Mardi Gras! Tuesday, February 17, 20115.
Angela’s Gloves. The Hottest Restaurant In New Orleans Today.
Only half of the bad weather forecast for today comes to pass. The rain ended overnight, and all the parades rolled as planned. But temperatures are as chilly as expected–in the high thirties, amplified by an insistent north wind. I arrive at Lafayette Square around a quarter to ten, and mount the consolidated broadcast platform for all the television stations. We are displaced this year from our usual spot on the steps of Gallier Hall, across the street. Some structural problems with the old city hall keep us from being there today.
Angela Hill–the only reporter here who has broadcast this spectacle more times than I have–greets me with a welcome offer. “Would you like a pair of gloves?” she asks. I remember that she made the same gesture last year, when the weather was even colder. I meant to buy a pair for myself, but gloves are not on my wardrobe list, and I forgot. These plain black loaners alleviate some of the sting, but after a half-hour my fingertips have begun to turn white, even though I am well layered.
I wonder about the young women in the bands and dance teams that fill the gaps between Zulu’s many floats. That parade is running well ahead of schedule, and it only stops a few times. How do the baton twirlers show off their skills? Especially the throwing and most especially the catching of their spinning sticks in these temperatures? They can’t wear gloves, can they? But most of these girls have bare legs. How can they stand it? Angela tells me that they’re wearing hosiery that holds in more warmth than one would think. I’m glad somebody here understands women’s wear.
And then I am thunderstruck by Channel Four weatherman Carl Arredondo’s getup. His face is made up in black and white–not in the Zulu minstrel style, but like a member of the rock group Kiss. Much more shocking is his costume, which has him more or less naked from the waist up. How could he not know it was going to be frigid today? Did he lose a bet with another weatherman? He is a brave man.
About an hour into our broadcast comes a moment I will never forget. The overcast clouds have been thinning out all morning, but now the sun jumps into a blue hole and send bright beams down. The whole crowd breaks into applause. It’s the first ovation I ever saw the sun receive outside an eclipse.
Zulu trucks on by, and here comes Rex, dappled with sunshine. He was selected unanimously by the School of Design (as the Rex organization is officially called), save for one dissenting vote: his own. Christopher Brown is a successful businessman (chairman of the board of Tabasco, among other involvements), and very active in the community his entire life. I skim past all the details looking for one datum–ah, here it is. Yes, I suspected this. Some years ago, for the first time, Rex was younger than I was by a few months. That began a trend, and the trend has reached a new milestone: Rex 2015 is ten years younger than me. Someone mentioned that Chris Brown is the first brown-haired (as opposed to gray) Rex in history. He’s not–I looked it up on the wall of the Rex Room at Antoine’s. But there haven’t been many.
The parade’s theme is excellent. Each float recalls a war that occurred early in the history of America, and explains what the upshot of the fracas was. The cavalcade ends very appropriately with the Battle Of New Orleans, which five weeks ago passed its two-hundredth anniversary.
Angela Hill offers to stay the full four hours that I will be here, instead of leaving as scheduled at one. I tell her it’s not necessary, that I have been doing the last hour of the parade solo for many years. But now I think I should have asked her to remain, because she seemed to be having a good time. Or, I may just be flattering myself.
Rex’s passage at Gallier Hall ends exactly at two o’clock. I have missed nothing but the truck floats that follow, but that is a plus. I make for my car and drive directly to the Crescent City Steak House, where I will indulge my own tradition of three decades standing. The eating of le boeuf gras, and thereby fulfilling the farewell-to-meat meaning of the word “carnival.”
The Crescent City is one of the oldest steakhouses in town, having opened in 1936 as a place for guys who had a good day at the nearby Fair Grounds to celebrate their windfalls. Even though it’s always served dry-aged USDA Prime beef, it’s an unprepossessing neighborhood café, with prices to match. While most other first-class steakhouses are long past the $40 or even $50 line for their steaks, the Crescent City still sells their main cuts for less than $30. For the first twenty years I dined there, it only rarely had many other customers in the house. On some of my early Mardi Gras dinners, I was the only one.
But no more. Krasna Vojkovich–whose late husband opened the Crescent City–tells me that it filled up the moment the door opened. Now, at two-thirty, it is not only full in all its dining rooms (there’s one in back of the bar, and another one upstairs), but about twenty people stand at the bar, another twenty cluster inside the entrance, and another twenty or more stand in the parking lot.
But they always save a table for me. As soon as I sit down, I circulate among the waiting people and invite the ones I know to join me. This year we host Clark, the Gourmet Truck Driver and his wife. Dr. Tom David, a retired veterinarian for horses who is also an oenophile. He always brings an interesting bottle of something big, old, and rich to share. He is there with his wife. And one more couple and a single who have attended Eat Club dinners in the past.
I find many other friends in the room. Dave Lagarde, retired sportswriter for the Times-Picayune. Tom and Lynn Long, who I just know from past decades. Two UNO fraternity brothers of mine. And many other Eat Clubbers.
Also here is a surprising number of restaurateurs taking the day off. Susan Spicer. Frank and Marna Brigtsen. Rodney Salvaggio and Paul Varisco, two of the three owners of Mr. John’s Steak House and Desi Vega’s Steakhouse. Given the excellence of those two places, their presence says something big about the Crescent City.
I get the same impression I had last year: this little old restaurant in its funny old neighborhood is, on Mardi Gras, comparable to Friday lunch at Galatoire’s. Indeed, it’s a lot of the same customers here and there. How did such a phenomenon get started?
“You know what started it!” Mary Ann says. “And every time you say you’re not taking credit for it, everybody knows that you are taking credit for it!” Mary Ann always has my number.
Anthony Vojkovich–son of the founder–takes care of our table personally. He knows I don’t mind if we have gaps in the service, as he and the rest of the staff battle their way though this barrage of customers. You don’t go to the Crescent City on Mardi Gras if you’re in a hurry. I am just happy to be here, surrounded by friends, people in costumes, and lots of purple, green, and gold.
In between, Krasna brings us a few treats. First, the tripe stew she makes for us every year. Several people eat tripe for the first time in their lives–at least knowingly. Krasna also makes some small pastries filled with mushrooms, onions, a little cheese and anchovies that we find tasty. And some fresh collard greens she grew in her own garden.
Then we have steak, of course. Evenly divided among filets and strip sirloins, sizzling in butter (that idea was created in this place). Broccoli and potatoes au gratin. Fresh-cut fries which, in alkl my years, I don’t remember ever having had. If I did, these are much better than those.
Our table breaks up at a bit after six–almost four hours and five bottles of wine (for eight people? is that all?) after I arrived. Mary Ann, who came to this carnival once years ago and never came back, is astonished when I don’t get home until seven-thirty. She calls at 11 p.m. She and Mary Leigh have just arrived at the airport from Los Angeles, and they have both a flat tire and a dead battery. She says I should not worry, let alone come to get her, as I offer to do. A guy at the airport jump-starts dead-battery cars. When she gets the car started she plugs in her air pump and fills the tire, and gets home at one-thirty in the morning. Weeks later, she will still not have replaced either the tire nor the battery. How can she live like that? And skip town for Mardi Gras, too?
Crescent City Steak House. Mid-City: 1001 N Broad. 504-821-3271.
#29 Among The 33 Best Seafood Eateries
Joey K’s
Uptown 2: Washington To Napoleon: 3001 Magazine. 504-891-0997. Map.
Casual.
MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
The rebirth of Magazine Street from a place with few restaurants into one with many began with the opening of Joey K’s. Even though many Uptown bistros appeared along Magazine a few years before, it wasn’t until casual, inexpensive neighborhood eat shops began popping up that the Street Of Dreams became a phenomenon. Joey K’s was the first such eatery. With slightly modernized versions of the classic New Orleans neighborhood restaurant, it grabbed the attention of a wide range of diners. These ranged from dressed-up Uptowners taking a break from renovating their nearby cottages to college students who liked the low prices and big portions. Two decades and one reverse renovation layer, Joey’s K’s keeps its attractions and stays busy.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
It’s a super-neighborhood restaurant, drawing customers from all over town with a menu bigger than is usually found in places that look like this. All the essential dishes of casual New Orleans eating are here, from beans and jambalaya to seafood platters and great old-time daily specials.
WHAT’S GOOD
It’s a classic New Orleans casual menu that stops short of being a cliche. They take all of the cooking seriously, something best seen in the daily specials. Many customers know exactly which day to be there for what. Portions are almost grossly oversize, and if that’s not enough, they have an all-you-can-eat catfish deal that runs every day. Despite that, seafood in general is a strong suit here.
BACKSTORY
Joey K’s opened in 1992, when neighborhood restaurants were in steep decline around town. In its early years the restaurant was self-consciously nostalgic, serving famous dishes that not many people ate in restaurants anymore. When neighborhood joints had a resurgence, particularly after Katrina,. Joey K’s was a perfect example of the genre–especially after owners Sam and Cindy Farnet brought the antique decor that had been hiding under modren [sic] paneling back to light.
DINING ROOM
A big room has big windows on two sides (it’s literally a corner cafe), with some nooks and crannies here and there for added space. The place looks (and is) much older than the current restaurant. Although it looks like the kind of place where the main clientele would be cab drivers and cops, in fact you see the entire assortment of Orleanians here. The wait stuff is fun.
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
starters
Gumbo
Grilled tuna salad
Shrimp remoulade salad
Fried artichoke hearts
Red beans & rice
Entrees
Hamburger steak, brown gravy
Fried chicken
Shrimp Magazine (sautéed in olive oil, garlic, artichoke, Ham, green onions, angel-hair pasta)
Trout Tchoupitoulas (sauteed, shrimp, crabmeat)
Rib eye steak
Fried catfish (all you can eat)
Fried oysters, shrimp, soft-shell crab or combo
Eggplant Napoleon (fried medallions, fried shrimp, crawfish cream sauce)
Veal, chicken or eggplant parmesan, angel hair pasta
Daily specials
White beans, fried pork chop
Corned beef and cabbage
Beef brisket, rice, gravy, cabbage
Bell pepper stuffed with ground beef and shrimp
Lima beans, ham hock
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Creole jambalaya
Shrimp & mushroom fettuccini
Fried fish tacos
Liver & onions, mashed potatoes and green peas
Braised lamb shank
Sandwiches
Fried oyster, shrimp, catfish, or soft-shell crab poor boy
Roast beef debris poor boy
Grilled Reuben sandwich
Desserts
Bread pudding, rum sauce
Blackberry or apple cobbler a la mode
FOR BEST RESULTS
Order light. They serve too much food here. Don’t wear your best clothes. It’s usually hard to get a table in the peak of lunchtime.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Some of the specials swap quantity for careful cooking. The fried seafood is crisp and hot, but the coatings all taste the same.
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 +1
Service
Value +2
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar
Hipness +1
Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Sidewalk tables
Open Monday lunch and dinner
Open all afternoon
Historic
Unusually large servings
Quick, good meal
Good for children
Easy, nearby parking
No reservations
Pan-Grilled Monkfish With Mardi Gras Vegetables
Here’s a basic recipe for grilling thick fish, applied to thick fillets of monkfish–a very firm, white fish with a texture that reminds many eaters of lobster. It doesn’t taste like lobster, but it is a very fine fish. While the instructions below are for grilling, this is also a very good fish for broiling. The garnish is a pile of colorful shredded vegetables, cooked just long enough to take out the stiffness.
This dish also works well with other species that lend themselves to the grill. Tuna, swordfish, redfish, mahi-mahi, escolar and lemonfish come to mind.
4 monkfish fillets, 6-8 oz. each
2 cups total of at least three of the following vegetables, coarsely shredded:
–Purple cabbage
–Green cabbage
–Carrots
–White onion
–Yellow squash
–Broccoli stems
1/2 cup melted butter
Creole seasoning
1. Heat a black iron skillet or griddle quite hot–but not as much as for blackening fish. Brush the fish with butter and sprinkle on Creole seasoning to your taste. Grill the fish for about two minutes on each side–until the fish is opaque all the way through. Remove and keep warm.
2. Pile the shredded vegetables onto the hot skillet or griddle, and spoon 1 tsp. of butter over them. Turn the pile after one minute, and cook for one more minute.
3. Place the fish on a serving plate, and put the vegetables on top of it.
Serves four.
Shrimp Gumbo @ Grand Isle
The seafood gumbo in this slightly-too-slick homage to the end-of-the-world restaurants around Louisiana leans almost entirely in the direction of shrimp. Which is not a bad idea, if you’re going to make a nice fresh shrimp stock and add some big, firm shrimp at the end of the cooking process. Which they do.
Grand Isle. Warehouse District: 575 Convention Center Blvd. 504-520-8530.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
February 24, 2014
Days Until. . .
St. Patrick’s Day 21
St. Joseph’s Day 19
Easter 35
New Orleans Tastemakers
Tennessee Williams died today in 1983. We all know his contributions to American theatre, but he was also a devotee of New Orleans restaurants. His favorite hangouts in his last days were Marti’s (where Peristyle is now) and Galatoire’s. The Tennessee Williams Festival–which always has a significant food and drink aspect–is about a month from now.
Deft Dining Rule #160:
If the shells on small shrimp are soft, just pull off the heads and eat the tail witghout peeling. You’ll eat more shrimp that way.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
You’re better off if you never make shrimp dip, shrimp pate, shrimp molds, or shrimp mousse.
Food Calendar
This is National Tortilla Chip Day. Tortilla chips are a big issue around my house. We all like guacamole and salsa here, and we have those recipes down. However, we still have a great controversy as to which chips are the best. We seem to have settled on thin, white tortilla chips. Yet to be resolved is the matter of shape: triangular versus round. We also find that some brands are so bland that we’re tempted to just throw them away. On the other side of the spectrum, flavored tortilla chips give the same effect you get from flavoring coffee. The current favorite among the commercial chips is Santitas, a relatively new product from Frito-Lay, which created the whole category with Fritos in the 1950s. (They were so novel then that people were raving about them all over the country.) What is certain is that we eat a great many tortilla chips, and I’m glad they took the trans-fats out of them.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Dungeness is a small fishing town in the northwest corner of Washington, across the strait of Juan de Fuca from Victoria, the capital of the Canadian province British Columbia, and seventy-four miles northwest of Seattle. It is the first place where Dungeness crabs–named for the town–were fished and processed commercially, starting in 1858. The town got its name from George Vancouver, who was remided of Dungeness, England when he saw the spot. The great restaurant in Dungeness is the 3 Crabs, a famous place right on the beach in Dungeness. Here’s their website: www.the3crabs.com.
Edible Dictionary
soufflee potatoes, n.–The most spectacular form of fried potatoes ever devised, soufflee potatoes are sliced wide and thin, then fried twice. The second frying, in very hot oil, causes the potatoes to puff up like small balloons. The technique is credited to a chef named Collinet, who was commissioned to cook a lunch for King Louis Phillippe of France, at the end of the king’s first ride on a train. When the chef saw the train coming, he began frying the potatoes–the king’s favorite dish. It turned out, however, that the king got cold feet about the newfangled mode of transport, and decided to make the trip in his carriage. Collinet now had cold fries and no more potatoes. When the king arrived, Collinet just dropped the fries back into the oil and crossed his fingers. What came out were the first pommes de terre soufflees. Antoine Alciatore, the founder of Antoine’s restaurant in New Orleans, was one of Collinet’s apprentices, and he brought the soufflee potato secret with him to his restaurant. The potato puffs are still served there, as well as in other New Orleans restaurants.
Ancient Food
In 1989 on this date, a 150-million-year-old dinosaur egg was found in Utah, still inside its fossilized mother. Unfortunately, it was not fresh, and a dinosaur embryo was found (by use of a CAT scan!) to be well formed inside the shell. No omelette there. But what a thought!
Annals Of Wild Boars
The serving of wild boars in gourmet restaurants has been expanding in recent years. Enough that not enough truly wild ones are out there, and in a great contradiction most are actually raised on farms. But the animal has long been in our lives. The first product made of nylon was a toothbrush. Dupont premiered it today in 1938. It replaced hairs from the necks of wild boars.
On this day in 1979, in Stamford, Texas, the highest price ever paid for a not-so-wild pig was negotiated by breeder Russ Baize: $42,500. It was a boar named “Glacier.” The record stood for eighteen years.
Cooking For The Stage
A play called Too Many Cooks,
written by Frank Craven, premiered on Broadway on this day in 1914. We need a sequel, set in New Orleans in 2015, entitled Not Enough Cooks.
Food Namesakes
Abe Vigoda, who played the character “Fish” in the TV series of the same name, splashed onto the big dock today in 1921. . . Betty Lou Beets, convicted of the murder of her fifth husband, failed to get a stay of execution from then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, and got a lethal injection. . . Simeon Rice, a pro football defensive end, was born today in 1974.
Words To Eat By
“Between the ages of twenty and fifty, John Doe spends some twenty thousand hours chewing and swallowing food, more than eight hundred days and nights of steady eating. The mere contemplation of this fact is upsetting enough.” –M.F.K. Fisher.
Words To Drink By
“After God, long live wine.”–Rosalia de Castro, Spanish writer, born today in 1837.
What’s In A House Salad?
It depends on the customer and his tastes. In this case, the selection is quite limited.
Click here for the cartoon.