Bistreaux
The Maison Dupuy Hotel has a handsome spread of dining rooms in its first floor. Over the years, some great, name-chef eateries filled the place. The rest of the time, it’s a more generic restaurant, never either bad nor brilliant. The currant occupant is Bistreaux, the all-day cafe for the hotel. Despite that, the kitchen rises to the occasion with a well-assembled Reveillon menu with a Creole flavor. It also offers an excellent bar, a beautiful courtyard, and free parking in the hotel.
The Bistreaux is in full swing with the Reveillon season, with two choices in each of four courses for a $55 dinner. Let’s look:
Four courses, $55.
Crispy Pork Belly
Cherries and lentils
~or~
✽ Sweet Potato Agnolotti Pasta
Brown butter, ginger snap, and sage
~~~~~
✽ Shrimp Rémoulade
Beets and tatsoi greens
~or~
Oyster and Artichoke Stew
~~~~~
✽ Crispy Roast Porchetta
Turnips with blood oranges
~or~
Oyster Linguini
Black pepper, egg, pancetta, and butternut squash
~~~~~
✽ Butterscotch Bread Pudding
~or~
Rum Cake
Apple and dulce de leche
French Quarter: 1001 Toulouse St. 504-586-8000.
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.
Thursday, December 8, 2016.
Fine Dining In Audubon Park.
A long-running controversy attends the equally-epochal remaking of Audubon Park. I first heard of it when the renovation of the zoo was just getting started in the early 1970s. The issue was the same one as now: how much of the park should be open grass fields sprinkled with big live oak trees, and how much should be buildings, exhibits, rides, swimming pools, and the like?
There’s no question that the zoo development proved a good move. A lot of people like the catering facilities for weddings and such. But the new golf course and the adjacent golf club house stirred up people who wanted to take long strolls through the park without being asked to get off the greens by duffers.
I first entered this latter matter a few years ago, when I attended a few wedding receptions in the Clubhouse and thought the food and service were surprisingly good. I didn’t make much of it at the time, because the Clubhouse wasn’t serving a la carte dinner. Just breakfast and lunch.
But a few months ago that changed. The Clubhouse management thought they might be able to do a good business at dinner during the week. It wasn’t long before I began hearing good reports from listeners and readers about the Clubhouse. Then came a request for us to have an Eat Club dinner from the Clubhouse’s management.
That dinner went live today, with a live-on-location radio show. I was reluctant to book all of this, but we had an open slot for the Eat Club this week. On the other hand, it was a cold, windy night. Even though guests can pull right up to the Clubhouse, the perception that eating there might require a trek across the fairways kept a large crowd from coming. But as it was we had thirty-two people, which the management said was just the right number.
On warmer days, this is a very appealing place to dine. A gallery surrounds most of the building, with a view of the golf course and the illusion of rolling hills. Those tables get a lot of use, but the chill in the air tonight forced us indoors. But even there the environment was pleasant. Two fireplaces and many gas-fired space heaters spouting towers of flame gave a vaguely exotic aspect. It was just a little too cold for us to be out there, but the idea was on a lot of minds.
Eat clubbers awaiting dinner at the Audubon Clubhouse
The Clubhouse seated the Eat Club unusually, at a U-shaped run of tables, with all the guests on the outside facing in. We almost never set up the Eat Club this way, because it limits conversations to one. But it looked good, and made it easy for the waiters to serve the food and wine.
The food was very good, and the wines were even better. We began with a trio of oysters that had been cold-smoked on their shells. Then they were fried with a thin coating that let the fascinating smoky flavor hints pass through. This is a great concept, one I’d like to taste again either here or anywhere willing to copy the concept.
We had Champagne with this–Henriot Brut, to be exact. I was still performing my duties as host when these bottles were drained, so I didn’t get any. But that happens to me at some point during all Eat Club dinners. I heard from more than once person that this was a Champagne in a category with Veuve Clicquot.
Second course was what has become among the most common salads in New Orleans restaurants. Tell me at what point you recognized the mix: roasted butternut squash, mixed greens, dried cranberries (BEEEP!), toasted pecans, and sugar cane vinaigrette.
The wine for this course was William Fevre Chablis, a fine example of Chablis. That’s a wine we don’t drink nearly as much as we did twenty or thirty years ago. It’s a pure Chardonnay with no oaking, too light for most modern palates. But I like Chablis, and was the only on in my vicinity who had good things to say about the wine. Which was non-essential with a salad to begin with.
Pan-seared Gulf fish with a sauce tinged with just the right sweetness.
The graphs pointed up again when the pan-roasted grouper came out with a saffron beurre blanc and (who noticed it?) chive oil. The sauce, with its up-front touches of butter and sweetness, was very much liked around the room. This came with the wine of the night: Mer Soleil Chardonnay. Although made with the same grape variety as the Chablis, it was a much bigger wine in terms of fruit, oakiness and that flavor hint that many people liken to butter.
I first tasted this wine during an Eat Club dinner at Brennan’s in the 1990s. It was selected personally by Jimmy Brennan, long before he and his restaurant passed on. But I can’t help but think about him whenever Mer Soleil pops up.
Wagyu beef with sauce Bordelaise.
The attorney who goes under the name Michael 75 when he calls into the radio show had his own theories about the next dish. It was Wagyu beef–the breed of cattle that made Kobe beef famous. The beef before us was not from Japan but from the American Northwest. He wanted to know whether there were any flavor uptick as a result of this pedigree. He seemed to think so after tasting. I did, too. I’ve had so many tough steaks lately that I have a chip on my shoulder whenever I assay another one. But this was tender and tasty, qualities enhanced by a real French Bordelaise sauce. It’s a red-wine sauce, as opposed to the garlic butter that we call Bordelaise around New Orleans.
The wine was a Pinot Noir under the name “Cherry Pie.” A lot of fuss was made under this wine. I found it edgy and unbalanced. But some people liked it enough to buy bottles of it on the way out.
Dulce de leche pots de creme.
We finished with pots de creme with the flavor of dulce de leche. The wine was the most attractive part of this course: Inniskillin Icewine from Canada. No data as to what grape variety it was. More important is that a cold snap in the vineyard caused the grapes to freeze, after which they are crushed, vinified, and served in half-bottles for just this moment. What happens here is that the juices become concentrated, and a sweet white wine of low alcohol appears. It’s a fascinating accident.
At the end of the dinner, I indulged myself and the most avid Eat Clubbers by singing “Christmas Waltz.” Nobody booed, nor did anyone suggest that I not quit my day job. I have come to a stage at which I have no hesitancy about breaking out into a song in public. Nobody gets hurt.
Audubon Clubhouse. Uptown: 6500 Magazine. 504-212-5282.
Eggplant Lasagna (Eggplant Tina)
This is my version of the terrific dish called eggplant Tina at Tony Angello’s restaurant in New Orleans’ Lakeview neighborhood. It’s one of the best-loved dishes there, served to a majority of the customers every night. It’s essentially a lasagna made with eggplant in the place of pasta, and a great deal of Romano cheese. The sweetness of Mr. Tony’s sauce balances the bitterness of the eggplant.
Or it did. In case you haven’t heard, the restaurant is leaving the business shortly or already has. There is a possibility that it will return under the management of the current staff, but it will be in a different location. (Tony Angello himself passed away a couple of years ago.) So, to eat eggplant Tina again, you’ll have to make it yourself.
Sauce:
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 tsp. chopped garlic
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
2 28-oz. cans Italian plum tomatoes, whole
1/4 tsp. salt
Other ingredients:
1 large eggplant (or two small)
8 oz. Fontina cheese
8 oz. mozzarella cheese, grated
8 oz. ricotta cheese
4 oz. Provolone cheese (shredded)
3/4 cup finely grated Pecorino Romano
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1. Make the sauce first. Drain the tomatoes (reserve the juice) and put them into a food processor; chop to a rough puree. (You can also do this with your fingers in a bowl.)
2. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat till the oil shimmers. Saute the garlic and crushed red pepper for about a minute–until it’s fragrant.
3. Add the tomatoes, 1/2 cup of the reserved juice, basil, oregano, and salt. Bring to a boil, and lower the heat to medium-low. Simmer for about twenty minutes, uncovered. Then keep on the lowest possible heat while you continue with the rest of the recipe.
4. While that’s going on, get started on the eggplant. Preheat the broiler to 500 degrees. Peel the eggplant, then slice it from end to end as uniformly as you can, about a quarter-inch thick. Sprinkle the slices on both sides with what seems like too much salt. Line a colander with the eggplant slices. Fit a bowl into the colander and weigh it down with a few cans of vegetables. Put this entire assembly into the sink and let it drain for a half-hour. Then rinse off the salt from the eggplant, and spread out on paper towels to dry.
5. Brush the eggplant slices with a little olive oil, and sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Spread the slices out on a baking sheet or pizza pan, and put the pan into the preheated broiler about three inches below the heat. Roast until the eggplant begins to brown. Remove the eggplant slices, and lower the oven to 350.
6. Coat the inside of a glass or ceramic baking dish (about 9″ x 13″ x 4″) with olive oil. Pour about 1/4 cup of the sauce on the bottom. Make the following layers, cutting the eggplant to fit:
Eggplant.
1/3 cup sauce.
Fontina cheese.
1/4 cup Romano.
Eggplant.
1/3 cup sauce.
Spinach.
Garlic.
Ricotta.
1/4 cup Romano.
Eggplant.
1/3 cup sauce.
Provolone.
1/4 cup Romano.
Eggplant.
1/3 cup sauce.
Mozzarella.
Eggplant.
Remaining sauce.
Parmesan.
7. Cover the casserole with aluminum foil and bake in the center of the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Remove the foil and return to the oven until a light crust has formed on the top.
8. After removing from the oven, let the lasagna rest for at least 15 minutes before attempting to slice. Serve with a wide metal spatula to keep the layers from sliding around (almost impossible for the first slice).
Serves about eight.
Flaming Halloumi @ Lebanon’s Cafe
Halloumi is an unusual but very simple cheese found throughout the Middle East, from Greece through Israel. It’s made in the same way Creole cream cheese is, but allowed to set a bit firmer. It’s usually made with goat’s or sheep’s milk. An unusual property of the stuff is that it will come close to burning before it melts. This makes it perfect for flaming as a dramatic appetizer. Lebanon’s Cafe flames a lot of halloumi, and it tastes as good as it looks.
Lebanon’s Cafe. Riverbend: 1500 S Carrollton Ave. 504-862-6200.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
December 12, 2016
Days Until
Christmas 14.
New Year’s Eve: 21.
Eat Club Gala @ Brennan’s: 1.
Today’s Flavor
Today is National Hot Cocoa Day. I never was much on cocoa–cafe au lait fills the same need in my beverage selections. But my wife loves the stuff, and on cold days she makes a very rich version of it that reminds her of the cocoa they make at the El Tovar Hotel in the Grand Canyon, where she used to work. She said that many of the staff put on a lot of weight every winter just from drinking that cocoa.
My favorite use of powdered cocoa is to dust desserts, notably chocolate truffles and tiramisu. If you place a doily on top of the item to be cocoa-dusted, you can get interesting patterns.
Another source says that today is National Ambrosia Day. “Food of the gods” is what that word literally means. So why should a concoction of coconut and orange sections get such a name?
Gourmet Gazetteer
Hanger, Texas is seventy-seven miles north of Dallas, not far from the Oklahoma state line at the Red River. This is cattle country, the ground rolling and the open fields dotted with trees. Hanger steaks are, indeed, grown in this area. But Hanger itself is just a place name now, having long since ceased to exist as a town. The nearest place to get any kind of steak is the interestingly-named restaurant Area 51, seven miles east at the Grayson County Airport.
The Saints
Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron of Mexico and the entire New World, especially the Spanish-speaking part of it. There is hardly a family-owned Mexican restaurant that doesn’t have a reproduction of her famous image somewhere.
Edible Dictionary
soubise, [soo-BEESS], (French), adj.An onion-flavored sauce from classic French cookery, named for the gourmet Charles de Rohan, the Prince of Soubise in France in the 1700s. It has become uncommon. The last time I saw a soubise sauce, it was served with a poached egg dish at brunch at Commander’s Palace. It’s made by cooking sliced onions slowly in butter for just under an hour, adding bechamel, straining the mixture, then enriching it with heavy cream. It could be ripe for a revival with the likes of panneed veal, or perhaps with a fish. Or maybe it will just become extinct.
Music To Dine In Italian Restaurants By
Today is the birthday of Frank Sinatra, in 1915. Certainly no vocalist is more played in restaurants, or anywhere else. Indeed, I’m listening to his classic A Jolly Christmas album as I write this. “May you live long,” he used to say, “and may the last voice you hear be mine.” Even though he died in 1998, his voice is still the last one a lot of people hear. If I could have two selfish wishes, the first would be to be sixteen again, and the second would be to be Frank Sinatra.
Deft Dining Rule #872:
A restaurant that plays a great deal of Frank Sinatra on its sound system will have many regular customers.
Food In The Movies
On this date in 1967, the film Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner premiered. It was about the reaction that a proper white couple (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, no less) had when their daughter brought an African-American fiancé (Sidney Poitier) home to meet the folks. I was disappointed that they didn’t focus more on the food being served.
Food In The Funnies
The Katzenjammer Kids, the oldest comic strip still running, made its first appearance today in 1897. One of the running jokes in the German-flavored strip was the efforts of Fritz and Hans (the Kids) to steal Mama’s pies from the windowsill. Mama always seems to be baking pies, and Der Kaptain always seems to be thinking about eating.
Food Namesakes
Nilda Pinto, a writer from Curacao, was born today in 1918. . . Artist Edvard Munch, whose famous painting was “The Scream,” probably came out screaming today in 1863. . . Philip Drinker, who invented the iron lung, took his first sip today in 1894. . . Jim Bunn, Congressman from Oregon, was bunn today in 1956.
Words To Eat By
“Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink
That is the finest of suppers, I think
When I’m grown up and can have what I please,
I think I shall always insist upon these.”–Christopher Morley.
Words To Drink By
“Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.”–Frank Sinatra, born today in 1915.