, remove the wheel near the bad bulb, remove a panel inside the wheel well, then–a bright light illuminating a cave-like passage–unscrew the old one (only one quarter-turn), screw in the new one, replace the panel and the wheel, and lower the car.
I can probably do all that myself, but I decide it’s one step over my aggravation threshold. I bring the PT to Superior Tires in Covington, which has serviced this car dozens of times in the past. Mary Ann follows me there and we have breakfast, after waiting a few minutes for a table. Mattina Bella is as busy as it deserves to be. Best breakfast on the North Shore.
I have basic soft-scrambled eggs with bacon and a single multi-grain pancake. Yum, yum. MA has her standard every-meat-in-the-house omelette. Owner Vincent Riccobono (not the one who owns the Peppermill, but a cousin who, confusingly, used to manage the Peppermill) comes over and we show him pictures of our first grandchild. He has four grandkids. His son is managing the door of Mattina Bella today–I think he usually cooks. His mother (Vincent’s wife) is here but taking the day off, sitting down to breakfast with friends. We show her the kid pictures, too. It’s an old-time family operation in an old-time part of Covington. Perfect place to be a week before Christmas on a cold day.
The radio station is drifting into a torpor. It is very difficult to sell advertising time the week before Christmas, so nobody has a lot of extra work to do. I go into town anyway, because my party schedule is full. The radio cluster’s annual holiday party is tonight at the Hard Rock Café. It’s been a few years since I’ve attended this. Not because I have any reason to avoid it, but because of conflicts with Eat Club dinners and the like.
In fact, I like going to the station Christmas party. I always meet a lot of co-workers who I don’t really know. We have six radio stations, each with its own staff. I always discover that for every person I don’t know, there are three who know me very well, many of whom step up and tell me flattering things. I am very lucky that they have such things to say. Ours is a very tight, well-organized operation.
The food is mostly pretty good. I begin with a shooter of chicken-andouille gumbo, good enough that I return for two more shots. Miniature Buffalo wings circulate, as do sliders, shrimp remoulade, cheeses, and roast prime rib carved to order. The bar in our private room is minimal, but when I ask for a Manhattan, instead of telling me that it was over the complexity limit, the bartender goes to the main working bar of the restaurant and comes back with the drink.
I win a new golden Cross pen from Boudreaux’s Jewelers in a raffle. I don’t use ball-points, so I will go to Boudreaux’s to see whether they will accept an upcharge for the fountain pen version. I know that it exists, because I saw an article about it in Esquire.
I wind up staying longer than I expected. But I have another party on my agenda, this one at the home of Mary Ann’s brother Lee. He and his wife Valarie–who seems to be the style-setter–also put on a magnificent party a year ago for Jude and his bride. They found a great caterer for that: Palate New Orleans, which created another superb spread tonight.
I have at times described The Restaurant Critic Diet in this space. The essence of it is that if you eat different food in different eateries every day, you will wind up losing a lot of weight. Here’s a new corollary to the diet: If you become famous as a food authority, you will find that the other guests at a party will keep walking up to you with reports about the food, and you will never be able to break away from them long enough to sample the eats yourself. Thereby, you eat less. A good thing, especially when the food is as fine as it was this night.
Saturday, December 19, 2015.
Caroling. Commander’s Palace.
My Saturday radio show was due to return to the air for the first time in months today, but a shift in LSU’s athletic schedule erased me from the log again. That was a good thing, because it allowed me to join three other MPAS singers in Christmas carols at the English Tea Room in Covington. This is a charming little place that not only serves dozens of varieties of teas, but maintains a menu much like you’d find in a real British tea café. Scones, ploughman’s lunches, shepherd’s pie, and little sandwiches with vegetables inside.
Our quartet–sometimes in four-part harmony, but mostly not–gave forth with two half-hour programs of song, religious and secular, magnificent and absurd, separated by a light lunch. (Tomato basil soup and a savory scone for me.) It was a delightful way to spend a midday. And the customers seemed to like it, too.
English Tea Room. Covington: 734 E Rutland St. 985-898-3988.
Dinner tonight with friends at Commander’s Palace. I will report on that tomorrow, Diary Time. I need to look for some wayward photographs I took that night. But now, if you will. . .
Sunday, December 20, 2015.
La Provence With The Gourmet Cellist.
Over the years, a number of people who I met through their calls to the radio show became friends outside the radio universe. The first of these was Charlie Lawlor, who sat with us for dinner at Begue’s during my second date with Mary Ann. (She was still on the air then, and Charlie called her, too.)
The most recent radio-voice-to-live friend is Daniel Lelchuk, to whom I gave the sobriquet “the Gourmet Cellist.” He’s a guy about Jude’s age, and already a man of good culinary tastes, both in his restaurant experiences and in his home cooking. He has traveled throughout Europe and knows it well. His regular gig is as the second-chair cello for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. But I have heard him deliver solo parts that seem virtuoso to me.
We’ve had a few dinners with Dan, and tonight we have another. His brother Saul is in from the West Coast, and they are making assiduous rounds of the New Orleans restaurant scene. Daniel wanted to take his bro to La Provence, to which he has not been himself. He didn’t have to talk me into it, and the four of us meet at six-thirty.
La Provence is busier than usual. But it is an ideal venue for Christmas-season dining. In fact, it has a Reveillon menu–the farthest-flung of all the Reveillons. It goes for $49 as a prix-fixe–no choices. This sounds good to most of us, but the Lelchuk boys have really been stuffing it in. Doris Metropolitan last night, for example.
Pate and croutons at La Provence.
We go through two crocks of La Provence’s chicken liver pâté before the first courses arrive. I persuade Dan and Saul to get the oysters ooh-la-la, which to my tastes is the best baked oyster dish around. Crab fat, saffron, a little red pepper, a little bread crumbs, all on the shells. They were slightly underbaked, but that might have been intentional to keep the oysters plump. Still spectacular, in any case.
We have some soups and salads: turtle soup from the Reveillon menu for me, and crab bisque for Saul. Daniel is lucky enough to get the butternut squash ravioli, which appears to be a signature dish when the squash are in season. Mary Ann has a butter-lettuce salad, about which she says she should have stopped there.
The most interesting entree is the porchetta, made using piglets from Chappapeela Farms. La Provence owner John Besh has been a strong supporter of the Chappapeela guys and their superb local products. Daniel has the porchetta, made by reworking parts of the pig into a sort of roast. Quite a plate of food, enough for at least two and with a new flavor in every bite.
This is rivaled by Saul’s pick, a stunning half of a duck, looking only slightly better than it tastes–and that is saying something.
Less impressive are the two fish dishes. One was a pompano with a pan-glaze of parmesan cheese, and sunchokes on the side (second time I’ve encountered that rare vegetable in a week). This melange is overly complicated for a fish like pompano, which stands alone in its flavor. The swordfish, on the other hand, must have come from a very large specimen, for which the cooking made it dry. It comes covered with shredded parsnips. Not my favorite use of that carrot-like, mildly-starchy root vegetable.
Few desserts are ordered. I have the upside-down apple cake, and find that likable enough. I have coffee, and we discuss whether it’s French press coffee or not. I say now, because I liked this coffee.
We spend a long time here. The pleasures of La Provence in winter is hard to pull away from.
La Provence. Lacombe: 25020 US 190. 985-626-7662.
Eggplant and Tomato Soup
Every now and then, a chef will make an eggplant-and-tomato soup as the soup of the day, and find it so good that he wonders whether anyone else ever discovered this. A few chefs have, I’m happy to say, and the results are always great. The combination of those two flavors is about perfect.
When I have a lot of people over, especially in the cool seasons, I greet each arriving guest with this soup in small coffee cups. The only change is to puree the soup all the way with a quarter-cup of whipping cream, or a tablespoon of sour cream and a few dashes of Tabasco.
1 large eggplant
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
2 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves only, chopped
4 leaves fresh rosemary (only 4 leaves!)
3 28-ounce cans whole plum tomatoes, crushed by hand, juice reserved OR 7 medium, ripe tomatoes, cored, peeled, and seeded
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1. Peel the eggplant and cut into large dice
2. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over high heat. When it shimmers, add the garlic cloves and crushed red pepper. Cook until the garlic is browned at the edges. Remove the garlic, and add the eggplant, cooking until it’s browned on the edges. Lower the heat to medium-low.
3. Add all the other ingredients and stir to blend. Add one and a half cups of the reserved tomato juice. Bring to a light boil and lower the heat to a simmer. Cover the saucepan and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring every now and then.
4. Roughly puree the soup in a food processor, leaving small chunks of eggplant. Return to the saucepan, add the lemon juice, and adjust seasonings. Add a little water or chicken stock if necessary to lighten up the texture.
Serves six to eight.
Calas @ Coffee Pot
Very few restaurants make calas, the cinnamony, fried Creole rice cakes that have been a house specialty at the Coffee Pot since the 1940s. They have served calas for breakfast (and lately as a dessert) for as long as I can remember–which takes us back at least to 1970. Before that, there is plenty of evidence that these golf-ball-size spheres were popular street food all around the French Quarter since the early 1900s. At the Coffee Pot, calas come with grits and sausage on the side, and take you back a hundred years.
Coffee Pot. French Quarter: 714 St Peter. 504-524-3500.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
December 22, 2015
Days Until. . .
Christmas–3
New Year’s Eve–10
Great Names In Dining
Today in 1858 was the birthday of Giacomo Puccini, the composer of some of the greatest and most-performed operas: Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and La Boheme among them. Quite a few restaurants and dishes are named after him. One of the latter is at Pascal’s Manale, consisting of veal scallops in a cream sauce with mushrooms. Like its namesake’s operas, it’s rich and rococo.
Eating Through History
Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, was born in Rouen, France (famous for its pressed duck, but that’s unrelated) today in 1643. LaSalle explored North America widely on behalf of King Louis XIV, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed the entire drainage of the Mississippi River for France, burying a silver plate saying so somewhere around what is now Venice, Louisiana. LaSalle is largely responsible for the fact that New Orleans has as strong a French culinary heritage as it does. We thanked him by naming a street and a few other things here for him.
Today in 1918, food restrictions imposed on Americans during World War I were lifted. However, the eating of buffalo tongue stuffed with rabbit livers remained banned, until it finally fell from vogue. Nobody eats the dish to this day.
Food Calendar
Today is National Big Tip Day. That is not just fanciful, but a tradition for a century or more. I’ve practiced it had for a long time. Certain waiters who take special care of me all year long get an extraordinarily large tip from me at this season. In terms of what it returns in pleasure, it’s the best money I spend all year in restaurants.
Deft Dining Rule #323:
Give somebody a hundred-dollar tip. Choose this person carefully. He or she will return the investment many times over, and you will suddenly become someone who gives hundred-dollar tips.
Gourmet Gazetteer
The neighborhood of Mandarin is on the eastern banks of the St. John’s River in northeastern Florida. It once was an incorporated town, but is now part of Jacksonville, just north. Mandarin is an architecturally rich area, with numerous historic buildings and parks. It dates back to the early years of the 1800s. Its name–for the mandarin oranges that grew around there in more profusion than they do now–was given to it by one of its earliest residents. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about it in admiring tones, and lived there after the Civil War. Lots of restaurants are just east of Mandarin. The Lunch Table Cafe sounds good.
Edible Dictionary
chinook salmon, n.–One of a number of names for the largest member of the salmon family. (Another common one is king salmon.) It’s one of the world’s best eating fish, much appreciated in all the places where it lives. In the Western Hemisphere, it’s found from San Francisco up to the Bering Strait, and down the east coast of Asia to Japan. Is spend most of its life in the ocean, but at spawning time it swims up rivers. One population travels about 1800 miles up the Yukon River. These fish have so much stored fat that they are the most prized of all salmon. You won’t likely see these in a restaurant, though, because the fishery is so isolated. The fish is named for a group of Native Americans in the Northwest.
Food In The Military
Today in 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans demanded the surrender of American forces. To this, Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe replied, “Nuts!”
Food Under Water
On this day in 1938, the first noted catch of a coelacanth was made, off the coast of South Africa. The coelacanth was previously known only as a fossil, and finding a living specimen was a great surprise. A primitive fish, its fins look like legs. It may be our closest relative among the fishes. Its body contains a great deal of fat, including in its swim bladder. They’re still caught, usually in very deep waters, but they’re extremely rare. I wonder what coelacanth tastes like.
Food Records
On this date in 1985 in Destin, Florida, the largest grouper ever recorded was caught. The fish weighed 436 pounds. After blackening, it was very tough.
Food Namesakes
Hoagy Carmichael, the band leader and co-composer of Stardust, was born today in 1899. . . It’s the birthday of Thomas Cook, the original travel agent, in 1808. . . Benedict Augustin Morel, a French psychologist, came to earth today in 1809. He espoused the nutty idea that many illnesses were the result of degeneration (backward evolution). . . Today is the feast day of St. Hunger of Utrecht, who lived in the ninth century.
Words To Eat By
“But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goat’s flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton;
And, when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.”–Byron.
Words To Drink By
“Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living.”–Jean Kerr, American author.
What Is Pumpkin Pie For, After All?
Yes, that’s right. Tune in tomorrow when we discover the secret explanation for rice dressing, macaroni and cheese, and spinach Madeline.
Click here for the cartoon.