Month: January 2019

It is hard to start talking about the combination of Restaurant Week and a hundred dollar gift certificate to my favorite place in Baton Rouge without drawing the parallel to what came after–Lisette Oropesa performing A Starry Night with the LSU Symphony Orchestra. It was my first time hearing a world class soprano perform and the feeling inside when she reached for the sky with her magnificent voice was very much like the feeling I had while trying Chef Cong’s hokkaido scallop and foie gras nigiri combination for the first time. Right there at the edge of excellence, experiencing it rather than performing it, is so incredibly bittersweet. As much as you love the experience, a small part of you insists on whining about how come you can’t do anything that well. Such is life for most of us non-maestro’s . I am always impressed when attending the symphony. So many players, all on the same page. For a food and football guy like me, used to burnt grease and server screw ups and unforced errors both in the kitchen and pre-snap on the field, it is simply amazing to see almost a hundred student musicians acting literally in concert. There is such joy in human excellence of any kind because it is so rare. So I love Umami. I love what Chef Cong’s done with the place since he bought it from the previous owners of Hello Sushi. I love a menu that stretches from a four dollar Cali roll at happy hour to market price Japanese imports. I love the excitement of the servers to be bringing something to the table that they know will never be sent back.

Restaurant Week specials are a good time to step outside your own beaten path and try something new to you. Last year I had the Lollipop Lamb Chops and swooned when I bit into the first one. The guy at the sushi bar saw me and laughed and understood my reaction perfectly. I got them again this year and also the pan fried pork dumplings and I’ve been meaning to try the Mushroom Trio since I love, love, love the smoked enoki nigiri (also on the $4 happy hour menu) and I snagged the snow crab salad as well.

Really hard to go wrong at Umami, but it is a dangerous place if you aren’t armed with a gift card. I would go more often but it is very easy to get carried away here. He’s got a great happy hour and nothing is overpriced but high-end sushi like this adds up pretty quick. Here’s a couple of great rolls, the Sexiest Man Alive and the Rock n Roll.

Now I didn’t eat all this at one sitting. I went once for lunch and twice for dinner and even with the Restaurant Week pricing, I blew through my gift card halfway through the second dinner. I do occasionally stop in at other places for sushi, but Umami is my go to for now, especially when I want to take someone with me and turn them on to excellent sushi. Happy hour is a good time to hit Umami, two for one house sake and draft, and it lets you mix in some $4 small plates and cali rolls with some of the more expensive, outside the box offerings like the flash fried brussel sprouts, the roasted bone marrow, and the oyster shooters so you get full and excited and out of there with a nice sake buzz and a little cash left in your wallet!

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I think the increasing OCD as I get older is due to two things that aren’t entirely unrelated. First, routine is a good substitute for a good memory. If you can get up and take all your pills as part of your morning routine, you don’t really need to remember to do it. Of course we all know that life hack is only temporary, but so is life. Secondly, that whisper of mortality in your ear every day makes you want your last fried chicken experience to be at least near the top experiences of all time. Inevitably, if I have a less than great food outing, I seem driven to correct it by going somewhere I know will produce. Chinese Inn on Nicholson has the best fried chicken I’ve encountered on this planet so far in the category of same day chicken. My old friend Charlie Smith rules the next day cold chicken category. While his slow poached chicken ( he pan fries it at about 280 in Crisco and it takes forever) is right up there hot, it somehow transforms into something incredible the next day. But if you aren’t young (relatively) and good looking, you are going to have a tough time getting him to make any chicken for you these days. He used to fry his chicken and we would boil eggs and make sandwiches the night before an Amite river outing. Big fun back then. Also fun was taking the girls to dinner at Chinese Inn Nicholson with its baroque ancient Chinese decor and excellent cuisine. The full sized and anatomically correct tiger statue always elicited wisecracks from the girls. Wish he was my friend! He’s got you beat Elrod! Worth it, though, for the extremely good times that always followed a trip to Chinese Inn.

Nowadays it’s my favorite lunch buffet to hit, especially when I need a fried chicken fix. Their seasoning just hits me right and they cook it at the perfect temp to crisp the batter and just finish cooking the meat so it is still juicy as hell when you bite down. Everything else is good too and they have some nice innovations on the buffet. They have a shrimp egg foo yung on the line, and they make up some moo shoo pork mini burritos that allow you to have a taste without filling the plate. And I am also a big fan of their shrimp fried rice. When you order it by itself they throw more shrimp in it than you get with the buffet. And though they aren’t on Waitr or anything, they do their own delivery after 4pm. And they can fry. The fried shrimp and fish is as good as anywhere, and the fried chicken is simply the best. Sorry Charlie.

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For some reason, whenever I get a chance to drop a line in the water, my first thought is always just how damn long it’s been since the last time I baited a hook. We didn’t tear it up, we never do in Mark’s pond, but jerking perch beats almost any other pastime I can think of. He’s caught a few twelve inch bass in the year and a half he’s had the place, and I’ve caught a few almost hand-sized bream once or twice when I’ve been out there, but mostly it’s just trying to be quick enough to snag the little one’s that are trying to steal your cricket or run off with your worm.

Mark added four new chickens to the flock this weekend and we watched as the new pecking order was established. Literally. It is good to have that reminder now and again that we are, to a certain extent, pre-programmed just like the chickens. All behavior is not learned behavior, and the genetic influence is just that, an influence. Otherwise all the chickens would act like little robots but they don’t. You don’t have to actively anthropormorphise to see that while they don’t have a lot of personality, what they do have is unique to the individual animal.

It is good to sit in the sun with a fishing pole in your hand and ask yourself all the childlike questions you can think of. Why do trees look like that? Why do trees grow up and bushes grow out? Why aren’t chickens as big as horses or cows? We’ve never pulled enough or big enough fish out of there to cook and eat so we always end up throwing them back or moving them from the front pond to the back pond on the property. Mark agreed with my not quite assessment of La Salvadorena and wanted me to try a Honduran place nearby in Covington. We were headed that way anyway to have a beer or two at the Chimes so we stopped in to check them out.

Mark got the tacos. I got the pork chop and eggs and we shared the sweet corn pork tamales which were really different. First time I’ve ever had tamales with bones in them. The pork (knuckles maybe?) was slow cooked and tender but unsauced and the sweet corn masa was very, very sweet. The pork chop was grilled perfectly which is hard to pull off with those thin cut chops. The crema was a nice touch on the plate, along with the queso fresca and the beans which were rich and delightful. Our server almost panicked when she saw that the guy who took our order hadn’t set out silverware and I was pulling the pork chop apart with my fingers because I just couldn’t wait to dig in. And the tortilla that came with the chop and eggs was not only house made but made fresh which you could tell because of the elasticity and fluffiness that a cooled and reheated tortilla just doesn’t have. So that is one of the things that made Baleadas better than the Salvadoran place, but it really was a lot of small things, the je ne sais quois that separates one joint from the next. And there really isn’t any knowing why exactly. The tortilla is better here than there yes, but why doesn’t the other place do it that way as well? Why are the beans thicker and richer here than they are there? And it is really only the borderline places that make you think this way. Why aren’t they just that little bit better that would let you praise them and recommend them to all your friends? I really don’t know. Fatigue, self-satisfaction, self delusion, good enough syndrome. I don’t believe there are any easy answers. That night we boiled shrimp from Rouse’s and paired them with some fresh prepped ravioli and also picked up some Grands biscuits and little smokies so I could throw together pigs in blankets for breakfast the next morning. I guess you’ve picked up on the boys weekend aspect of this visit. Mark’s wife Paige and the kids left soon after I got out there to go to BR to spend the night with grandma so we were on our on. Great visit and always nice to get the hell out of Dodge. I love BR, but a little distance every once in a while does indeed make the heart grow fonder. On my way out of town we stopped off at the Abita Springs Farmers Market which they hold every Sunday at noon. Farmer’s market is kind of a misnomer. There was one produce table and a lot of tye-dyed onesies, and homeopathic hand cream, and New Orleans style tamales, and pulled pork sandwiches and nachos, and falafels, and folk art, and one guy that made jewelry from rattlesnake vertebrae and fox and squirrel phalanges. He also made deer antler knives with knapped flint blades so I got one of those, And I was able to score a jar of fig preserves to totally round out the trip.

Redfish on the half shell is one of the easiest fish preparations there is. The one pictured is from Parrains on Perkins, but just about every seafood joint offers one. We started cooking them at Mike Anderson’s on Lee Drive way back when in the midst of the Prudhomme induced redfish craze. Before Chef Paul came out with his blackened redfish, it was considered a trash fish. After, we cooked almost all the redfish in the gulf in three years so they aren’t available commercially any more. Now it is most often red or black drum served, but the technique remains the same. Take a skin on scale on filet and throw it on the grill skin side down, cover it, and cook it through all on that one side, never flipping it. Then add a sauce, garlic butter, your favorite barbecue sauce, a combo of barbecue and Tiger sauce, or just about any other glaze you can think of. You can even treat them like chargrilled oysters and hit it with a little Italian cheese blend of pecorino romano and parmesan. You can buy drum now at Rouse’s and Whole Foods and Fresh Market for sure. And if you happen to catch actual redfish on your own, make sure to leave the skin and scale on the redfish. Go ahead and filet the speckled trout because you really need to fry them.

I really thought this entry was going to be a mea culpa, and I really wish it was. I went in early for lunch like I always do and the kids were still hanging in the dining room with their dolls and action figures and coloring books so I wish I had wonderful things to say about the place. One of my guys at work was going on and on about the fried chicken at La Salvadoreña and I just kept nodding and nodding and finally decided to give the place another try. I had gone soon after they opened with really high expectations and tried the pupusos and tacos and came away with that slightly disappointed good but not great assessment. Same today. The twice cooked fried chicken was good and I enjoyed it but I would still choose at least three other places first to go to for fried chicken. The fresh tortillas and the little different twists on rice, beans, and pico were nice, but not overwhelmingly so. And I hate damning with faint praise, but the place just didn’t rock me. It rocked the guy I work with and his wife–she loved the pupusos–so maybe this is a mea culpa post after all. I don’t know everything and I am often wrong–just like the rest of us. If you don’t want to own that, just take a minute to consider your entire dating history. Thought so. We can hit a place on the wrong day for them, or the wrong day for us. We can pick the wrong dish to try. We can have a bad encounter with a server. I remember bringing a date to Gino’s once. We were dressed a little down, jeans and sweaters, but my wallet was stuffed with cash. Our server stopped in the middle of taking our order to answer a question from an older woman in a fur coat and stayed at their table instead of turning back to us. We got up, I threw a twenty on the table and didn’t return to Gino’s for ten years. I was wrong to over react that much (five years should have been sufficient) but that just goes to show how much goes into the restaurant experience. Give La Salvadoreña a try if you want, but try as I might, I can’t recommend it very highly.

Overpass is another enterprise where the owners knew exactly what they wanted to accomplish top to bottom in appearance and appeal and food and drink menus. There are only a dozen draft beers, but they are carefully selected to give people what they want. They have draft wine as well and do some intriguing craft cocktail specials. The food is eclectic–steamed pork buns, cheese curds, coconut shrimp tacos, truffle frites, fried chicken skins and really well executed blue plate lunch specials throughout the week. But those are all planets revolving around the sun.

The Burger is listed just that way on the menu. Center of the page, drawing all the attention. It is the beef that sets this burger apart. A house blend of chuck, brisket and beef short rib, it has significantly more flavor than most patties. The frites are house cut and they offer a full compliment of condiments to dress the burger including the red onion jam you see pictured above and a really tart garlic aioli. You can add a fried egg, sliced avocado and/or pork belly as well. I’m also a big fan of the cheese curds as a beer compliment when I’m just hanging with friends or shooting the shit with the servers and bartenders, many of whom I know from working together at other restaurants.

This is the site of the old ZZ Gardens and the owners did a complete refurb on the historic building and blended it with a chic modern industrial interior that has that sharp but casual vibe that makes you feel good about yourself when you visit, like Hey, I feel like somebody tonight! And it’s right in the middle of a neighborhood that includes Duvic’s Martini Bar, George’s Bar, Ivar’s, Rama, DiGulio’s, Pinetta’s, City Pork and Kalurah Street Grill–all in walking distance if you want to bar hop on a single Uber there and back. Really great place to eat or drink, or eat and drink.

This place has always been very special to me. My first ever visit was with my parents on my fifteenth birthday after we finished at the DMV and I had my learner’s permit tucked safely in my wallet next to my fake ID. I had what they were having, Shrimp remoulade and the shish kabob with roasted new potatoes and a little garlic water salad right on the plate. They brought the little white bread rolls hot to the table with real butter. And by they, I mean the older black men who waited back then and ran a book out of a two top in the back of the place. The shrimp remoulade was unique. Boiled shrimp sliced lengthwise to increase coverage. Sliced white onion and green olives over a romaine and iceberg mix with a thousand island style remoulade finished with a drizzle of straight horseradish sauce over everything. Wish I could share a picture, but sadly, it is no longer menued. The wine soaked lamb was slow roasted then flash grilled just before serving and the garlic roasted new potatoes were something I’d never had before that day as my mom was more into baked and mashed potatoes. Many things remain the same after the reopening, the cozy Lady and the Tramp atmosphere with the candles and Chianti bottles, the wooden tables and chairs with the checked red and white cloth, the Godfather music playing in the background.

But the old black men are gone, the ashtrays are gone, the book is gone. And, like any homage, some of the items, including the shish kabob, are actually made with better cuts of meat, fresher ingredients, etc–but just aren’t the same as you remember. I spent two years once cooking the food I grew up with, fried pork chops, meatloaf with whole boiled eggs in the center, shrimp pizzas, and my aim was not to duplicate what my mom actually put on the table, but what I remembered eating, which wasn’t quite the same thing. There’s a parallel with my suburban homage and the reopened Pinetta’s, you try to reproduce it your memories and even if you are successful, they aren’t the same memories as others have. But there is a way around all the memories, at least at Pinetta’s. Start fresh. No one ever eats the whole menu at a restaurant. As much as you might want to, you don’t have the time, there are other restaurants and dives to hit, and you can get stuck on favorites. For years I loved to hit Pinetta’s for lunch by myself, ordering the remoulade and shish kabob and a Heineken, making sure to break a hundred when I paid out and tipping well so I’d have the old guys on my side when I’d bring a woman in on her birthday for dinner, calling Heroman’s to deliver a dozen red ones in the afternoon that they would keep in the cooler for me until I asked to look at the dessert menu and Earnest, the singing waiter would bring them to the table and sing happy birthday to my lady. That was then. This is now.

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My ex-wife turned me on to a classic from her homeland, spaghetti aglio e olio. She was macrobiotic for the most part, vegan a good bit of the time, but she did love her seafood and cheese so a lot of my meatless cooking I learned from her or for her. The new Pinetta’s nails this dish.

Paired with salatta alla Pinetta or their spot-on Sensation salad and a half liter bottle of Chianti, it makes for a wonderful dinner, with or without friends. Every place is not good for single diners. This one is. You can sit to dinner with your memories, or invite friends to make new ones. Comme ci comme ça. There is always more to explore at every restaurant. Something you have yet to try. While mostly Italian, Pinetta’s has Turkish, Armenian, and German dishes as well and the set and daily lunch specials are quick, one plate, and very reasonably priced. Try it yourself for lunch. Bring a friend for dinner.

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They do an excellent job. I could go on and on, but it almost seems a crime to say too much about high end sushi. Done right, it is the most elegant food you will experience. Spare, simple, only the lightest touch of art to make it as enticing as anything you will see in front of you. Legend has it the Emperor would stare at and contemplate a sushi feast then wave it away as too beautiful to eat. I do know that feeling of appreciation, but I’ve yet to send any sushi away.

Since I was headed down to NO, I contacted some friends to see what they were up to and an old neighbor of mine was free to share some sushi and a good bit of sake and Sapporo. I hadn’t intended to get a pitcher of Sapporo–I thought I had ordered one of the 22 oz bottles, but I wasn’t going to turn it down when the server brought it to the table.

I got there a little before my friend did. So I was free to take a number of photos of the excellent little layout. Haiku has a separate bar at the front of the space beside a nice patio. The sushi bar and more seating and the hot kitchen are at the rear of the building. They have a cool little lamp that shines the logo down on the sidewalk to catch the attention of anyone walking by, and the shop is in a section of Magazine where the foot traffic is constant and heavy.

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It had been a while since my neighbor and I had seen each other so we had a nice long talk about life, love, work and self care. Work out strategies, tai chi, healthy eating, and healthy attitude. Inevitably talk drifted to those who were no longer with us, either by service, misfortune, crime, disease, or their own hand. I’m pretty sure I shared my thoughts on how absolutely maudlin the holiday season could become either despite of or because of all the glitter and commercialism. Even the music is tainted with an undercurrent of sadness and missed loved ones. The easy explanation is the anguish of the great wars and how many were lost colliding with a militarized Hollywood serving the country as a propaganda machine to drive the war and war bond effort in the 40s. 1942 is when Bing Crosby first sang White Christmas. But you also have to consider the legacy of Yule and the winter solstice, and how maybe those midwinter feasts were driven by chowing down on the last of the uncured provisions before they went bad. We can only wonder whether those times birthed the current obsession with out with the old, in with the new and the introspection and self criticism and drive for self improvement packaged in the New Year’s Resolution trope or if it is, in fact, simply commercialism. We can only hope that our thinking moves on toward making it a time of self-care and self-understanding. And maybe even a reexamination of those we’ve lost by their own hand. It’s not all driven by bitter depression and loneliness. I’m sure we all know at least one loss characterized by ‘Fuck this. I’m out.’ And yes, I’m aware that my own when in doubt, power out strategy has its own costs. It would seem a good time to segue into Bourdain, but it isn’t. Not yet. More sushi, please. Maybe some spicy scallop nigiri?

My first sushi experience was out in LA. A friend’s sister took me along as her boy toy for a business trip and when we hit the sushi bar it seemed she was trying to intimidate me with the raw fish. I grew up eating raw oysters so sushi didn’t prove much of a challenge for me, in fact, I loved the new flavors and textures and just went wild trying everything on her dime and didn’t slow down until I hit the squid served in its own ink. That was an acquired taste for sure. But I loved the uni and tobiko and quail eggs and everything else she threw at me. To me, fresh uni tastes like life itself, the sun the sky the ocean all in one bite. When I went back on my own to live and work in LA, I got a job at the Famous Enterprise Fish Company on Kinney Street in Santa Monica. We were just a couple of blocks off the beach and the concept was as simple as sushi. We had an exhibition kitchen with two cast iron pits filled with mesquite hardwood and we grilled everything. Shark, swordfish, halibut, tuna, rainbow trout, hamachi, bay snapper, king crab and lobster and snowcrab, calamari steaks panéed and topped with avocado and tomatillo sauce. I even had a chat with Paul Newman once about what we had available. while I was working the grill. Nice guy. Very real. We made a mean cioppino as well, but the jambalaya I made every Friday night paid for me and then some. Even if I had to make it with polish sausage and toss in some shrimp and fish to make it much more paella-like than jambalaya-like it worked for the owners. So every now and then the bosses would take me with them to Senba Sushi on Oceanfront Walk in Venice not far from Muscle Beach. That place was magnificent but there was very little English spoken there. Both of the bosses spoke Japanese and would carry on with the experts behind the bar at length. Those chefs would toss live sea urchin in the air and pop it with their yanagibas to crack it open like an egg and release the fresh uni. They would show you a whole flounder and then carve it into a delicate flower style sashimi presentation and later in the meal bring you the backbone fried tempura style with ponzu sauce. It was a hole in the wall joint, the kind I like best. If you rent the Akroyd/Hanks version of Dragnet you can catch a glimpse of Senba when the car blows up during the beach scene. Well here’s a photo of Samantha Fish, which is the reason why I went down to NO Saturday. She was playing at the Cigar Box Guitar Festival at Frenchman Theater with Jonathon “Boogie” Long. She is a fantastic blues lead guitarist/singer and she just created her own record label Wild Heart Records and signed Boogie as her first artist. Thank god for Guitar Hero and Xena: Warrior Princess and anything else that might have inspired little girls to pick up a guitar and play. I can remember visiting a friend a while back and watching his three daughters rock out to Slow Ride by Foghat and thinking at the time that our music was never going to go away. If you get a chance, you should definitely check her out.

Back to Galvez Parking Garage to check out downtown. Two dollars to park for an hour and have a safe base for exploration. I work a lot closer to downtown these days and I’ve always wanted to spend a bit more time checking it out but I was always afraid of the parking, both time spent finding a place and cost when I did. I’ve conquered those fears and feel like Bienville or d’Iberville. Ha! I wish! That certainly would have been fun and filthy being one of those guys, but I digress as I am wont to do. The Serop’s guys did a lot of work on their place over the holidays. Redid the floor, all new tables and chairs. That is no small investment. Outside looks nice too.

And the inside features the express part of the name, a thirty something pan hot and cold serving line manned by multiple servers and cashiers primed to get you in and out as quickly as possible. This is to their benefit as well as yours and also lets them take full advantage of carry out and Waitr delivery.

In fact, I was a little intimidated since it was my first visit so I just went with the combination shawarma plate with rice pilaf, feta salad, hummus and pita, but as soon as I saw the lovely spinach pies I had to add one to my order. And of course I filled my styro cup with Lebanese tea. Next time though, I think I will just hit the build your own plate because the stuffed bellpeppers and tennis ball sized falafel and the roasted cauliflower all made me want to keep piling my plate but luckily, I didn’t persist. The combo plate and the spinach pie was already too much food for lunch but oh so good. The middle Eastern food itch doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it needs scratching. Serop’s Express is a very, very fast answer for that particular need. Next up downtown is Chow Main (still giving them some time since they just got open a few months ago) and Christina’s and Poor Boy Lloyd’s and Cecilia. Also need to hit Pastimes for old times and Frostop just for their banging roast beef poboy.

So I’m leading with this napkin holder instead of the absolutely gorgeous food I had for lunch because branding is important too, especially in a food court where your competition is literally right next to you. Of course branding means nothing if you can’t back it up with goods and services, but it does help in the overall experience and that is why customers return. Every little thing is important. Even the napkin holders. Oh and this, this is a statement.

Now a homemade condiment is a nice touch, but the presentation and the attitude behind that presentation lifts it to the next level. Chow Yum Phat has some sharp workers putting out a very high quality product and every bit of the layout of their White Star kiosk, from their uniforms to their condiments is top notch. I do wish they would add a hot green tea to the menu, or even an iced import, but it is White Star and you can stroll over to Gov’t Taco and buy yourself a Mexican coke to go with your ramen and dumplings.

Not going to waste a lot of time talking about the food. Only so many ways you can say delicious, great, good, yum yum yummy. Beware the dumplings if you are averse to jalapenos because they are in the beef not just a garni. And I love every element of the ramen, the broth, the noodles, the beef, the mushrooms, the soft-boiled egg, the kimchi and the slivered scallions are all the bomb but this is a place you really need to try for yourself.