Sesquidecennially Millennial.
Nothing should end on a Thursday.
It seems so unfinished a time.
Discounting whatever happened
Belittling as Roosevelt’s dime.
Ought-fifteen’s kitchens and tables
In our land of roux and cayenne
Gave many new things to chew on
And classics to love once again.
Chef Justin Devillier.
Chefs now seem to need dual rest’rants
Their cooking the menu to sieze.
Justin from Le Petit Grocery
So opened a place called Belize.
Pat Gallagher’s Mandeville friends
No longer to Covington go.
Two Pats are needed to serve up
His steaks, lamb, pompano.
But king of multiplication
Is peripatetic John Besh.
Twenty-sixteen he will open
Four eateries: two old, two fresh.
Chef Dominique Macquet at Saveur.
Then came Avo-That’s Italian.
In honor of Bourbon, here’s Kenton.
Arana’s Mexican with a spider’s face.
Saveur’s what chef Dominique’s bent on.
Did you notice, in the above
Yet more menus on Magazine Street?
Eighty five restaurants live there.
Serving all you may want to eat.
That’s the good news, and now the less
As so the comparisons go.
Marti’s dining room, with Negroni.
Marti’s remains in a limbo
Maybe next year? I surely hope so.
Redemption once was old Christian’s.
New owners now have the church closed.
They’ve something new for the steeple
What that will be, only God knows.
So much for things, now on to people
Begin with who left us bereaved.
First surely comes Chef Paul Prudhomme’s
American taste preconceived.
But the food man I will miss most
Is mentor Dick Brennan the first.
He shared the warmth of his Irish smile
And his humor, his taste, and his thirst.
Italian friends went off to heaven.
Tony Angello has angels to feed.
Joe Segreto is still a legend
But his story we’ll never read.
I could write more such sentiments
Till home here come all the cows.
That’s the only complaint I voice:
It’s not about whats but the hows.
I’d relate what appeals to my palate
And thoughts welling deep in my mind.
Good wishes to you, O list’ner. Friend.
I remain, still tastefully signed:
Tom Fitzmorris
Thursday, December 31, 2015.
Old Year Adieu. New Years Eve A Deux.
For weeks, Mary Ann has talked about what she might want to do for New Year’s Eve. The options are few, unless I embarrass a restaurateur (and myself) by trying to swing some weight around. All the great eateries are booked up, as I tell everyone else in our boat.
She keeps coming back to the Windsor Court Hotel as a venue. Her first idea was to spend the night there, and take advantage of the various packages the hotel has been advertising. But the hotel is fully booked. Her next idea is to more or less sneak in and pretend that we’re really hotel guests. But everybody who comes to the door at the Windsor Court is treated like a guest, so that’s legit.
I am on the radio until six. She picks me up and we pull into the hotel’s courtyard and garage. We are surprised to see few people there. We check the front desk one more time about a room, but no dice.
We walk around the hotel’s gigantic Christmas tree. It’s probably the largest indoor Tannenbaum in any New Orleans restaurant, with the possible exception of the one at Antoine’s. It has an O-gauge model railroad running around its base. I have never seen this train inoperative.
We ascend to the second floor and the Polo Lounge, at the entry to the Grill Room. Polo is pretty well filled, but there is flux among the customers, and we shortly take over a sofa just big enough to feel roomy, without leaving space for anyone else. We will remain there almost all the way until midnight, grazing from the bar menu and drinking harmlessly.
The place feels very comfortable from the outset. Tom Hook, the regular pianist in the Polo Lounge, plays a range of music from ragtime to the Great American Songbook. I could listen to this guy all night.
At eightish, a new musical corporation takes over, with three instruments and a young singer by the name of Robin Barnes. If she stays around town, she will become as famous as any other jazz singer active today. Her range of tonality and timbre have me spellbound. Even Mary Ann–who is not what you could call a music lover–thinks Robin is spectacular, not just in her music but in the way she relates to the audience. I have my usual reverie about how I could possibly perform a duet with her, but she is way out of my league.
The eating part of the evening pleases MA greatly. Nothing here will stuff her or me. We begin with charcuterie, most of it variations on ham, although there’s a brasaola in there too. MA has a club sandwich, and I get truffled fries. The latter bring the only disappointment of the evening: these are not fresh-cut fries! In the Windsor Court? MA, who puts herself forward as the arbiter of taste when it comes to pommes frites, find this scandalous.
But everything else contributes to a lovely evening, one in which we feel warmer to one another than we have in a long time. But isn’t that what New Year’s Eve is for?
I have been short on sleep and have been catching up on walking for the past couple of days. The sofa in the Polo Lounge is so comfortable that for a moment I fall asleep, pitching forward enough to alarm MA. This proves to be the Salvador Dali Alarm Clock Effect in action. Dali used to take one-second-long naps by putting a coin into his right hand and letting his arm hang down over a coffee cup. After a few moments, he falls asleep, and the coin falls into the cup, waking him up. I am a connoisseur of nap-taking, and this sounded like a form of torture to me. But I can say now that the trick really works. When MA saw me lean forward, she reached out to stop me. But by then I was already awake–wide awake, in fact, and fully refreshed.
When it turns eleven, MA decides that it’s too cold to stand by the pool and watch the fireworks over the river–if, indeed, the pyrotechnics can even be seen from there. She hatches a new idea. Wouldn’t the fireworks be amazing to see from the middle of Lake Pontchartrain? So we pay up our bill (a little over $100, so we have paid our rent on the sofa) and depart for home. MA forgets to turn around and look at the fireworks until we make it to the Causeway’s sixteen-mile marker. She pulls into the crossover, and finds that we have gone much too far. We can see the fireworks, but on a very small scale. Most interesting is all the action along the lakefront in Metairie. Hardly a dark spot could be seen over there.
We decide that this was a fine way to welcome the New Year. Not that we will ever do it again. But now we can say, “Remember the year when we sat in the same sofa at the Windsor Court for five hours and saw the fireworks from the Causeway?”
Windsor Court Grill Room. CBD: 300 Gravier. 504-522-1994.
Cheese Soufflee
Few dishes have the elegance of a hot soufflee. The fluffy baked foam of egg and flavorings has the reputation of being very difficult to make, but really, only two parts of the preparation are unusual. First, you need straight-sided soufflee dishes, specifically made for that purpose, and useful for almost nothing else. (And hard to stack in your cupboard, to boot.) I recommend four-inch-diameter soufflee dishes. Second, you need to hang around keeping your eyes on the things as they bake. It’s not as all-consuming as making a roux, but nearly so.
While most cheese soufflees involve Cheddar cheese, I find the superb melting qualities of Fontina work better, balanced with the tanginess of Pecorino Romano.
1/4 cup very finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese
1 tsp. salt-free Creole seasoning
1/4 tsp. salt
3 Tbs. flour
3 Tbs. butter
1/2 cup chicken stock
2/3 cup whole milk
5 large egg yolks
1 cup coarsely grated Pecorino Romano cheese, loosely packed
8 oz. Fontina cheese, cut into small cubes
8 large egg whites, completely free of yolk
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
1. With your fingers, apply a thin film of softened butter to the insides of the soufflee dishes. Spoon some of the finely-grated Romano cheese into each dish. Cover with your hand and shake until the insides of the dish are coated with the cheese. Set the dishes in the refrigerator while you carry on.
2. Heat the butter in a small saucepan over low heat, and allow to cook until it stops bubbling. Combine the Creole seasoning, salt and flour, and add to the butter. Raise the heat to medium-high and stir with a wooden spoon until it becomes a blond roux.
3. Add the chicken stock and milk. Whisk until the mixture thickens, and continue to whisk until it begins to boil. Remove from the heat.
4. Beat the egg yolks with a whisk or electric mixer until they become thick and much lighter in color. Whisk this, a little at a time, until the eggs disappear into the sauce.
5. Add all the remaining Romano cheese and the Fontina cheese to the sauce. Stir with a whisk until completely smooth. (If necessary to finish the melting, turn the heat back on low. Turn it off again after the cheese is melted in.)
6. In a clean bowl with clean beaters, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until peaks form. Gently stir about a third of the beaten whites into the cheese mixture with a rubber spatula. When blended, fold in the rest of the egg whites with the spatula. (A few streaks are okay).
7. Remove the soufflee dishes from the refrigerator. Load in the cheese mixture into each one, leaving about a quarter of an inch from the top.
8. Cut pieces of parchment paper or aluminum foil wide enough to wrap around and overlap the soufflee dishes, and fold them over. Tightly wrap them around the tops of the dishes, with most of the paper above the top of the dish. Tape it in place with masking tape.
9. Bake the soufflees in the preheated 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes, or until browned on top. Under no circumstances should you open the oven door for the first 15 minutes.
10. Get everyone at the table as the soufflees come out of the oven. Remove the paper collars, and serve them immediately in their dishes atop plates.This is especially good for lunch with a small salad of baby greens and vinaigrette on the side.
Serves six.
Adult Grilled Cheese Sandwich @ Cowbell
Cowbell is a kicky everyday-eats place in a renovated gas station near the Orleans-Jefferson parish line. Brack May–whose resume is decidedly on the gourmet side–has made his “adult-style” grilled cheese sandwich into a popular item. It’s crusty, grainy bread, interesting cheese, and other stuff like asparagus stuck in the middle. Good! The soup that comes with it is even better.
Cowbell. Riverbend: 1200 Eagle St . 504-866-4222.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
January 4, 2015
Tenth Day of Christmas
Here come the leaping lords. I don’t know what that’s all about, and I don’t think I want to know. Also silly: the chromium combination manicure, scissors and cigarette lighter in Allan Sherman’s version of the song. In another: mistletoe arrives today, too late for the parties. Benny Grunch goes to the Tenneco Chalmette Refinery for some reason. In our own take on the Twelve Days song, today we’d like to simmer for you ten cups of red beans to go with the nine cups of rice and eight links of sausage from the last two days.
Sports In Food
It’s Don Shula’s birthday. The NFL coach with the most wins in history was born today in 1930. He co-owns a chain of steakhouses, whose New Orleans branch was for a few years in the J.W. “Formerly The Meridien” Marriott Hotel on Canal Street. That space is still a steak house, if a very different kind: Fogo De Chao, the all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse. New Orleans has not yet experienced this style of dining done well. It’s wildly popular in twenty-nine locations around the U.S., plus some in Brazil. It just opened here.
Today’s Flavor
This is National Spaghetti Day. As much as I love pasta, whenever I encounter spaghetti in the strictest sense of the word, I’m glad that we don’t eat it often. The thinner string pastas–spaghettini, vermicelli, angel hair–have taken over. Thicker spaghetti doesn’t roll up onto a fork, or hold as much sauce. This is because, ounce for ounce, the thinner the pasta, the more surface area it has.
Deft Dining Rule #152:
It is neither necessary nor suave to use a spoon to help twirl spaghetti around a fork. Just put the tines of the fork down on the bottom of the plate and start turning it. It works at least as well as a spoon.
Deft Dining Rule #153:
If you are old enough to read, you’re too old to cut your spaghetti into shorter pieces. Chefs put a lot of work into giving you long strands to twirl. Get with il programma.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
Breaking spaghetti to fit into a storage jar is carrying organization a little too far.
Gourmet Geography
Fork is a community of country homes–some bordering on estates–in central North Carolina. It’s about twenty-five miles southwest of Winston-Salem, in an appealing hilly terrain. The nearest place to eat is the Tar Heel Q, specializing in the unique North Carolina style of barbecue, with open pits and a vinegar-and-mustard-based sauce. If you bring it back to fork, you may not be allowed to eat it with your fingers.
Food In Show Biz
The movie Chocolat, about a new-in-town single mother who works her way into the hearts of her neighbors in a small French town by making excellent chocolate pastries premiered today in 2001. It’s also the birthday of fictional chocolate magnate Willy Wonka–as a trademark for the line of candy bearing the character’s name. Issued today in 1972.
Food On The Air
Today was the premiere, in 1932, of the Carnation Contented Hour, a music variety show on radio sponsored by Carnation Evaporated Milk, the milk from contented cows. Would you prefer milk from a contented cow or a singing cow? I have one of the Carnation shows in my collection; I wish I had more. Good music back then.
Sounds Like A Food Story, But Isn’t
Today in 2006, the first female Beefeater was confirmed. Best known for gracing the label of the bottle of the namesake gin, the Beefeaters–more properly known as Yeoman Warders–have been guarding the Tower of London for over five hundred years. All of them were men until then. But it’s not the rough-and-tumble job it once was. Beefeaters now mainly entertain visitors to the Tower.
Edible Dictionary
carbonara, Italian, adj.–A pasta dish made “in the style of the coal miners.” This implies simple cooking. (Just as marinara is the simple style of the sailor, and cacciatore is the simple style of the hunter.) But the coal miners were also suspected of liking a certain smoky flavor in their food. So we get a little guanciale (cured hog jowls) in the sauce, which is otherwise made with eggs, Romano cheese, and black pepper. The dish has evolved quite a bit since it found its way to America. Here it’s almost always made with bacon or even prosciutto instead of guanciale, and with cream in the sauce. Sometimes the eggs are left out here. It can be made with any kind of pasta, but spaghetti is the most common. It’s a rich and wonderful dish as long as you don’t eat it too often.
Eat Club Namesakes
Today is the birthday, in 1837, of Charles Stratton, a midget known in the world of entertainment as General Tom Thumb. I only bring this up because an Eat Club regular who travels here from Little Rock to attend our dinners has the same real name and stage name. He’s not a midget, though, so his circus career didn’t amount to much, forcing him to do very well in more conventional businesses.
Food Namesakes
J. Danforth Quayle, the vise-prisedint under George Bush I, was borne tooday in 1947. . . Arthur Berry, an early British Olympic soccer star, was born today in 1888. . . Wilhelm Beer, an astronomer who drew the first known map of the moon based on telescopic observations, was born today in 1797. . . Jon Appleton, an American classical composer, was born today in 1939.
Words To Eat By
“No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.”–Christopher Morley.
“Nothing spoils lunch any quicker than a rogue meatball rampaging through your spaghetti.”–Jim Davis, author of the comic strip “Garfield.”
“Eating food with a knife and fork is like making love through an interpreter.”–Anonymous.
Words To Drink By
“We live in stirring times—tea-stirring times.”–Christopher Isherwood, British writer, who died today in 1986.
What Happened To Mom’s Home Cooking?
Ask Dad, but in private.
Click here for the cartoon.