Thursday, March 17, 2017.
A Grueling Rehearsal Of Doo-Wop.
Most of the bad restaurants in New Orleans are not worth reviewing. I estimate that about a third of local restaurants are unacceptable to palates who are looking for enjoyment. That’s about five hundred restaurants. I seldom write about such places unless they are prominent and generate a fair amount of discussion. I particularly avoid restaurants that clearly don’t know what they’re about, and who are likely to be very small businesses operating on a thread. There’s something cruel about smashing such eateries.
I wound up eating lunch today in a little sandwich shop I’ve had my eye on for years. It took me that long because I never seem to go there when the place is open. Today I was going that way, the OPEN sign was on, a few cars were in the parking lot, and about half the tables were occupied.
In I went. I ordered a roast beef my usual way: dressed, easy on the gravy, heavy on the pickles, and if they could toast the bread that would be appreciated. They did all that, but the mayonnaise content was over the top.
On the other hand, the place was smelly. It was reasonably (if not scrupulously) clean, but in something less than perfect repair. (Which, for a sandwich shop, is not uncommon, even among the better joints.)
I ate about two-thirds of the sandwich. It wasn’t terrible, but it was unpleasant. I wondered all day whether I would get sick. I didn’t.
That’s all I have to say about this spot, to which I bear no ill will. I’m not going to specify it by name–at least not until well after it closes. In the process of growing up, I lost my sense of schaden-freude. The vogue for writing scathing reviews of local restaurants–Richard Collin was the most flagrant practitioner, back in the 1970s–is and ought to be over.
On the other hand, I’m miffed that the only meal I’ll have today is that stinky sandwich.
Dress rehearsal tonight for the big NPAS Doo-Wop Concert Friday night and Sunday afternoon. I am there very early, when a few subset groups of the main chorus ran through a few of their songs. The Choristers–the best of our singers–have developed an excellent sound that reminds me of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66–although I’m sure that wasn’t their target.
We went through the whole show, which was a lot longer than I thought it would be. The women in the group (who outnumber the men two to one) have their own repertoire, none of which I heard until tonight. I liked their close-harmony, quartet reading of “Mr. Sandman,” which qualifies as both a barbershop number and doo-wop.
The rehearsal went until almost ten o’clock, most of it spent on the risers at attention. I was beat by the end of it, and slept well for five hours afterwards. It took me an hour and a half to get back to sleep, however, because I kept running the songs through my brain. I learn almost every skill in my sleep. Which may explain my level of incompetence.
Shameless plug: tickets for the concert and other details are at www.npas.info. The shows are Friday night, March 18 (tonight) and Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. I’m the guy deep in the back, left. NPAS is non-profit.
Jeff’s Creole Grille
Metairie 3: Houma Blvd To Kenner Line: 5241 Veterans Memorial Blvd. 504-889-7992. Map.
Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website
Fish with crabmeat.
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Compared with New Orleans proper, its wealthiest suburb Metairie has never come close to having the same wealth of cuisine that the city does. In only one category–Italian food–does Metairie excels.
But that appears to be changing. Neighborhood restaurants lately have been popping up all over the sprawling Metairie landscape. The style of these places is more involved than say, a poor boy or seafood shop, with extensive lists of everything from sandwiches through daily specials in the red beans category through some excellent, creative daily specials. Jeff’s is among the best examples of these new dining options.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
Even though most of the menu is familiar, eating at Jeff’s is not like eating at, say, Mandina’s. The food–even the poor boys–comes out resembling more the offerings of an ambitious bistro than those of a corner joint. This is particularly true of the daily specials. The pricing seems to be designed to woo people away from the chains. And the food is better, too.
WHAT’S GOOD
The ingredients are of impressive quality, particularly in the seafood department and the specials. In the more everyday dishes, where raw materials matter less, the kitchen shows a thorough knowledge of how to make moderately-priced dishes taste great.
BACKSTORY
Ed McIntyre–who had opened five Mr. Ed’s neighborhood cafes around town and sold off a few of them, premiered what is now Jeff’s in 2008. He sold it a couple of years later, and after one more management change it arrived at its present state.
DINING ROOM
The main dining room has that classic well-worn look, but is clean and comfortable. Signs leading to the video poker take you to the bar, which is often busier than the dining room. A few tables are jammed into unlikely corners. The servers are neighborly and casual.
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
Starters
»Louisiana blue crab dip
Spinach and artichoke dip
»Fried eggplant
Crispy catfish
»Turtle soup
»Creole gumbo
Soup of the day
»Bleu cheese iceberg wedge
Club salad
»Cobb salad
Grilled chicken Caesar salad
Shrimp and avocado salad
Sandwiches
»Hamburgers (numerous options)
Roast beef poor boy or open-face
Fried shrimp, catfish or oyster po-boy
Meatball and mozzarella po-boy
Grilled chicken sandwich
BBQ beef sandwich
Club sandwich
Entrees
»Red or white beans and rice, with sausage or pork chop
Meatballs and spaghetti
Chicken parmesan
»Roasted half-chicken
Grilled or breaded pork chops
Pot roast, baked macaroni, vegetables
Ribeye steak
Crabmeat au gratin
»Fried oyster, catfish, shrimp, or combo platters
»Daily dinner specials
Desserts
»Bread pudding
Key lime pie
Praline cheesecake
Brownie with ice cream
FOR BEST RESULTS
The grilled seafood is the best part of the menu here, followed closely by the soups. Some of the more ambitious specials–mussels, for example–are much better than one expects.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The steak night comes across as a bargain, but you’re better off going to the seafood side of the menu.
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
Consistency +1
Service+1
Value +2
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar
Hipness -1
Local Color -1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Good for business meetings
Open Monday lunch and dinner
Open all afternoon
Unusually large servings
Quick, good meal
Easy, nearby parking
Reservations accepted
Whiskey Cake
This recipe came to me from the makers of Knob Creek Bourbon whiskey, a small-batch bourbon that’s good enough that you might be tempted to have a shot while making the cake (go ahead, but have it over ice cubes, with perhaps a little water–nothing more). The recipe is inspired by a cake made in the Greensboro, Georgia home of the grandmother of Luann Landon, who wrote a book about the dishes served there. It’s called “Dinner At Miss Lady’s,” and it’s published by Algonquin.
1 1/12 cups flour
1 lb. pecans, chopped
1/2 lb. golden raisins, chopped coarsely
1 tsp. baking powder
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
2 Tbs. Steen’s cane syrup
3 eggs, separated
1 1/2 tsp. freshly-grated nutmeg
1/2 cup bourbon
Pinch cream of tartar
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
1. Measure the flour after sifting once, then sift again. Mix 1/2 cup of the flour with the raisins and pecans.
2. In a medium bowl, sift the remaining flour and baking powder together.
3. Soak the nutmeg in the bourbon for ten minutes.
4. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating until the mixture is smooth and the color changes to a bright yellow.
5. Stir the nutmeg into the bourbon. Add about half the bourbon to the egg mixture, then half a cup of flour, then the rest of the bourbon, and finish with the flour. Beat the batter for about a minute between each addition, scraping down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula as you go.
6. Fold in the flour with the pecans and the raisins with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon.
7. With clean beaters in a clean bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until peaks form. Fold this into the batter with the rubber spatula, stopping when only fine streaks can be noted.
8. Grease two loaf pans with butter and pour in the batter. Bake in a preheated 325-degree oven for an hour and 10 minutes, lowering the heat to 275 after 45 minutes.
9. Cool the cake in the pans on a rack for 30 minutes. Removing the cake is not easy, so be careful. The cake tastes better and slices much easier if you chill it first.
Makes about 12-15 big slices, which are great served with egg nog.
#6: Oysters Foch @ Antoine’s
The sauce is where the main action is, although the rest of the dish is pretty good, too. It’s a variation on hollandaise, which will come as a surprise to those who like it, because it doesn’t resemble hollandaise at all. It’s so dark that it looks as if it’s made out of chocolate. The flavors of tomato, sherry, and pepper come through, too. There’s nothing like it in any New Orleans restaurant (or any other restaurant anywhere, to my knowledge).
The sauce goes over the top of cornmeal-coated fried oysters, placed on foie-gras-slathered toast. It’s supposed to recall the horrible battles in World War I led by Marshal Ferdinand Foch, but the less you know about that, the better. It’s a fantastic and unique appetizer. Antoine’s also uses this sauce on breaded trout or soft-shell crabs to brilliant effect, too. In Antoine’s Hermes Bar, they serve an oysters Foch poor boy–something I’ll bet the waiters have been eating for fifty years at least.
Oysters Foch at Antoine’s.
Antoine’s. French Quarter: 713 St. Louis. 504-581-4422.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
March 18, 2016
Days Until. . .
St. Joseph’s Day 1
Easter 9French Quarter Festival 19
Jazz Festival 43
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
Kibbe is a rural crossroads community in east central Georgia, 163 miles southeast of Atlanta. It’s a farming area whose fields grow cotton, pecans, and peaches. It was founded as a station stop on the old Seaboard Air Line Railroad. No restaurants there, but seven miles south in Vidalia is a good place called the Tree House. Don’t count on getting kibbe–a Middle Eastern dish made of ground beef or lamb with cracked wheat, onions, parsley. It can be served either raw or fried into little football-shaped meatballs
Edible Dictionary
sopes, [SO-pehss], Spanish, n., pl.–Sopes (the word is almost always used in the plural) are thick tortillas made of finely-ground masa meal, and shaped into shallow bowls. The depressions are filled with beef, chicken, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, or any similar combination of toppings. They’re picked up and eaten almost like sandwiches, but more carefully. They radiated out across the northern half of Mexico and into the United States from Sinaloa, the Mexican state on the east side of the Golfo de California. They somewhat resemble tostadas or chalupas, but usually hold more meat than either of those.
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.
The Good Side Of Bad Restaurants.
They can help you lose weight. Or so it might seem. Actually, eating mediocre food makes you want to eat more of it to satisfy your spirit.
Click here for the cartoon.