Oktoberfest On The Riverfront
I can’t remember a time when more Oktoberfest celebrations were going on around town. Add yet another venue for eating wurst and schnitzels with distinctive beer: the Crescent City Brewhouse. That’s a logical place for it: owner and brewmaster Wolfram Koehler is a German native. He’s also kept a high standard of food in his establishment, and that makes the food noteworthy.
Oktoberfest has begun at the Crescent City Brewhouse. The special menu changes from week to week, in a three-course dinner with appetizer, entree and dessert for prices in the high $20s. The menu below is for the first week. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner seven days. Live music every night. Jawohl!
House Cured Salmon
Boiled egg, capers and sour cream
Veal Schnitzel $28
Breaded and fried veal, French fries, asparagus and lemon
Wine: Recommended beer: Pilsner
Slow Roasted Duck $29
Bacon and beer braised red cabbage, warm German potato salad with Red Stallion vinegar pickled onions
Wine: Recommended beer: Oktoberfest
Baked Fisch $30
Louisiana drum topped with a lemon caper butter sauce, green beans and roasted potatoes $30
Wine: Recommended beer: Red Stallion or Weiss
Warm Apple Strudel
Crescent City Brewhouse
French Quarter: 527 Decatur. 504-522-0571. www.crescentcitybrewhouse.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.
Thursday, October 2, 2015.
Celebration @ Impastato Cellars: The Boy Returns.
Dave (the young man formerly known as The Boy, and now the fiancee of my daughter Mary Leigh) is in town after graduating from Army training. He is a second lieutenant, soon to move up to first. He will soon find out that this rank is well below that of husband.
We meet at Impastato Cellars in Madisonville. We will have our fourth Eat Club event there in two weeks. I am not there for business. The Cellars is where the Marys and Dave want to go for dinner tonight. I thought I was the first one there when Dave appeared from out of nowhere to shake my hand. The girls were already on the hanging patio in the back.
Cellar with table, Impastato Cellars.
We have what seems an immense amount of food on the table, but that may be due entirely to the reflexes of the kitchen. We begin with a few items new to me. One of these will be on the menu for the Eat Club: a pair of artichoke bottoms filled with crabmeat and shrimp in a cream sauce. That’s funny. I was just talking about a dish much like that a few days ago. It was a specialty at the old La Louisiane in the Jimmy Moran days, with glazed hollandaise over the top instead of this cream sauce. Both of the Impastato brothers–as well as Joe Impastato’s wife Mica–worked in the kitchen at La Louisiane, so they ought to have this down. Mary Ann sure thought so.
Another new if very simple dish come to my part of the table: oysters poached in a light sauce with herbs and a small presence of onions and celery. How did they get a dozen oysters into this little dish? It is better than it looks, but then I remember that all oysters-and-cream dishes are good.
Crameat cannelloni with some extra crab claws on the side.
From then on we eat familiar classics. Fettuccine Alfredo, a salad with panneed chicken on top, spaghetti and meatballs. For me, the crabmeat cannelloni. The sheets of pasta wrap around a large pile of jumbo lump, with an overwhelmingly rich cream sauce. This should never be eaten as an entree.
Joe Impastato has finished converting the former wine cellar–which still does stock a fair amount of wine–into a private dining room. It has only one table, big enough for twenty, at which Joe will concoct a five-course dinner with wines for bigger groups, Since the table is in its own room, it has more privacy than it appears.
Dinner over, I reach for the shift lever in my car. It feels funny. I move it into reverse, but it won’t go there. I know immediately what the problem is. It happened to my 1980 Jetta in its last days. When I presented it to *Ashton Rupert at Doody & Hank’s Auto Repair, he laughed and asked, “Which parking garage were you in last?” Come to think about it, a carhop did a bad job of parking my car about a week ago, and it’s felt strange ever since.
I leave the car at the restaurant (with permission), and resolve to take care of it tomorrow morning. Can’t drive a car that doesn’t have a reverse gear. The other gears don’t seem to be where they’re supposed to be, either.
*Ashton was a guy I worked with at the Time Saver in the mid-1960s. Another one of the five hundred people–that’s all–who live in New Orleans. I used to see him often at Mass, too.
Impastato Cellars. Madisonville: 240 Highway 22 E. 985-845-4445.
Friday, October 3, 2015.
Nudging A Car Along. First Taste Of 2015 Oktoberfest.
I don’t have the nerves for much of anything anymore, if I ever had them. I lay awake much of the night thinking about how I will get my car from Impastato Cellars to the dealer. The obvious strategy is just have AAA tow it there. But I can’t help thinking that I might be able to drive the fifteen miles myself. And, indeed, I can. The forward gears seem to be fine. I just have to figure out where to throw the stick. I couldn’t get it into fifth, but I can live without that. A couple of times, I had to use a slipping clutch in third to get rolling, but after a lifetime of driving manual transmissions, I know how to do that. With Mary Ann riding behind me, we get the car to Rainbow with no problems.
Now my anxiety will shift to how much this will cost. I’m thinking at least a large. (And the twelve-year-old car has only 230,000 miles on it! More irritating will be using MA’s car. I put forth the proposition of renting a car, but she says no. That clears me in case I have to inconvenience here.
I use MA’s car to drive into town. I have a guest on the radio: James Marvel, the stage director of the New Orleans’ Opera’s presentation of La Traviata on October 9 and 11. Interesting young guy, a New Orleans native, graduate of De La Salle, with a great track record of directing operas all over the world. Nothing stuffy about him at all. I’ve joked around less with chefs and waiters.
After the radio, I drive around aimlessly in Metairie trying to figure out where to have dinner. I wind up at the default restaurant on such an occasion: The Peppermill. This Italian restaurant has a long tradition of serving an Oktoberfest menu for the entire month. And there it is. I have a Creole-Italian schnitzel–also known as panneed veal with crabmeat in a butter sauce. Delicious! That and a house salad. I’d like a soup, but I don’t like the Peppermill’s soups much. No, not even their allegedly famous crawfish bisque.
Bread pudding finishes me off.
I hate Mary Ann’s car.
Peppermill. Metairie: 3524 Severn Ave. 504-455-2266.
Field Peas
When the wonderful old Berdou’s was still around in Gretna, one of its lunch specials was field peas and rice. Mr. Berdou told me he didn’t sell many orders of it. “But I like them, so we cook them almost every week.” I’d never given the things a second thought before, but these moved me to add them to my regular bean rotation at home.
Field peas are a lot like crowder peas, but smaller. They’re a light brown, bigger than lentils but shaped like red beans. They have a unique savory flavor that I find makes a great side dish. This version steers away from the bacon-fat, salt-pork kind of thing we do for red beans. If anything, it’s inspired be the way they cook beans in Italy. So I suggest serving them with orzo pasta instead of rice.
These are also wonderful as a side dish with any seafood you can think of.
1 lb. field peas, sorts, rinsed, and soaked for a few hours or overnight
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium bulb fennel, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
Pinch nutmeg
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. summer savory
1 1/2 Tbs. salt
1 Tbs. Crystal hot sauce
6 sprigs parsley, leaves only, chopped
8 oz. orzo pasta, cooked and drained
1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the onions and fennel and cook until soft.
2. Drain the field peas and add them to the pot. Add six cups of fresh cold water, the bay leaf, nutmeg, thyme, savory, salt and hot sauce. Bring the pot to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Cover and cook for one hour.
3. Check after an hour to see that the peas have not absorbed all the water. If so, add more. The pot should still have a soup texture.
4. Cook another 30-45 minutes, until beans are completely soft but not falling apart. Remove the bay leaf. Taste for seasoning and adjust. There should still be enough liquid so that the beans have a stew-like But not runny) texture.
5. Add the cooked, drained orzo to the pot and gently stir into the beans. Serve garnished with fresh chopped parsley.
Serves about six.
Oysters Drago (Char-Broiled Oysters) @ Drago’s
It’s a simple dish, a fact that kept fancy restaurants from offering it until the dish became such a phenomenon that almost any restaurant with a local theme had to add it to the menu. Shucking oysters is the first step, and most chefs don’t want any part of that. So it fell to the city’s great oyster specialist to create and serve them, by the hundreds of sacks per week, to people willing to wait quite some time for them. Are they really as good as all that? Yes. Why? Because the oysters are so good. Which also explains why other restaurants never quite get it up to Drago’s standard.
In the unlikely case that you never had them before, Drago’s char-broiled oysters are shucked fresh, blasted by fire and steam on an open grill, basted with a lot of garlic-herb butter, dusted with Parmigiano cheese, and left on the grill till the juices bubble. Simple, yes. But so good that you can eat dozens of them and still want more.
The dish really ought to have a name as distinctive as its flavor. And that name ought to be oysters Drago. Restaurants that serve it ought to give credit to the originator. It’s not like Drago’s isn’t a major presence in the local dining scene.
Drago’s. CBD: 2 Poydras. 504-584-3911.
||Metairie: 3232 N Arnoult Rd. 504-888-9254.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
October 5, 2015
Days Until. . .
Halloween 26
Today’s Flavor
It’s Filé Day here in Louisiana, about the only place where that herb is routinely used in cooking. Filé is made by drying and crushing the leaves of the sassafras tree into a powder. Sassafras is a smallish tree that grows in the shady woods throughout the South. The leaves are unusual in having three distinct shapes, mixed uniformly throughout the tree. Some are leaf-like pointed ovals, some look like mittens, and others look like mittens with thumbs on both sides.
The one and only use for filé in the kitchen is a big one in these parts: making gumbo. It’s usually a gumbo made with something like chicken or sausage. (I personally think it doesn’t belong in seafood gumbo.) Some chefs add it during the cooking process as a thickener, but it has a bitterness when used that way. I think the aroma is better than the flavor, and so I dust it on the top of the gumbo at the table. I’ve tried using fresh sassafras leaves in gumbo, but that doesn’t do a thing. Apparently the drying process is necessary for the aroma to emerge.
The name “filé” is derived from French, in which it translates as “string” or “line.” When filé is stirred into a liquid, it forms a sort of string until it gets fully soaked. Filé’s dirty secret is that parts of the sassafras tree have been found to be carcinogenic–notably the roots, which were once the source of flavoring (and the name) for root beer. Products containing the problematic substance are banned. However, little if any of that is in the leaves, and apparently the small amount of filé you ingest in gumbo isn’t enough to hurt you. Although who knows?
You can make your own file. I’ve found a very thorough explanation of how to do so, along with pictures of sassafras leaves, at this web site.
Edible Dictionary
panzanella, Italian, n.–One of a number of Italian salads made with chunks of bread among the greens, vegetables, and dressings. It almost certainly began as a way to ause surplus stale bread. For that reason, a lot of recipes for it have it soaked with water, squeezed, then fried in a bit of olive oil. The wetting cycle is unnecessary if one begins with fresher bread, although it should bo on the coarse, crusty side. Other items in the tossing bowl besides bread are anchovies, capers, olives, and other salty, big-flavored things, and chunky, crisp vegetables like zucchini, bell peppers, and cucumbers. Tomatoes are almost always present. The dressing is an olive oil vinaigrette with a bit of Cremona mustard.
Annals Of Fast Food
This is the birthday in 1902 of Ray Kroc. He liked the hamburger stand operated by the McDonald brothers in Southern California so much that he bought the company. He was more impressed by the innovative rapid-service aspect of McDonald’s than the hamburgers. As time went on, what little there was to be said good about McDonald’s food fell victim to the need for speed. The French fries, for example, used to be freshly-cut from whole potatoes on the individual restaurants, fried in beef tallow. They were great! Now they’re just sticks. Even the burger has come down a lot. Formerly freshly grilled with the onions, now they’re cooked in advance and warmed in a microwave right before being served. The curve points downward, while the company continues to thrive.
Deft Dining Rule #137
If you have to eat while driving, make it a standard single McDonald’s hamburger. It’s so dry that there’s no chance any of it will get on your clothes.
Food in Show Biz
Today in 1961, the movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s, based on the Truman Capote book, was registered in the U.S. Patent Office. The most delicious part of it was its star, Audrey Hepburn.
History Of Cooking
Today in 1568 in what is now Belgium, Willem of Orange and his army took over Brabant. That sounds like a food story, but isn’t exactly, although Brabant potatoes–fried cubes drizzled with butter–are named for the place. The Belgians have been frying potatoes (better than anybody else, at that) for a very long time.
The Saints
Today is the feast day of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, who is much revered in New Orleans. He is buried in the church where my wife and I were married, St. Mary’s Assumption, in the Irish Channel.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Sassafras, KY 41759 is an unincorporated town of 675 people in the eastern bootheel of Kentucky, about ten miles from the Virginia state line. Its in the hilly, wooded countryside on the western slope of the Appalachian Mountains, in a flat spot created by the Yellow Creek as it approaches Carr Fork, a tributary of the Kentucky River. The flow from there goes to the Ohio, then the Mississippi, and winds up in downtown New Orleans. A substantial main line of the CSX Railroad passes through Sassafras. The nearest restaurant is a quarter-mile away: D&G Barbeque, serving that distinctive Kentucky style barbecue.
Food Namesakes
Penny Baker, Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in January 1984, was born today in 1965. . . Jimmy Ritz, one of the Ritz Brothers comedy and vaudeville team, was born today in 1903. British actor Fred Feast stepped onto the Big Stage today in 1929.
Words To Eat By
“It was not her sex appeal but the obvious relish with which she devoured the hamburger that made my pulse begin to hammer with excitement.”–Ray Kroc, founder of the McDonald’s chain, born today in 1902. He was talking about his first meeting with the woman who he would later marry.
“Well, there doesn’t seem anything else for an ex-President to do but to go into the country and raise big pumpkins.”–Chester Allen Arthur, the twenty-first President, born today in 1830.
Words To Drink By
“There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.” —Ecclesiastes, 2:24.
Edible Frisbee.
A fun game to play while you’re waiting for the oven to get hot enough to bake a pepperoni with extra cheese.
Click here for the cartoon.