Changing The Guard At Vega Tapas Cafe
Glen Hogh took over Vega Tapas Cafe from founding chef Allison Vega in the early 2000s. Although running a restaurant was something new for him, he seems to have natural talent. Not only in his senses of taste, but also in his understanding of what makes restaurant customers pay attention. Working simultaneously in the kitchen, dining room, and promotional world, he made the restaurant even better than the inventive Allison had. There was always something new going on at the restaurant, usually at a price that was hard to resist.
Glen announced a few days ago that he is ready to move into a new chapter of his life. He’s sold Vega Tapas to Greg Francis, who Glen says has a passion that matches his own. The executive chef job goes to Will Sampson, who has cooked at Vega Tapas almost since the restaurant opened in 1996.
Sounds stable enough to me. As Glen himself proved, changes like this can result in an improved restaurant. So we’ll see what happens. Equally interesting is what Glen Hogh will wind up doing. Sharp-minded guy.
Vega Tapas Cafe
Metairie: 2051 Metairie Rd. 504-836-2007. www.vegatapascafe.com.
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.
Daniel’s
Metairie: 1023 Veterans Blvd.
City Park Area: In the Parc Esplanade Apartments.
Carrollton: Nelson St. @ Dante St.
Metairie: Somewhere In Fat City.
And other locations.
1999?-2009?
We Orleanians have a taste for raffishness in our restaurants. So do a lot of visitors to our city, many of whom believe that an authentic New Orleans dining experience must take place in a patchwork building with a funny floor plan and mismatched tables and chairs. If the place is a little hard to find or otherwise inconvenient, so much the better.
Of and on for about twenty years, Daniel Tobar provided just such restaurants in a succession of locations around town. There were at least five of them over the years. Some didn’t stay open long enough for me to get in and review. But most were so good and in such offbeat premises that people would talk. Such news always made its way to me.
Notable among these peripatetic eateries was Daniel’s sister Sophia’s rotisserie-chicken restaurant, which itself cropped up in at least two locations, in Metairie and near the nexus of Carrollton and Claiborne. The menu there had a Greek flavor, and everything was good enough to inspire raves. (Sophia’s may well deserve its own article in this department.)
Directions to Daniel’s various restaurants usually included the phrase, “It doesn’t look like a restaurant, but. . . ” This was certainly true of the 1023 Veterans iteration. For years, a pickup truck sold shrimp, oysters and other seafoods at that spot. The truck was well enough known that when Daniel’s opened in the building behind it, everyone knew where he was. From the outside, the premises looked like a shack. Inside, it became patio. Tables made of sheets of glass sitting on high steel frameworks supported tablecloths. Some other tables were almost as low as patio furniture. Yet the food was so good and so inexpensive that customers ignored these odd discomforts.
The menu described the food as “Latin-Italian.” It’s the only restaurant I know of that used that label. More accurate would be Mediterranean, in the broad sense including the flavors of Spain, South of France, Italy, and Greece, in descending order of importance.
An entree that captured the flavor of Daniel’s was his seafood paella. Loaded with big, meaty shrimp (from the truck out front?), squid, and mussels, it had a yellow-rice-and-green-pea matrix, juicy with fish stock and fragrant with herbs. At $14, it could have served three or four people.
Also great was grilled calamari, seared after a marination in something herby and oily. A nice change from the standard fried squid.
Rotisserie chicken was always part of the menu, a whole bird for around $10. The marinade and slow roasting brought forth tender meat with a buttery sauce with lots of garlic and herbs. Pork shoulder spent hours coated with marinades and roasting in the slow oven.
The food was surprisingly spicy. They never went beyond my tolerance, but they hit right on. When Daniel made crawfish bisque or chicken gumbo, it was outstanding.
The famous dessert was a soft caramel flan, followed closely by a bread pudding with a delicious Amaretto sauce. One more attraction: Daniel’s restaurants rarely had liquor licences, so one could bring in his own wines with no corkage. It was one the first restaurants to make a selling point of that policy.
At some point in the 2000 decade, Daniel fetched up in the restaurant in the Parc Esplanade Apartments, across Bayou St. John from City Park. It was a great location if you lived there. Less so if you didn’t. I ate there a few times, but I would have gone more often if the rigamarole of getting into the gated parking lot had been comprehensible. (The problem, near as I could tell, was that Daniel was cooking, waiting tables, and buzzing people in all at the same time.)
I lost track of Daniel in the decade since Katrina. Some other owners ran the Parc Esplanade location for some time. But if he turned up in a restaurant again, I’d be there.
Thursday, January 8, 2015.
Real Winter, New Orleans Style. Coffee Rani.
I hear traffic reports during my radio show that say the Causeway is shut down in both directions, for different reasons. I’m glad I decided to stay at home today. It’s a nasty day, with New Orleans weather at its most miserable: almost cold enough to freeze the droplets of rain that come down.
It stops just as the radio show ends, and I manage to take three laps of my walk around the ranch. I think it’s this more than my diet that has brought my weight down. To stay in that spirit, Mary Ann and I have dinner at Coffee Rani in Covington. This has always been a good place for salads and sandwiches, with a more inventive menu than most such places.
We must have caught the place in a shift change. It too an unusually long time to place the order (at the counter, something they ought to change) and have it prepared. We both get soups, and Mary Ann picks the winner: a creamy shrimp soup with mirlitons and a fascinating spice blend. I ask for the black bean soup, and for some reason it takes three attempts to get it served at a temperature above that of my skin. Later I learn that the young woman waiting on us was in her first day at Coffee Rani. Of all customers for her to have to deal with!
Chicken pesto pasta at Coffee Rani.
I follow this with a pasta dish with a creamy red sauce and grilled thick with a big flake of pesto sauce cooked to crispy. A little peculiar, but good enough.
Coffee Rani. Covington: 226 Lee Lane. 985-893-6158.
Crawfish Cardinale
The most famous and best crawfish dish at Antoine’s is, like many of their dishes, an adaptation of something else on the menu. In this case, it’s crawfish mariniere with a bit of what they call “tomato sauce,” but which I’m almost certain is actually ketchup. This recipe duplicates the dish closely, then adds a couple of other flavors I like with crawfish (the tarragon, chervil, and dill, all optional).
If you buy peeled crawfish tails (which may be all you will find right now, although that situation should improve in the next few weeks) they will already be boiled. The dish is better with crawfish you peeled yourself, if you have that choice.
1/2 stick butter
3 Tbs. flour
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 Tbs. brandy
1 cup half-and-half, warmed
2 Tbs. bottled chili sauce or ketchup
1/2 tsp. dried tarragon
1/2 tsp. dried chervil
1/2 tsp. dill
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1 1/2 cups boiled crawfish tails
1. Heat the butter over medium heat in a saucepan until it bubbles, then stir in the flour and make a light roux. Stir constantly until the texture changes, but don’t allow the roux to brown.
2. Add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds. Then lower the heat to the lowest setting and stir in the brandy. After about a minute, add the warmed half-and-half, and whisk until the sauce thickens. Add all the other ingredients except the crawfish and simmer, stirring once or twice, for about two minutes.
3. Fill ramekins or small au gratin dishes loosely with crawfish tails. Top with 3 Tbs. of the sauce. Place the dishes into a preheated 400-degree oven. When the sauce begins to bubble and brown at the edges, the dish is done. Serve immediately. Make sure French bread is on the table to help get the sauce.
Serves four to six.
Free-Form Crabmeat Raviolo @ Atchafalaya
“Raviolo” is singular of “the much more common Italian word “ravioli,” and says that you only get one of them. That’s plenty enough in this case. The pasta part is a five-inch-square sheet, folded over some lump crabmeat in an uncomplicated but very good sauce involving shiitake mushrooms, spinach, unsweetened mascarpone cheese, and a creamy-looking citrus beurre blanc with a sprinkling of green onions. The crabmeat is the center of attraction. Even though it plays solo, one of these is big enough to split, or to make a light entree. I think this has been on the menu since before the brilliant Christopher Lynch took over as executive chef, but it’s right up to his level of cookery.
Atchafalaya. Uptown: 901 Louisiana Ave. 504-891-9626.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
January 15, 2014
Days Until. . .
Mardi Gras–33
Valentine’s Day–30
Annals Of Food Disasters
Today in 1919, an enormous tank of molasses broke open and flooded downtown Boston with over two million gallons of the sticky stuff. It proved that molasses in January is not all that slow. It moved at over thirty miles per hour, and before it stopped it had destroyed several homes and other buildings. Twenty-one people drowned in the molasses. People would not make gingerbread or pancakes for years afterward, I’ll bet.
Food Inventions
Today in 1889 Daniel Johnson patented a revolving table for dining rooms on ships. People sitting at such a table could turn it to have the food they were interested in come to them, rather than requiring a waiter do it. This concept can be seen in action in a number of restaurants in Mississippi, notably the Dinner Bell in McComb.
The Physiology Of Taste
William Prout was born today in 1785. His work focused on the chemistry of food and the digestive system. He discovered that the stomach does its work with hydrochloric acid. He was also the man who noted that most foods can be classified as either carbohydrates, proteins, or fats. He’d be proud of those nutritional labels on food packages–the ones we’re beginning to consider more important than matters like taste and whether we really need to eat that stuff in the first place.
Today’s Flavor
It’s National Curry Day. In America, curry is one of the most misunderstood of food concepts. A curry does not necessarily (and probably doesn’t) have the flavor of curry powder, with its powerful flavors of cumin and turmeric. The word “curry” originated in the Tamil language, as the name for a dish cooked with a spiced sauce. That admits of an enormous variety of dishes, with such a wide spread of flavors that the word “curry” becomes as generic as “stew” or “soup.” A good Indian restaurant will have dozens of dishes that they’d call curries, each with its own distinctive ingredients and flavor.
Certain ingredients do turn up in many curries. But the actual spice blend for each curry dish is unique. Some of the most common components are coriander, cardamom, black pepper, cumin, turmeric, mustard, cinnamon, and fenugreek. Cayenne and other red peppers are now also common curry ingredients. Finally, there’s curry leaf, a member of the same family of trees that includes the citrus fruits. All of these are roasted and ground to the same consistency so they blend well.
Curries are found in many Asian cuisines. Thai curries have their own wide variety of tastes, none of which have much in common with Indian curries. The curries you find in Chinese restaurants have another range of distinctive differences. There are even American curries. These, interestingly, are the ones most likely to use curry powder.
Those who love curry know that it’s habit-forming. This is not merely because we like the flavor. There’s scientific evidence that the spices in curry are literally addictive. It’s a very benign addiction, however. The spices in curry all seem to be good for you. They certainly taste good.
Edible Dictionary
quinoa, n.–A plant native to the Andean region of South America, grown for its leaves and (more common in our markets) its seeds. It’s not a grass, but its seeds are typically used in the same way that cereals are. It is often hailed as a new crop, but it’s not been grown wit tremendous commercial success yet. It resembles coarse couscous, excelt that the morsels are translucent and have a nutty taste.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
The best tool for grinding spices is a coffee mill. Buy a separate one from the one you use to grind coffee beans. The flavor of cardamom and peppercorns will not ruin each other, but neither of them is acceptable in coffee.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Curry, Pennsylvania is a suburb of Pittsburgh. It was an old rural town called Curry Hollow; a major highway through the area still bears that name. The terrain is hilly and lushly wooded. One side of Curry consists of suburban neighborhoods; the other is the large and green Jefferson Memorial Park cemetery. The nearest restaurant is the Eat ‘n’ Park, two miles away. (Not an appealing name, is it?) I couldn’t find any Indian restaurants, which strikes me as a missed bet.
Deft Dining Rule #62:
No dish tastes the same in two different restaurants. If a restaurant closes, you will have to get unused to the way it cooks its food, and learn to like the best of what’s served elsewhere.
Annals Of Popular Cuisine
Today in 1990, Campbell’s produced the twenty billionth can of tomato soup, its original product. Canned tomato soup is more useful as an additive than on its own. For example, when added to beef broth along with crushed canned tomatoes, it makes a better soup than just the whole tomatoes alone.
Eating Across America
Today in 1777, Vermont declared its independence not only from its British colonizers, but also from New York, which had controlled it under the name of New Connecticut. Vermont’s most famous food product is its maple syrup, but its major specialty is dairy products, notably Vermont Cheddar cheese.
Food Namesakes
Captain Beefheart (real name: Don Glen Vliet), one of the farthest-out of the far-out rock and blues musicians of the late 1960s and 1970s, was born today in 1941. . . Early baseball pro Grover Lowdermilk stepped onto the Big Diamond today in 1885.
Words To Eat By
“Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.”–Peter Ustinov.
Words To Drink By
“The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.”–Homer.
The Problem With Farm-To-Market Menus.
They don’t help the kitchen’s work much.
Click here for the cartoon.
Five-Star Editions For The Past Seven Days
Thursday, January 14
Wednesday, January 14
Tuesday, January 13
Monday, January 12
Friday, January 9