A Place To Land In The French Quarter On Mardi Gras
I lived in the French Quarter for three years in the 1970s. I was in my twenties–the peak years for adult Mardi Gras partying. Having a place for me and my friends to land made the festivities much more enjoyable. While quite a few restaurants along the Uptown, Mid-City, and Metairie parade routes offer packages of food, chairs, and bathrooms, not many do so in the French Quarter.
In Richard Fiske’s bar.
Richard Fiske–formerly the owner of the Bombay Club–always had a package for the day. Now that his restaurant has moved into the Chateau LeMoyno Hotel, he has even more space for you to spread out. For $75 (plus tax and tip) you come and go all you want from eleven in the morning until five in the afternoon. Chef Nick Gile has a buffet going throughout, and The Bombay Club’s bar–one of the city’s best–is there. And this is important: clean restrooms.
Reservations are required, and they always sell out. Go to the website below or call the number to get a spot.
Richard Fiske’s Martini Bar & Restaurant
French Quarter: 301 Dauphine St (Chateau LeMoyne Hotel). 504-586-0972. http://www.richardfiskes.com/Mardi-Gras.html.
NOMenu invites restaurants or organizations with upcoming special events to tell us, so we might add the news to this free department. Send to news@nomenu.com.
Saturday, January 31, 2015.
Ham And Cheese. Cheese And Fries. Truffles? Oysters?
What with basketball games, the radio show didn’t start until nearly four, and ended at six. Not a great schedule for a Saturday, but I can’t complain. I must be grateful right now: Monday, one of my fondest wishes will come true and I will return to late afternoons on weekdays.
That gave me time in the morning to do some shopping. I relearn a lesson: if you buy suit separates (nothing else will fit my body), you have to buy both parts of it at the same time, preferably with an extra pair of pants. A year ago I bought only the jacket from a set. I thought it would look good on its own. I changed my mind, but now the matching pants are gone forever.
Mary Ann meets me for lunch at the Po-Boy Company, for the second consecutive Saturday. Today I make it a grilled ham and cheese, which is a better sandwich than is generally appreciated. It’s particularly good with about a tablespoon of roast beef gravy for a small and two for a large. Chisesi ham, John Gendusa French bread. They could have toasted the bread more, but that’s nearly a universal complaint I have.
Cheese fries. You may have all of mine.
Mary Ann wants cheese fries. I can’t figure out why anyone would eat those. The fries get soggy when the cheese holds in the steam. The cheese melts, releasing its grease, compounding the problem. Fries should be crisp!
After all the rain this week, the Cool Water Ranch is riddled with big puddles. My afternoon strut had to stay on the gravel roads, which run around the outside of the fenced zone. The dogs don’t seem to mind that we are separated by the barrier. They walk a few yards, get interested in something or other, and get left behind. They’re still out walking with Daddy as far as they’re concerned. I hope Mary Ann is satisfied with this arrangement.
The dogs have found a curious attraction. They are digging into the ground at the bases of oak trees. Just oaks–not pines, tupelos, or maples. They go at this with intense concentration, and even start working on spots where the oak roots come to the top a few yards away.
Mary Ann thinks they’re after moles. I’ve seen a few moles and their earthworks around here over the years, but none since the dogs began their current project. I have a different idea. In France and Italy, dogs are used to find truffles. A truffle is the fruiting body of any one of several varieties of mushrooms. (The rich chocolates called truffles are so named because they resemble these mushroom parts.) Dogs–and, even more acutely, pigs–can sniff out truffles even a couple of feet underground. They go after the truffles with great enthusiasm, and it’s the job of the human on the other end of the leash to keep the dog or pig from eating the truffle.
All this describes pretty well what’s going on with the dogs. Especially the dog Susie, who as an older female has better senses than the big male oaf Barry.
I could be rich! I’ll get Mary Leigh to start designing the packaging for Cool Water Ranch Truffles.
MA and I decide to have two meals today–not an indulgence either one of us takes anymore, as we try to keep dropping pounds. Drago’s comes up, and the idea of it is so alluring that we drive across the lake–in the rain, yet–to indulge. Another reason: it’s been quite awhile since our last time. Restaurants as consistent as this don’t need to be checked often.
The restaurant is full, of course. We wait for awhile and talk with Klara Cvitanovich. How is her husband Drago, now in his nineties? She waggles her hand to make the universal signal for “just okay.” He hasn’t come to the restaurant in awhile. She, on the other hand, seems as much in control of the seating charts as usual. Which is to say totally. After a few minutes we get a table in the room with the big lobster tank.
Today’s proof of the theory that only 500 people live in the New Orleans area is Ed Biggs, a graphic designer I’ve known for forty years. He is at the next table. Come to think of it, he may be a counter-example for my 500-people thesis. I haven’t run into him in a long time.
We tear through a dozen char-broiled oysters. The only complaint I ever hear about Drago’s original version of that now-omnipresent dish is that they overcook them. Indeed, I have said so myself. But that is not the case tonight. They are absolutely perfect. In fact, a little underdone for MA, who eats nearly everything burned to a crisp. So I get eight oysters to her four.
The special is black drum, prepared in your choice of five cooking methods. MA specifies yet a sixth version, but even though we have the server who I believe to be the best in the building, MA’s uniquely byzantine specs are puzzling, and she doesn’t get the crabmeat she thought she would. I tell her to let the waiter know and he’d fix it. She just keeps eating.
Meanwhile, I have what Tommy Cvitanovich will shortly tell me is the best entree in the restaurant. It doesn’t sound especially fabulous: grilled shrimp on a bed of boudin out of its casing, with a side order of corn with peppers. But this is nothing less than spectacular, as Mary Ann confirms.
Tommy sits down with us. He has lost a tremendous amount of weight, and we have that topic to discuss in addition to the usual ones. He’s as glad I’m eating the shrimp and boudin as I am. The new Drago’s in Jackson, Mississippi is doing great. And the rumor that Drago’s will shortly open another location in Lafayette is true, but the location has not been determined.
I tell Tommy that I feel a level of energy in the restaurant that I’ve never seen before among the wait staff. And I’ve been dining at Drago’s since it opened in 1969 (when I was working across the street at the Time Saver). Somebody here has a training program that is working big-time. Tommy is happy to hear that. It’s tough to find and keep servers, especially in a restaurant as busy as this one, where everybody has to be where he or she is needed at every second. I’d say they have that down, with the added bonus of a good attitude. (Note to Reader #3855R: you may now write to me about the night six months ago when the service wasn’t perfect. But you are among the few who say this about Drago’s these days.)
The Po-Boy Company. Mandeville: 1817 North Causeway Blvd. 985-778-2460.
Drago’s. Metairie: 3232 N Arnoult Rd. 504-888-9254.
Sunday, February 1, 2015.
What One Learns From Email Subject Lines!
It’s a routine Sunday, but I like routines. A warm (73!) but cloudy day continues to make winter more tolerable than late fall was. Mary Ann and I have a mid-afternoon dinner at Zea (tomato bisque, a new variation of hummus with a powerful blast of hot sauce, house salads.
She tells me that between the dinner at Drago’s last night and this Zea snack, I should be able to get along without her company. She and Mary Leigh then leave me at home while they meet up with niece/cousin Hilary Connell to watch the Super Bowl. MA thinks VitaScope Hall in the Hyatt Hotel next to the Superdome is the perfect spot. Why? Because they have good French fries.
I keep up to date with the game without even trying. By merely catching up on my email, enough messages with subject lines about the game tell me that something unusual at the end of the game turned it around. I also get the impression–again, from just the subject lines of emails that my eyes only barely grazed–that the commercials were not as good as usual.
Dixie Chicken And Ribs
Lakeview: 6264 Argonne Blvd. 504-488-1377. Map.
Casual.
MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
It’s not uncommon for a building to host a string of restaurants over the years, with new owners and names. But it’s surprising how many such restaurants seem to hang onto elements of the restaurant that was in the same building before. What is now Dixie Chicken and Ribs is remembered by a lot of people as having been the home of Chicken Delight. That was a national chain of take-away fried chicken places that was very successful until fast-food fried chicken outlets like KFC and Popeyes stole Chicken Delight’s thunder. (Chicken Delight, however, still exists in other parts of the country.
And so, after a number of restaurants here on Argonne Boulevard, we have another chicken specialist–although one with a lot more to offer than Chicken Delight ever did.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
The Harrison Avenue restaurant row is among the most popular concentrations of eateries in town, after the French Quarter, Magazine Street, and Mid-City. What it lacked, however, was an old-style workingman’s restaurant, with big poor boys, red beans, fried chicken and seafood and the like. Dixie Chicken and Ribs fills that void reasonably well, at prices only slightler higher than more attractive restaurants.
Fried chicken poor boy and red beans on the side.
WHAT’S GOOD
The good news is that everything that can be made to order is. That makes a big difference in the matter of fried foods, which come out crisp and greaseless. The less-good news is that across the board the seasoning levels are much lower than I like to find. Almost everything I’ve had here fit that description. The bread pudding is terrific.
BACKSTORY
Chicken Delight notwithstanding, the best restaurant ever in this location was the Odyssey Grill, a superlative Greek restaurant in the 2000s. Dixie Chicken and Ribs opened in the 1990s across the street from Tony Angello’s, and had one other location before it wound up here. It moved here not long after the deep Katrina flood waters went down.
DINING ROOM
The two dining rooms are spacious, quiet and squeaky clean. But it has the feeling of a company cafeteria in a big office building. Most customers are there only long enough to eat. The servers are efficient and very helpful.
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
Seafood gumbo
Grilled or fried chicken, shrimp or oyster salad 8.95
Poor boy sandwiches (the usual suspects)
entrees
Fried, rotisserie or barbecue chicken
Barbecue ribs
Fried oysters, shrimp, catfish, stuffed crab or combo platters
daily specials
Red/white beans and rice, sausage, porkchop, or fried chicken (MO)
Grilled or panneed chicken, dirty rice, creamed spinach(WE)
Stuffed shrimp (FR)
desserts
Bread pudding 3.95
Lemon berry mascarpone cake 4.95
FOR BEST RESULTS
The chicken, seafood and daily specials make for the best eating.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
I don’t much care for this style of ribs, which are too tender. (That will strike some eaters as an asset.) There could be a lot more smoke flavor.
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 +1
Attitude +2
Wine & Bar
Hipness -1
Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Good for business meetings
Open Monday lunch and dinner
Open all afternoon
Quick, good meal
Good for children
Easy, nearby parking
No reservations
Ragout Of Mushrooms With Grits
This is a spectacular side dish for almost any meat, but it’s especially fine with beef. The ragout of mushrooms is much more intensely flavored than the same mushrooms sautéed in butter would be. And now that we can find coarse-ground grits that stand up to cooking, we’re getting used to using it as a side dish at dinner. This comes out fine with standard white mushrooms, but it’s better to mix in some exotic or even wild species if you can find them.
Grits:
2 cups half-and-half
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup grits, preferably Anson Mills stone-ground white grits
2 Tbs. butter
Ragout:
1 stick butter
6 Tbs. flour
2 Tbs. chopped onions
1/2 square (1/2 oz.) Baker’s dark chocolate
3/4 cup half-and-half
1/2 cup warm, strong beef stock or broth
1/2 cup port, Madeira, or Marsala wine
16 oz. assorted mushrooms, cleaned and sliced into pieces the size of the tip of your little finger
1/4 tsp. marjoram
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
3 dashes Tabasco chilpotle pepper sauce
1. Make the grits first by bringing the half-and-half and the salt to a light boil. Stir in the grits and lower the heat to the lowest temperature. Cook, stirring now and then, until a furrow you make with a spoon drawn across the top surface remains for a few seconds. Remove from the heat. Let the butter melt on top of the hot grits, and tilt the pan around to coat the top surface with butter (don’t stir it in). Keep the grits warm, covered, in an oven at the lowest heat setting.
2. For the ragout, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and add the flour. Make a light brown roux, stirring constantly. When the mixture reaches the color of a brown paper bag, add the onions and the chocolate, and remove from the heat. Continue to stir until the chocolate disappears.
3. Whisk in the half and half until the mixture takes on the texture of mashed potatoes. Whisk in the beef stock and the wine until well blended. Add the remaining ingredients and lower the heat to the lowest temperature. Cover and cook for about 15 minutes, stirring every now and then , until the mixture is very thick and the mushrooms are very soft. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Stir the butter into the grits and spoon onto the plate. Surround or top the grits (at your discretion) with the mushroom ragout. Serve with steak, roast beef, roast pork, or lamb leg.
Serves six to eight.
Seafood Platter @ Katie’s
Katie’s is the best neighborhood restaurant in a part of town that has more and better such restaurants than any other. Although it isn’t strictly a seafood restaurant, it serves the finest example of the West End-style fried seafood platter. Shrimp, crawfish, oysters, and catfish, with a soft-shell crab as an opulent option. Everything is fried to order, separately, and with variations in the coating from one item to the next. The only danger is that the pile is so high that the steam emerging from the just-out-of-the-fryer seafood can make the bottom layers soggy. Solution: ask for an extra plate. This thing is way more than one person should eat, anyway.
Katie’s. Mid-City: 3701 Iberville. 504-488-6582.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
February 9, 2014
Days Until. . .
Mardi Gras–8
Valentine’s Day–5
Annals Of Chocolate
Today in 1894 the Hershey Chocolate Company was founded. Milton Hershey, who had been in the candy business for some time, started the company after a few less successful ventures. Chocolate makers in Europe are puzzled by the American taste for Hershey’s chocolate, which they find has a slight tang from sour milk. But we certainly love it. The history of Hershey (and his fierce competitor Forrest Mars) is the subject of the excellent book Emperors of Chocolate, by Joel Glenn Brenner.
Today’s Flavor
Today is National Lox and Bagel Day, says the web rumor. The combination of silky smoked salmon with cream cheese on a well-made bagel is easy to get hooked on. It’s a filling repast. I can no longer eat even a whole bagel for breakfast and then have lunch–let alone one with salmon and cream cheese. But that doesn’t make it less of a pleasure.
“Lox” comes from the old German word for salmon. Similar words are found in all other Northern European languages. Strictly speaking, lox is not smoked but cured salmon. That’s certainly true of “belly lox.” However, that has given way in delis to Nova lox, for Nova Scotia, which once dominated the smoked salmon supply in Northeast America. Nova lox usually is less salty than belly lox, from being cured a shorter time in a milder brine solution.
Edible Dictionary
chapon salad, n.–A green salad with an up-front flavor and aroma of fresh garlic. The classic way this is imparted is by rubbing dry, crusty pieces of bread with garlic cloves, then adding the bread crusts to the salad when tossed. Sometimes the garlic cloves involved are used to wipe the inside of the salad bowl, releasing the garlic oil and further adding an assertive garlic character.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Eatonton is a town of 6500 people in central Georgia, seventy-seven miles southeast of Atlanta. It’s the seat of Putnam County. W. Truett Cathy, the founder of the Chick Fil-A fast food chain, was born here in 1921. Etonton was also the home town of two famous writers: Joel Chandler Harris (creator of Uncle Remus and Br’er Rabbit) and Alice Walker (The Color Purple). It’s named for William Eaton, the hero of the late-1700s war against the Barbary pirates. The place to eat (since there is no Chick Fil-A in Eatonton) is Hannah’s, right in the center of town.
Deft Dining Rule #691:
Hot lox–as in cut up and cooked into scrambled eggs, or with pasta–sounds better than it actually is. Heating salty foods makes them seem even saltier, and perhaps unpleasantly so.
Food In The Movies
It’s the birthday of Brazilian movie musical star Carmen Miranda, who is almost always depicted as wearing a hat made of bananas, mangoes, and other fresh tropical fruit. She was a hat designer before she became a star, and she made hats–always tall and showy–out of non-food items, too.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
If you wear clothing decorated with food designs, you will never splash sauce on it. (You may, however, stain it with wine or coffee (unless the article has a wine or coffee design). This does not apply to aprons, unfortunately. [I think the Old Kitchen Sage may still be hung over from the parades over the weekend.–Tom.]
Feminism In The Dining Room
Today in 1987, the Exchange Luncheon Club–the eatery for traders at the New York Stock Exchange–added a ladies’ rest room to its facilities. The funny thing is that the NYSE began allowing women on the floor about twenty years earlier. In the interim, it’s was sort of like it was in the old days at Galatoire’s: the women had to climb a flight of stairs if they went to the loo.
Chronicles Of Food Safety
The first fire extinguisher was patented today in 1863. Called the fire grenade, and it was very simple: you threw a bottle made of very thin glass and filled with salt water, into the fire, and out it went. You hoped. It made kitchens safer for frying soufflee potatoes. When’s the last time you checked the fire extinguisher in your kitchen? At the risk of sounding like the Reader’s Digest, you ought to check it once a month.
Food Namesakes
Dean Rusk, Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was born today in 1909. (A rusk is that hard, dry piece of bread you find under eggs Benedict, among other places). . . Former Congressman Gary Franks was born today in 1953. . . Actor Joe Pesci was born today in 1943. (“Pesci” means “fish” in Italian.) . . . Chicago journalist, playwright, and humorist George Ade was born today in 1866.
Words To Eat By
“Protect your bagels, put lox on them.”–Sign at a bagel shop in New Haven, CT.
“A bagel creation that would have my parents turning over in their graves is the oat-bran bagel with blueberries and strawberries. It’s a bagel nightmare, an ill-conceived bagel form if there ever was one.”–Ed Levine, New York food writer and bagel commentator.
Words To Drink By
“When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.”–François Rabelais, French Renaissance writer and philosopher.
Wild Game Dinner On The Cruise.
As cruise ships make their dining rooms more adventuresome, some ideas work and others don’t.
Click here for the cartoon.