Wednesday, April 1, 2015.
Keyboard Cuisines, N.O’s Most Interesting New Restaurant.
If you haven’t read about it, you’ve thought about it: wouldn’t it be great if food ingredients could be pulled into your kitchen from all over the world through the internet? And then, once it’s in house, what if the food could be turned into the most ambitious kinds of finished dishes?
As crazy as that seems, such projects have been in the works for over a decade now. The central appliance is the 3-D printer. Using more or less the same concept that the standard computer printer uses, 3-D printers live up to their name. Many complicated projects–the International Space Station, to name one–can now manufacture parts in space through this technology, thereby solving what could be disastrous problems.
The idea of creating food sensations goes much farther back than the personal computer, though. In the 1950s, a gadget called Smellovision was actually able to release aromas to match those you’d expect to sniff if you were in the room depicted on your television. Smellovision had severe limitations: it could only deliver five aromas, from aerosol cans inside the TV set. But still, people found it amazing, and some developers filed away the concept for future use when the technology improved.
One of the 3-D food printers at Keyboard Cuisines.
Improve it has. It is now delivering actual hot food–not just the aromas but the food itself–at the new Keyboard Cuisine, opened last week in the Broadmoor neighborhood.
When I first heard about it from a radio listener a few days ago, I laughed. Even if the system worked in creating edible food from what is essentially a computer printer, how good could the food be? Really. The novelty will no doubt pull in hundreds of customers (there is already a line of a few dozen people every day). But duplicating natural flavors–as Chef (and Ph.D in Physics and Computer Logic) Chun Lis says he can–seems farfetched at best.
Chef Chun nodded at my doubt, and challenged me to a blind tasting of a traditionally-cooked Cajun crawfish etouffee and a duplicate of the dish printed by The Creator (as he calls his machine). He even let me cook the etouffee myself.
When I finished (side note: crawfish are looking and tasting very good now, at last), I spooned some of my dish into an insulated coffee mug that I fetched from my car. We then went to the corner of the “kitchen” (it looks more like a boiler room for selling SEO services). He asks me to put a little of my dish into the analyzer. How much? “Size of a pea,” he says. Add a crawfish tail? I ask. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “We have hundreds of times more biodata than we need right here.”
I look over the gadget and spoon in the sample. He walks me over to the other side of the room, where a somewhat oversize printer is already humming. In back of it are ranks of funnel-shaped reservoirs, looking something like the jellybean dispensers at the supermarket.
This is our first successful food printer,” he said. “It takes 128 elements and, using the data the analyzer gave us of your etouffee, it combines and processes them to make an exact duplicate. Think of the reservoirs as being like the ink cartridges on your old inkjet paper printer.”
After about fifteen seconds, we hear two short bleats–like VW Beetle horns heard in the distance. “Ready to cook?” asks Chun. I nod. He pushes a button and the sound of a fan revving up begins. I see a plastic bowl begin to inch out of the machine. “Since this is a semi-liquid, the printer is also creating a cup to hold the etouffee–and aha! Can you smell the aroma?
I can. “I am producing an etouffee as much like yours as I can,” says Chun. “However, I could add more salt, more Tabasco, more onions, more crawfish stock–each of which would also be printed out as it goes.”
The bowl is finished being created, and a conveyor belt rolls it out. It is steaming. The bowl itself is just warm. “Taste it,” Chun says. I put my spoon in and take a bite, then another. It is quite good, I tell him.
Crawfish etouffee printed out.
Then I raise my coffee mug, with its conventionally cooked etouffee. “Go for it,” says Chun. I insert my spoon, and taste it again, with the printed etouffee’s aftertaste still in my mouth. The flavors are different. But not much different. Indeed, there’s less difference between the two than there would be had I made two separate batches by my mother’s recipe.
“That’s what I was about to tell you!” Chun says. “It’s closer than you could get by any other method!”
So, we have a crawfish etouffee here for. . . what price?
“Using the standard restaurant food-cost percentage, for the ingredients we used, I would have to sell this for about a dollar and a quarter.”
For a whole cup of etouffee? “No!” he says. “For all you can eat. The cost of the ingredients I used just now is essentially zero. Now the machines. . . they add a good bit. If I figured that in, and if I sold, say a hundred of these a night for a year, the price would have to be around five dollars. But after a year, I suspect I will have better machines and better ingredients, and I might be able to do the dollar-and-a-quarter all-you-can-eat thing. But now that you’ve seen that I am not faking this, let’s sit down and have a full dinner.”
We begin with a dozen raw oysters. Even the shells came out of the food printer. Then jumbo lump crabmeat Remick, with the most enormous and tenderest lumps, and not a fleck of shell.
Turtle soup, printed out.
Now turtle soup. “I am especially proud of this,” says Chun. “The species of turtle that makes the best turtle soup are all endangered now. Restaurants have had to use veal and the like. But without killing even one turtle, here we are, eating a turtle soup that is an exact duplicate of the real thing!”
He winks. “Now if only we can get Brennan’s to bring back its old recipe, we’d be getting somewhere!”
Next is red snapper with a brown butter and capers. Whole fish. Wow. Creamed sorrel on the side. Followed by a twenty-two ounce sirloin strip steak, rare. “I want you to look at the middle of this,” says Chun. “Other than true Kobe beef, have you ever seen such marbling? Now tell me you’ve ever in your life eaten a better steak. And I will tell you that this will cost you two dollars, and you or anybody else can bring home another one on the house. It costs me almost nothing, so why should I rip you off?”
Roasted squab with a sauce made with Domaine de la Romanee- Conti La Tache, 1989. Don’t tell me you can duplicate expensive old wines, I ask. Chun shrugs his shoulders and smiles. “Why not?”
And then he really blows my mind. Bananas Foster, built inside of a goddam computer printer, flames and all!
“Just two things left to figure out,” Chun says. “Crowd control is a problem. You see the line outside. There has been some violence. But when other restaurants shift to printing their food instead of burning gas and sticks and grease the way the cavemen did, that will even out. Second problem: we need to expand the number of ingredients. We have figured out about two hundred and put then in glass jars. But I don’t want to fool with that side of the operation. We’re talking to the Vietnamese chefs about making out ingredients for us. They understand.”
I have another potential issue, I tell him. How do the chefs feel about this?
Just that moment, a frozen pork belly flies through the front window of Keyboard Cuisine’s dining room.
“There’s a chef now,” he says. They’ll come around, though, after they get a look at the mathemetics.”
Keyboard Cuisines. Broadmoor Corner Toledano at N. Earhart Blvd. Lunch and dinner seven days. Reservations required: 504-524-0348.
#3 Among The 33 Best Seafood Eateries
Drago’s
CBD: 2 Poydras. 504-584-3911. Map.
Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
It’s amazing how many great New Orleans restaurant institutions were created by Croatian entrepreneurs. The “-ich”-named people left behind Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Gentilich’s, the Crescent City Steak House, Sam’s Place, Uglesich’s, and many other memorable eatiries. Drago’s stands about them all. Drago and Klara Cvitanovich, well connected to the world of oyster fishing in Louisiana, opened their restaurant in 1969, and became a standard. One of their dishes–char-broiled oysters–has become what may be the most imitated seafood dish in the restaurant history in New Orleans. And they keep leading the way, innovating as they go.
Char-broiled oysters, “The best single bite of food in New Orleans.”
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
Drago’s permanent place in the annals of New Orleans cuisine is assured. Its char-broiled oysters are so exciting that the idea has been imitated in dozens of other restaurants. That achievement is already in a league with Manale’s barbecue shrimp, K-Paul’s blackened fish, and Antoine’s oysters Rockefeller. Beyond its oyster grill, Drago’s is a classic New Orleans seafood restaurant, nudge upscale just a touch. Beyond fried seafood platters and gumbo, it’s the city’s leading lobster restaurant. New dishes enter the menu regularly, and both locations remain very busy.
Fleur-de-lis shrimp.
WHAT’S GOOD
The oysters, raw or grilled, are reason enough to come here. They come from premium Louisiana sources and are hard to beat. Those who like lobster find very fresh ones here; they sell so many that none of the crustaceans hang around long enough to lose their fat. The rest of the menu starts where most casual seafood restaurants stop. Fried seafood platters are a footnote to a menu that offers many other delicious opportunities.
BACKSTORY
Drago Cvitanovich and his wife Klara–both of whom are still active in the restaurant–are Croatian immigrants who worked in the local seafood business for years before opening their own restaurant in the 1970s. One of the first businesses in Fat City, it was always good, but never was especially busy. Their son Tommy came along with some fresh ideas, and seemingly overnight Drago’s became one of the busiest restaurants in town. Their second location, in the Riverfront Hilton, is the top-grossing restaurant in the entire Hilton chain in America. The efforts Drago’s family made after Katrina (and other disasters before that), and their activity in the community lend further good karma.
DINING ROOM
The Metairie restaurant’s high-tech design makes for lively sound. A lot of that comes from the usually large crowd waiting in the bar for tables. That’s almost inevitable in the Metairie restaurant, particularly on Fridays and in Lent. The oyster grill is a centerpiece, with columns of flame and steam bursting around the bivalves. The downtown restaurant sort of overlaps the gigantic Riverside Hilton hotel’s lobby. It’s more spacious, but the same casual feeling obtains.
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
Starters
Raw oysters on the half shell
Drago’s original char-broiled oysters
Sushi grade raw tuna, wasabi dressing, Cajun aioli.
Crabmeat Mediterranean salad
Lobster salad, mixed greens or spinach.
Chicken & andouille sausage gumbo
Fleur de lis shrimp (sautéed with peanuts, red pepper aioli)
Crescent City shrimp (a take on barbecue shrimp)
Wicked squid (fried squid, peppers tossed, sweet-spicy glaze.
Seared tuna & avocado salad, Cajun aioli, soy vinaigrette
Duck spring salad, blackened rare, greens, candied walnuts, cranberries, bleu cheese
Mama Ruth’s seafood gumbo
Oyster chowder
Shrimp & corn bisque
Oyster brochette (broiled, wrapped with bacon, fried, Jack Daniels glaze, horseradish sauce
Entrees
Mixed grill of char-broiled half Maine lobster, petit filet, blackened shrimp, Cajun cream sauce, corn maque choux.
Shrimp & eggplant stack
Seafood pasta (shrimp, crabmeat, cream sauce, angel hair pasta) Herradura shrimp or oysters (sautéed with sun-dried tomatoes,
pine nuts and onions, tequila, grilled portabella mushroom)
Boudin-stuffed shrimp, corn maque choux.
Oysters Hoisin (grilled, creamed spinach, bacon,
Bordelaise sauce, cheese)
Maine lobster any size, any style
Lobster Empire (stuffed with sautéed oysters, mushrooms, angel hair pasta
Catch of the day, prepared in choice of six ways
Shuckee ducked (blackened rare duck breast, linguini pasta, oysters and cream sauce.
Marinated portabella mushroom sauteed with Prime filet tips
Twin filets, collard greens, potatoes
Crawfish or shrimp etouffée (as per season)
Fried catfish, oysters, shrimp or combo platter
Desserts
Bananas foster cupcake
Apple cobbler
Bread pudding
Crème bruleé
FOR BEST RESULTS
The restaurants are open all afternoon, and the crowds thin out then. Order fried seafood only if you must; it’s not really a specialty, compared with the grill side of the menu.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The unavoidable crowd during peak hours in Metairie can create stressful moments. There is a parking shortage in Metairie, although not as bad as it once was). The downtown Drago’s has validated parking in the hotel’s garage.) It would be nice to have a real oyster bar again (they only serve raw oysters at tables).
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 +2
Service+2
Value +1
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar
Hipness
Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Many private rooms
Open Sunday lunch and dinner (CBD only)
Open Monday lunch and dinner
Open all afternoon
Unusually large servings
Good for children
Free valet parking
No reservations
Seafood Stuffing
We use a lot of seafood stuffings in New Orleans cookery, particularly in casual seafood restaurants. The most common ingredient is crabmeat, followed by shrimp, oysters, and crawfish. This variation uses the first three. However, you can use what you have at hand, adjusting the quantities logically. You can also skip the baking step, roll up the stuffing into balls, and fry them to make what they used to call “crab chops” in West End.
1 stick butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 cloves chopped garlic
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 cups shrimp stock
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 Tbs. Creole seasoning
1 bay leaf
2 dozen oysters, chopped
1 lb. claw crabmeat
24 medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 cup plus 2 Tbs. freshly-grated French bread crumbs
3 green onions, snipped finely
6 sprigs parsley, leaves only, chopped
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and heat it until is begins bubbling. Add the onions, celery, and garlic and cook until it turns soft.
2. Add the wine, shrimp stock, salt, Creole seasoning and bay leaf. Reduce heat to a low boil and reduce by about half.
3. Remove the bay leaf. Add the oysters, shrimp and crabmeat and cook for two or three minutes.
4. Add about a quarter of the bread crumbs at a time, stirring just enough to mix everything evenly. Add the green onions and parsley with the last batch of bread crumbs.
5. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper. Load the stuffing into a baking dish and bake, uncovered, in the center of a 400-degree oven for 12-15 minutes, until toasty on top.
This gives enough stuffing for about eight fish, twelve crabs, sixteen shrimp, or eight to ten side dishes.
Crabmeat and Brie Soup @ Dakota
This soup–now such a signature item for this five-star restaurant that they bring it to every charity event they join–was created when the kitchen found itself with an excess of Brie cheese. Brie does not last forever, so chef Kim Kringlie plowed it into the already rich crabmeat and cream bisque. What emerged was a soup with the tang of cream, the bitterness of Brie, the fat mouthfeel of both, and, overriding it all, the flavor of crabmeat both from backfin lumps and crab stock. It’s certainly the best-selling first course at Dakota, and so popular that they get requests to sell it by the quart and gallon. It teaches us that for some people there is no such thing as too rich. I think this is right on the edge of that, and occasionally over it. But the taste is marvelous.
Dakota. Covington: 629 N. US 190 . 985-892-3712.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
April 1, 2015
Days Until. . .
Easter 4
French Quarter Festival 8
Jazz Festival 24
Restaurant Anniversaries
Bozo’s opened today in 1928. Founder Chris “Bozo” Vodonovich was one of many Croatians who created great restaurants in New Orleans in the 1900s. He relied on his connections with the fishermen in Plaquemines Parish to supply him with first-class oysters and other seafood. Bozo’s became legendary, always packed with people waiting for the simple but meticulously fried and boiled seafood. Bozo’s son–also named Chris–continued that attention to details until he sold it to Ed McIntyre in 2013. He renamed it Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish Grill and expanded the menu a bit, but the standards set by Bozo are still in place.
Food Calendar
This is Sourdough Bread Day. Sourdough is to San Francisco what New Orleans-style French bread is to our town. It’s served everywhere a local flavor is desired. It’s an interesting product. The making of sourdough begins with a mixture of flour and water set out in the open to capture free-floating yeasts from the air. (San Francisco is supposed to have the best airborne yeast in the world, but that has never been proven.)
The yeasts begin leavening this starter dough and multiplying. More flour and water are added–as well as milk and sometimes sugar or potato starch. When enough active starter is made, some or all of it goes into a batch of bread flour, where over a period of hours it leavens the dough. Most of that gets baked into bread, but some of it is kept unbaked, to continue feeding the yeasts. That’s used to make the next day’s batch of sourdough bread, and the process is repeated.
Long-time San Francisco bakers claim that their sourdough starter has been developing this was continuously for decades. All the above is the original, artisan’s method of making sourdough. In actual practice, most bakers of sourdough also use a commercial baker’s yeast to help the process along. (They say it improves the taste, but the purists call this a shortcut.) It’s great bread, no matter how you slice it.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Wineland is twenty miles southeast of Fresno, California. Although a vast amount of ground is under wine grapevines in this area, it’s nothing like it was in the 1940s and 1950s. Here were the vineyards of the Roma Wine Company, the largest winery in California in those days, making wines with names like Chablis, Sauterne (no “s”), Burgundy, and Claret, even though the grapes used were totally different from French wines bearing those French names. The wine produced hereabouts these days is mostly on the low end–jugs and boxes. (There are some exceptions.) Wineland’s main occupant is a gigantic winery and bottling plant. The nearest restaurants are mostly fast-food operations two miles south in Kingsburg. Jeb’s Waffles and Ribs sounds interesting, though.
Edible Dictionary
Cabrales, (Spanish), n.–Cabrales is a blue cheese made from cow’s milk in the mountainous northern reaches of Spain. As this and other Spanish cheeses have become more popular, some makers have been adding both sheeps’ and goat’s milk to teh blend, resulting in a tangier cheese. The critical criterion is that all these animals come from the Asturias region. Cabrales available commercially comes in a distinctive gren foil wrapper, but the original covering was maple leaves. I find Cabrales less powerful than Roquefort or Gorgonzola, probably because of lighter veining. But a very fine cheese indeed. Eminently suitable for sprinkling into vichyssoise, or just eating.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
If you make a good yeast sponge, you are evermore committed to taking care of it the rest of your life. Or you’re not a true bread baker.
Deft Dining Rule #235
A restaurant that serves just enough bread is more interested in its food cost percentages than your pleasure. [Note: Most chain restaurants don’t serve bread at all anymore.]
Annals Of Food Writing
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, physician and author of The Physiology of Taste, was born today in 1755. His witty, appreciative tome was the first modern book on the subject of fine cuisine and dining, and remains definitive. His most famous quotation was “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Here are two more:
“A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.”
“The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.”
Food And Sports
Rusty Staub was born in New Orleans today in 1944. After a long and distinguished career in baseball with Jesuit High School, the Astros, and the Expos, he moved to New York and was adopted by Mets fans. He was popular enough that he opened Rusty’s, a restaurant that served Cajun food to New Yorkers for twenty-one years. He remains a gourmet and oenophile. A very nice guy, he is an ardent philanthropist.
The Saints
This is the feast day of St. Hugh, the patron saint of Grenoble, France. A dish noted as being the the Grenoble style almost always includes capers. It’s also where the potent Chartreuse liqueur comes from. St. Hugh donated the land on which Chartreuse Abbey, where the potent beverage originated, was built. Perhaps this explains why St. Hugh is also a patron saint of headache sufferers.
Food Namesakes
Apple Computer was founded today in 1976. . . Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor of Germany in the late 19th century, was born today in 1815. (A bismarck is a kind of filled doughnut) . . . Actor Wallace Beery came out onto the Big Stage today in 1885. . . Billy Currie, who plays many instruments for the group Ultravox, was born today in 1950. . . Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker got married today in 1961.
Words To Eat By
“Ex ovo omnia. Everything from an egg.”–William Harvey, British physician, born today in 1578.
Words To Drink By
“Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux makes you talk of them, and Champagne makes you do them.”–Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, born today in 1755.
Onomatopoeia In Oenophilia.
Is it a white meat or a red meat? What color, then, should the wine be? Just listen for the answer.
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 TU 3/31/15
5-Star Back Edition MO 3/30/15
5-Star Back Edition FR 3/27/15
5-Star Back Edition TH 3/26/15
5-Star Back Edition WE 3/25/15
5-Star Back Edition TU 3/24/15
5-Star Back Edition MO 3/23/15
5-Star Back Edition FR 3/20/15
5-Star Back Edition TH 3/19/16
5-Star Back Edition WE 3/18/15
5-Star Back Edition TU 3/17/15
5-Star Back Edition MO 3/16/15
5-Star Back Edition FR 3/13/15
5-Star Back Edition TH 3/12/15
5-Star Back Edition WE 3/11/15