MeMe’s Wine Dinner This Monday
The excellent Creole bistro MeMe’s in Chalmette continues its series of wine dinners, staged every month or two on Mondays–specifically, this Monday, March 23. Chef Lincoln Owens has a five-course menu featuring a mix of Italian and California wines. He and the restaurant’s owners (two couples, the Williamses and the Catalanottos) continue to bring serious dining to St. Bernard Parish, when has never had this kind of cookery and service before.
MeMe’s wine dinners are a little different from most in that you can make a reservation at any time during the evening, with open seating starting at 5 p.m. A representative from the wine dealer will be there to tell what went into the bottles. The menu speaks for itself:
Shrimp au Vin
Gulf Shrimp sauteed in creamy white wine with cheddar cheese and green onion served in casserole lined with mashed potatoes
Wine: Franciscan Chardonnay
Romaine Salad, Jumbo Lump Crabmeat
Char-Grilled romaine leaves, parmesan vinaigrette, shaved parmesan cheese, fireburst cherry tomatoes.
Wine: Ruffino Borgo Conventi Pinot Grigio
Blackened Amberjack
Tomato, basil, potato puree, charred Vidalia onion.
Wine: Simi Pinot Noir
Sliced Filet Mignon Oscar
Beef tenderloin, thinly sliced, mini crab cake, grilled asparagus, hollandaise sauce.
Wine: Diseno Red Blend
Cheesecake With Fresh Strawberry Compote
Wine: Rosatello Rosso
The price for this is a mere $70, inclusive of tax, tip and wines. Reservations are essential at the number below.
MeMe’s
St. Bernard Parish: 712 W. Judge Perez Dr. 504-644-4992. www.memesbarandgrille.com.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2015.
Cheese, Wine, And Festivals.
After stewing about The Procedure for weeks before it transpired yesterday, today it’s as if it never happened, save for the happy knowledge of the outcome. So goodbye to that, and back to normal.
The Round Table radio show, for example. This weekend, the Festival Season gets underway big-time. This Friday is the Lark in the Park, and Sunday is Chef’s Soiree in Covington. We have chefs from both events in the studio.
Chef Robert Bruce may hold the record as the person who, over twenty or so years, represented the greatest number of restaurants in on-air guest shots with me. Currently he’s the chef of Mr. John’s Steak House. From there he brings an example of a variation on my New Orleans Cut steak. In that, the chef gets his strip steaks cut twice as thick as usual, and then cuts them in half vertically to create what looks like two filets. That lets the steak cook in a more exciting way, with the superior flavor of the strip. He brought me his take on the idea, cooked black and blue with an encrustation of black peppercorns. I bring it home and dispatch it for dinner.
Also in the house today is Russell Hendrick, the owner of the long-running Shortstop Po-Boys on Transcontinental at Airline Highway. He makes a great roast beef, but in an unusual style: the beef is rendered almost entirely into debris. This works for me and enough other people to keep the place busy, but it’s not for everybody.
Phil DeGruy is the guy handing you a hamburger in the logo of Phil’s Grill. He will be at Lark In The Park. During our conversation, it comes out that he had been working for the Taste Buds–the trio of chefs who created Zea, Mizado, and Semolina–when he was inspired to do the burger concept. The Buds urged him to do it because he was so enthusiastic about the idea. Phil’s is a make-you-own burger shop, with enough oddities (buffalo, a bunch of different cheeses, etc.) to make it unique. I asked about the closing of his downtown location. The problem was that lunch business was great but dinner and weekends were terrible. But that’s typical of the CBD.
Adam and Eric Acquistapace, whose family owns the well-known supermarket in Covington, shows up with a run of very nice little wines, and a list of all the ones they will be pouring at the Chef’s Soiree. Eric, who runs the cheese department, brings us an enormous round board with cheeses ranging from mass-produced (but good) cheeses to hand-made fromages, mostly from France. The well-cheesed board catches the attention of the radio station staff. That’s a good thing: there is a lot of cheese here, too much to take home.
I’m glad my mother so often told me, when I was a kid, how absent-minded I am. If she hadn’t, I’d be frightened by the number of disremembered items on my agenda. Today I am a week off for a meeting with the staff of Robin Roberts’s TV news show. Fortunately, it is next Tuesday, not today. But believing otherwise I walk to the meeting place–the bar at Café Adelaide. It’s a block from the station. But that isn’t close enough to prevent my getting wet from a passing cold storm, even with an umbrella. I wait forty-five minutes before I decide that I probably have the date wrong. Then back out into the rain. I’m rather full from the food brought to the Round Table show, so I just head home, rain falling all the way.
#13 Among The 33 Best Seafood Eateries
Muriel’s
French Quarter: 801 Chartres. 504-568-1885. Map.
Nice Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Muriel’s location is almost too good. It’s on Jackson Square, the center of New Orleans since its earliest days, a few feet from St. Louis Cathedral. With second-flood balconies overlooking the park and the river, there is no better place for an immersion in the New Orleans spirit. Indeed, at least one spirit haunts the hallways and staircases of Muriel’s antique building. A little voodoo here, a little bawdiness there, and distinctive Creole and Cajun cooking filling the atmosphere with its flavors and aromas. The place almost seems touristy, but it has a large local following that keeps the flavors right and the prices attractive. The emphasis is on seafood, prepared with virtually zero use of the deep-fryer.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
In an environment so distinctly Old New Orleans that it could be used as a movie set, Muriel’s rings all the Creole bells. But its kitchen turns out food that more resembles the work of a jazzy gourmet bistro with a native clientele, not the touristy fare you’d expect from an historic location like this. Even the prices seemed tuned to the local trade.
Soft-shell crab in season (warmer months).
WHAT’S GOOD
Chef Gus Martin made the rounds of the Brennan family restaurants for many years, and has that outfit’s accurate fix on what constitutes real food. The fresh foodstuffs, the convincing seasoning levels, and the Creole cooking techniques result in a menu different enough to be distinctive, but unambiguously imbued with the flavor of the town.
BACKSTORY
The New Orleans Muriel’s is the third and only surviving member of a small chain of mostly West Coast restaurants opened by a dot-com zillionaire. He brought in as partner Rick Gratia, an alumnus of the Brennan family restaurants and his own family’s West End seafood house. Muriel’s opened just before 9/11, but despite that struggle and the one after Katrina, Muriel’s was a hit from the beginning. Its building went up in the early 1800s, later to become famous as a pasta factory during the years when the French Quarter was really more Italian. For 25 years it was an outlet of the Chart House chain.
DINING ROOM
Muriel’s feels like an ancient restaurant. In fact, it’s a relative newcomer. Even lifetime Orleanians find the place authentic, particularly the upstairs rooms, illuminated almost entirely by real candles in the chandeliers. To get up there, you pass a table set with a meal and wine for the building’s resident ghost (ask), then climb stairs to the accompaniment of monastic music. A balcony wrapping around the restaurant upstairs adds further to a near-perfect old New Orleans environment.
REVIEWER’S NOTEPAD
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
Starters
Seafood gumbo
Turtle soup au sherry
Louisiana strawberry salad, kale, arugula, black peppercorn, bacon
House salad, pomegranate vinaigrette, manchego cheese
Duck cassoulet salad, white bean puree, andouille
Pan roasted crab cake, wilted spinach, crispy capers
Duck ragout, foie gras, aioli, arugula, black currants, satsuma syrup
Crawfish and goat cheese crepes, Chardonnay cream sauce,
Fried green tomato stack, shrimp salad, tomato-bacon jam, remoulade
Shrimp risotto, chaurice sausage, roasted poblano butter sauce
Escargots, fennel, leeks, oyster mushrooms, bacon, garlic butter, in a vol-au-vent pastry shell
Double-cut pork chop.
Entrées
Seafood Bayoubaisse (shrimp, fish, crabmeat, fennel, tomato, veloute sauce)
Pecan-crusted baby drum, crawfish relish, lemon-butter sauce
Blackened redfish, tasso, corn maque choux, potato salad, grilled asparagus, Creole butter sauce
Wood grilled Gulf fish, wilted spinach and leeks, charred tomato vinaigrette
Dijon mustard encrusted salmon, orange beurre blanc
Roasted vegetable curry, flatbread, toasted cumin, Louisiana popcorn rice, cucumber raita
Baked chicken cassoulet, andouille, rosemary
Wood-grilled double-cut pork chop, sugar cane-apple glaze, pecans, sweet potatoes, greens
Smoked duck breast, poached pear, butternut squash, roasted
Brussels sprouts
Three wood-grilled beef tournedos, arugula pistou, choron sauce, blackened shrimp toast
Desserts
Chocolate and peanut butter dome, raspberry and chocolate sauces
Pecan pie, vanilla gelato and caramel sauce
House made sorbet sampler
Vanilla bean créme brûlée
Red velvet ice cream sandwich
Flourless chocolate cake, creme anglaise and raspberry coulis
Pain perdu bread pudding, candied pecans and rum sauce
FOR BEST RESULTS
Muriel’s runs many seasonal special menus celebrating the arrival of such things as blue crabs, crawfish, and Creole tomatoes. Even when none of that is on, the three-course table d’hote menu is always seasonal and a great value at $40. They also hold frequent wine dinners. Sunday brunch is one of the better ones. The house-label wine is unexpectedly excellent.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Some members of the service staff–notably the people at the front door–have a less than perfect idea of what avid diners want from a restaurant, and aren’t having nearly enough fun in such a clearly enjoyable restaurant.
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 +2
Service+1
Value +2
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar +2
Hipness +1
Local Color +3
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Balcony tables
Romantic
Good view
Good for business meetings
Open Sunday lunch and dinner
Open Monday lunch and dinner
Open some holidays
Historic
Good for children
Free valet parking (ask when reserving)
Reservations recommended
Rigatoni all’ Amatriciana
This is the great pasta dish of Rome, made there using guanciale, cured pork made from hog jowls. That’s hard to find here, so I suggest you use thickly sliced pork belly, pancetta, or unsmoked bacon. That’s a flavoring for what is otherwise a basic tomato sauce, whose only other distinguishing quality is that it employs enough crushed red pepper to make it distinctly spicy. Some versions add mushrooms, but I prefer this one. One more thing: the sauce gets better after a day or two in the refrigerator.
It’s more traditional (and better, I think) to use Romano cheese instead of Parmigiana for this dish.
1/4 cup olive oil
4-5 thick slices (about 4 oz.) pancetta (or unsmoked bacon), coarsely chopped
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 Tbs. chopped garlic
1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 28-oz cans whole Italian plum tomatoes
1/2 tsp. salt
1 lb. rigatoni pasta, cooked al dente and drained
Garnish:
Finely-grated Romano cheese
Chopped fresh parsley
1. In a saucepan over medium heat, heat two Tbs. of the olive oil the olive oil until it shimmers. Add half the pancetta or bacon and saute until browned. Remove from the pan and drain on paper towels.
2. Add the remaining olive oil and chopped pancetta, crushed red pepper, garlic and onion. Cook until the onions are clear, then add the wine and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat by about half and simmer for about five minutes.
3. Puree the tomatoes with half the juice from the cans in a food processor. Pass the puree through a food mill or medium sieve to remove seeds and skins.
4. Add the tomato puree and salt to the saucepan. Bring the contents to a light boil and hold there, stirring now and then for 20-30 minutes. Or you can lower to a bare simmer and keep it going for about two hours, with the leftover tomato juice stirred in, for a thicker, sweeter sauce.
5. When the sauce is cooked to your liking, add the browned, reserved pancetta back into the sauce. Add the cooked, drained rigatoni to the pan and toss with the sauce to coat. Divide among pasta bowls and serve with grated Romano cheese and fresh parsley.
Serves four entrees or six to eight primi courses.
Italian Special Poor Boy @ R&O’s
The Italian poor boy has spread to many sandwich shops around the city. But it began art R&O’s back in the days when the Bucktown seafood, pizza and sandwich maker was in its original location behind the old East End Grocery. R&O’s has moved and expanded twice, but that sandwich remains great. It’s Italian sausage and meatballs, each sliced and doused in red sauce, then covered with a few slices of mozzarella cheese. All this is on an unusual hybrid of French bread with Italian bread: the shape of the former, the sesame seeds of the latter. They heat it up and then it’s all up to you.
R&O’s. Bucktown: 216 Old Hammond Hwy. 504-831-1248.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
March 18, 2015
Days Until. . .
St. Joseph’s Day 1
Easter 18
French Quarter Festival 22
Jazz Festival 38
Annals Of Everything
The world was created today in 3952 BCE, according to calculations from the Bible made by The Venerable Bede. Happy birthday, Earth!
Today’s Flavor
Today is National Tomato Sauce Day. Tomato sauces are so numerous and distinctive that long books of recipes could be compiled for them. The tomato flavors are always front and center, yet most ingredients added to the sauce emerge to be tasted, as well. This gives rise to a wonderfully broad range of sauces.
The Italian tomato sauce variations alone could keep us here all day. There’s marinara, cacciatore, ragu, fra diavolo, amatriciana, arrabbiata, and sugo, to name only a few. Sometimes the variations are as slight as those that distinguish one pasta shape from another, giving rise to millions of dishes.
Tomato sauces are also widespread and varied in the cuisines of the tomato’s native home–Mexico and other parts of the New World. Here in New Orleans where I live, our default version is sauce Creole–onions, bell peppers, celery, black pepper, and tomatoes, all hanging on to their fresh flavors in the brief cooking.
Tomato sauces also turn up in Indian cooking. Let’s draw the line at barbecue sauce. It’s usually made with a predominance of tomato. But it’s not really red.
One of the most interesting and important properties of a tomato sauce is that it loses its sharpness as it cooks, while the sugars in them emerge. A tomato sauce cooked for five or ten minutes with fresh herbs still has a fresh, garden-like taste and a chunky texture. The same ingredients cooked for hours become smooth and mellow, with a completely different flavor. Cooks who get a feel for this can play with it endlessly and deliciously.
Tomato sauce has one other major nonconformity. While most chefs make a big deal about using fresh ingredients for everything, few object to the use of first-class canned tomatoes. While it could be said that the science of canning tomatoes is long perfected, the time a tomato spends in a can can be considered part of the cooking process. Adding fresh tomatoes to the mix adds further possibilities.
Deft Dining Rule #280:
Pasta with red sauce should never be eaten on the first meeting or date with someone promising.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
When tomato sauce cooks with bubble and splatter
Aside from the mess, something’s the matter
Give it a stir and lower the heat
It’s an hour or two before you can eat.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Tomato Creek is in north central Minnesota, at the base of the little spur that sticks up into Canada at the Lake of the Woods. It flows from one marshy area to another, dead-ending in both. This means that it marks a small basin across the Continental Divide separating the Mississippi Watershed and the Canadian Watershed. It’s a stream that goes nowhere. If you want to go somewhere for lunch, get out of the creek and hike eleven miles to Roosevelt, where is the Roosevelt Rustic Diner. It doesn’t get much more rustic than this territory.
Edible Dictionary
marinara, n. or adj.–A sauce made of tomatoes, onions, olive oil, and herbs, cooked simply and quickly. This is as opposed to bolognese sauce or ragu, which include meat. Although “marinara” is sometimes applied to sauces that sit on the stove for many hours, the name itself–a reference to sailors, who require simplicity in their cooking–really implies a sauce that’s on and off the stove in fifteen or twenty minutes. A New Orleans “red gravy,” then, isn’t exactly a marinara. But close enough. On the other hamd, it’s not pure Italian, either. John Mariani, in his Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, says that the word was created not in Italy but among Italian-Americans in New York City.
Food In The Wild
In 1543 on this date, Hernando De Soto noted that the Mississippi River had flooded over its banks in Louisiana. He was the first European to report any kind of flood anywhere in the New World. Because of the soil the river dumped on its floodplains, we have good vegetables, especially tomatoes.
Annals Of Winemaking
Ernest Gallo was born today in 1909. He and his brother Julio created what would become the biggest family-owned winery in the world under their names, and now many others, too. Lore about the Gallo brothers is that when they decided to get into the business, Julio asked whether Ernest could sell all the wine he could make. Ernest answered, “Can you make all the wine I can sell?”
Cocktails On Broadway
Pousse Cafe, a play set in the 1920s, opened today in 1966 on Broadway. It would only have three performances before closing. A pousse-cafe (“coffee chaser”) is a sweet after-dinner drink made by layering cordial liqueurs of contrasting colors in a small, slender glass designed for the purpose. They were once the rage, but the liqueur makers began making their potions with uniform proofs and specific gravities, and it became difficult to layer them. That’s the excuse the bartenders make, anyway. We think they just don’t want to be bothered.
Food In Advertising
Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy, was introduced on this date in 1961. His first gig involved touting Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, the croissants in a can. I’m sure you’ve seen his joke obituary. If not, it’s funny enough to read.
Food Namesakes
Susan Butcher won her second Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska today in 1987. . . Comedian and actor Dane Cook went for his first laugh today in 1972. . . Boy band singer Devin Lima looked cute for the first time today in 1977. . . Jacob Bunn, American industrialist and friend of Abraham Lincoln, came out of the oven today in 1814. . . British barrister and columnist James Pickles gave his first opinion today in 1925.
Words To Eat By
“Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot.”–John Updike, novelist, born today in 1932. The line is from his book The Witches of Eastwick.
Words To Drink By
“You know you’re drunk when you think that the cab fare is the time.”–Dane Cook, comedian, born today in 1972.
Special Menus.
Most restaurants these days have not just their standard lunch and dinner menus, but also other, specialized offerings. Vegetarian, low-fat, gluten-free, and early-bird menus are common. But many others are available, to address often-requested dishes.
Click here for the cartoon.
Recent Back Editions
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5-Star Back Edition, Tuesday, March 10, 2015
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