Month: May 2019

My last post about Omi I wrote about the Japanese menu which I wasn’t particularly impressed with and wondered if the Chinese menu wasn’t what kept this place going in the face of a poor location made very difficult to get to by heavy Essen Lane traffic at any and all meal times. That is exactly the case. I returned several times to go Chinese and I’m very glad I did. I went with pork egg rolls with hot and sour soup and Omi Pork on my first return trip.

I can’t really speak to authenticity in Chinese food since I’ve never been to China, but these dishes are unique to my experience of Chinese since they employ a completely independent flavor profile from standard Chinese-American fare. The egg roll was house made (you could tell by the non-standard size and shape as well as the chopped rather than shredded cabbage inside) the hot and sour soup was barely sour at all, and the heat was black instead of red pepper. The melt in your mouth pork belly and potatoes of the Omi Pork (got to try it if they put their name to it) had a deep rich sauce. The menu describes the dish as “skin-on pork belly meat slowly simmered in slightly sweet and salty black sauce.” My guess is the sauce is a combo soy/demi, but I can’t say for sure. It did have a deep cilantro current that wasn’t provided by just the garnish. Very good stuff. Next visit I went with Cumin Lamb. Sliced lamb and white and green onion stir fried with a healthy dose of cumin. Completely unexpected. Wildly successful.

Last, but certainly not least, I got the Beef Hot Pot. Oh my. It came out in a little mini wok atop a sterno burner bubbling away and stacked with sliced beef and lettuce and bok choy and chilis and cilantro and everything just enhanced the beef flavor. Literally one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth. The egg drop soup was better than any I’ve had as well. So glad I kept digging, because I have found a true treasure .

Nothing gourmet about this place, but it does have some solid, stick to your ribs dishes. I was able to walk right up and get a Quiche Lorraine and a Potato Gallette right off the hot line with a cup of French roast to go with. Not as exciting as The Tea Room in Covington, but solid.

Now they do cook to order as well, sandwiches, breakfast plates, crepes–but I’ve always just run in and run out. What is really amazing about this place is how they play the little French tunes at just the right volume to make the dining room sound like the middle of a mall. Don’t believe me? Go check it out for yourself. They’ve also got some pretty sweet looking pastries, but I was too full to try anything else.

I think one of the most important things you can do when you’re cooking at home is take your eye off the ball. How many times when you’ve been cooking bacon on the stovetop have you started wondering what you’re going to do with all that lucious bacon grease? How many times have you started thinking about the red beans you’re going to make, or maybe thinking you should do your grilled cheese in bacon fat rather than butter? Some of the best ideas are born this way. I recently got a Le Creuset dutch oven and I’ve been running quite a few things through it, including roasted duck with some root vegetables thrown in for a possible soup or side. I noticed that I generated a lot of juice and rendered fat so I started thinking ahead to next time. What if I went to the market and got some new potatoes and heavy cream and threw in some red onion and garlic and went for duck fat mashed potatoes?

Well I did and I’m very glad. I seasoned the duck the night before, then placed it on top of the potatoes and let it go for two hours at 300°. I drained most of the liquid but left some to mix with the heavy whipping cream and Voila! duck fat mashed.

And oh yeah, I did end up with a side of roasted duck as well.

This led to some other dishes like Irish banger sausage with duck fat mash.

Roasted duck tacos with elote.

Duck fat mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy.

And duck and egg breakfast ramen.

Second breakfast! or technically, high tea. I guess that’s why the entire menu is available all day with breakfast, lunch, and tea service offerings. I finally found myself in Covington with time to check this place out, and the hot scones alone were worth it. The clotted cream and lemon curd were both new to me, along with just about everything else I tried.

I went with The Petite Windsor High Tea — A selection of four English finger sandwiches, three assorted mini-savories, fresh fruit garnish, one mini-dessert, one chocolate-dipped strawberry & one fresh-baked scone served with house-made clotted cream, house-made lemon curd or imported strawberry preserves. A pot of tea of your choice. Priced per person.  That last bit about priced per person is important because the place is great for get togethers. While I was there a group of women came in and were directed to the Tudor Room where they hugged and talked and waited for everyone to get there. A tea service is perfect for that sort of gathering since it is a lot like a served buffet, with finger sandwiches, mini-quiches, and sweets to pick and choose from without having to walk through a line with a plate in your hand. And while it may have been a show of posh across the pond, here in the USA it is just a quaint and stylish way to be fed and entertained.

And a pot of real tea to go with everything. I went with the Bangkok Blend, a green tea with lemongrass, vanilla, coconut & ginger. Very tasty. The mini quiches were definitely home made because they exploded with flavor. The servers were dressed in British black and it was easy to imagine them with a crisp Brit rather than a slow southern accent. And the place is packed with curios, mostly tea services, but plenty of photos and flags and other memoribilia.

My only regret was that this place isn’t here in Baton Rouge where it would be easy to escape once a week. Oh, and maybe that I couldn’t hang for just one more meal, both because I had places to be and that the table I had was only available for an hour. I doubt any place else in Covington was as packed as The Tea Room at ten in the morning. If you know you’re going or you have more than four people, I suggest you make a reservation. Quite the experience. Quite, I say.

It has always been a mystery to me how this restaurant survived in perhaps the worst non-Bennington location in the city. It is hard to find, hard to access when there is any traffic at all on Essen, and the left hand turn off Essen onto One Calais Avenue is too close to the Interstate exit. You run the real risk of being cut off by idiot BR drivers blocking the intersection when you get your green turn arrow. How do you keep a spot like this open? Like a couple of other places in town, this one has both a Japanese and Chinese menu, but markets the sushi bar. So I decided to try that first and see if it answered the survivability question. Short answer. It did not. The nigiri was only a notch above the all you can eat buffet level, but the size of the pieces and the price wasn’t bad. Middle of the road I’d say.

I’m still going to go back though, in part because the steamed shrimp gyoza dumplings and the service were both very good, and they at least attempted to make the salmon skin hand roll I requested using the server’s scratch pad since she was new and not confident that she knew what I was asking for. It came out sort of clunky, lacking any of the fresh crisp elegance that a handroll should display.

The other reason I will return to try the Chinese menu is their perseverance. It takes a lot to hang on in the restaurant business when you are fighting traffic problems or a hard to access location and are surrounded by hotels and businesses instead of neighborhoods. There must be a reason Omi has hung around all these years when everyone before them collapsed at that location. Or there’s a well kept secret like a great Chinese menu. But there are signs. The place is worn, needs an update or remodel which they clearly can’t afford, but it is clean, there was absolutely no dust on the intriguing art works, and the server may have been new, but she and the owner? manager? were eager to please. Even if it is only in appreciation of the effort it takes to stay open, I feel like I have to give these guys another shot to win me over. You dream, I dream, we all dream of a hidden treasure. There’s only one way to find one.

Curbside seems really well dug in to their niche of gourmet burgers, boozie shakes, and live music. I got the Smoking Joe(L) with sharp cheddar, killer bacon, onion strings and smoky bbq sauce. Reminded me of the baseball style burgers my uncle used to grill in his backyard. You know the kind, ball of ground meat, barely mashed at all into a patty, slathered with sauce, like four inches thick in the middle, slapped on a plain Holsum bun. They were fantastic, and I guess that is why I’m reminded. There’s some straight up burgers as well, a ground lamb entry, and the one with mushrooms and onion jam I want to try next time.

Now six dollars might seem a lot for a cookies and cream milkshake and there’s no way for me to convince you with just a photo that it’s probably worth ten bucks. It is so, so good. I almost got a second one, but I have to at least pretend to control myself in public. I think it would also be fun to go back on a weekend night and check out the bands and try the boozie shakes. Maybe even do a little dancing. Definitely going back to try a couple of other burgers. And at least one more milkshake.

I don’t know why I keep trying these corporate chains. I guess I keep hoping to be surprised like I was at Zea, but that is definitely an outlier. I also dream of going one day to a place that is as good as Red Lobster looks on tv. And yes, I will run by and check out the Red Lobster here in town someday, maybe after a movie at the AMC 15, but I will certainly temper expectations. And the thing is, there isn’t anything to really criticize about Bonefish. The place was immaculate, the service professional ( even if it was a bit tedious to endure the corporate dictated flybys from a server dressed in a chef’s coat and pants, as if) and all the food was very fresh and perfectly cooked. It just lacked heart and soul. A bit more salt and lemon wouldn’t have hurt either.

Now I do like a place that brings bread to the table before even asking what I’d like to drink. And I can testify that there was only one empty among the mussels I ordered. But even the onion and garlic was a bit bland. Luckily the fresh mussels were fine on their own, but if felt like the corporation had done nothing to enhance them.

Like I’ve said before, it all looks wonderful, it just didn’t quite take that next step to delicious. Here’s the description for the Thermidor Gnocchi: sweet lobster chunks and tender shrimp sautéed with golden-brown potato gnocchi, mushrooms, peas, and fresh tomatoes tossed in lobster-sherry cream sauce . Sounds great, doesn’t it? I had very high hopes when I first sat down and picked this. Less so after the less than amazing mussel app. But all the flavors were a bit faded, and the sherry wasn’t even detectable. A shame, but it still looked really nice.

Government is a little misleading. This lunch only spot is tucked inside Circa 1857 which is on the corner of Government and N 19th, but the parking entrance is on N 19th. The Cafe has courtyard seating in good weather and quite a few cosy perches inside surrounded by eclectic artwork. You’re also already inside Circa 1857 which, along with The Pink Elephant further down Government, is the top place to find cool old stuff and doodads. They sell original art and art supplies as well, and are part of a complex that includes Mosaic Garden which has new stuff, jewelry, windchimes, small sculptures, aromatics, stones, and lots of new age style gifts and accoutrements. But back to Yvette Maries. A very interesting menu. I saw chicken salad and egg salad sandwiches, beaucoup fresh salads based on spring mix which they also use to dress the sandwiches. Whole, half, and quarter muffs, some interesting sides and a tomato basil soup. I got the half sandwich special which comes with any side or chips so I went with the pressed ham and cheese and the tomato basil soup.

The ham and cheese was crisp and light and made more so by using the spring mix and fresh creole tomatoes. The soup was heavy duty. I know that looks like rice, but it is cheese which reinforced my desire for some al dente pasta to pour the soup (pasta sauce) over. If you are a fan of the light, creamy bisque style tomato basil, you should pass on this one. If you feel faint, light-headed, or skinny, you should go ahead and dig in. I left with confidence in the other sandwiches, and made a note that it would always be a good thing to drop by for lunch and take a quick look around the shops before heading back to work. Or start a Saturday full venue browsing expedition with a meal. Either would work. The rest of this is just shots of the funky stock available at Circa, a pic of the courtyard, one of Mosaic Garden exterior, and a shot of the table placard that had my high school football number on it. What are the chances of that? Makes you feel like you were meant to be there right at that moment.

We all have our favorites. Some of us cook. Some of us write We likely all like to read. I think my momma was the best cook ever. I’m sure there are one or two others who would agree with me. I read a lot. I have a lot of favorite authors. Gene Wolfe, who died recently is one. Hunter S Thompson has inspired me since someone stuck Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas in my hand and told me I just had to read it, and of course I’ve recently become enamoured of The Bruno Detective Series, written by Martin Walker because of the fine writing, much of which is about cooking. Last time I moved I gave ten bankers boxes full of paperbacks to the Goodwill store. Not the first or only time I’ve had to pair down my collection because I was running out of space and my place looked like I was a hoarder. But out of all my favorites, including Pound and Eliot, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Guy Gavriel Kay is the best I’ve ever read. He writes slightly altered historical fiction that takes place in far away lands, but his characters are very dangerously human. If you read him, you will weep, not cry. He knows us. He knows what we fear. What we love. What we’ve done. What we are ashamed of. His prose is lyrical, and grave, and direct. It’s been three years since his last book, and yes, I am always afraid that each book will be his last, or the last I have a chance to read. Some of his books are paired, and should be read in order. This one is stand alone. It references past books, but it is okay if you haven’t yet read them yet, because they are far removed on the timeline. These are, after all, historical tales. And this book is one of his finest.

Eliza does that New Orleans thing as well as anyone else in BR. Call it Creole elegance. There’s no white tablecloths, but their food is fancy, and very New Orleans based. The roux is darker, making the gumbo more soup than stew. They bring in the Leidenheimer bread and use larger shrimp on their poboys. The desserts are old school but still dressed up for a night out on the town. They play Mardi Gras tunes at low volume in the background. The decor is simple, but very deliberately Louisiana. They know who they want to be, and that makes it a very comfortable place to have a meal.

My gluten free friends love this place because of all the options. They batter the fried food in corn meal, some of the appetizers are gluten free, and they have a lot of very nice salads, plus the servers know exactly what is and isn’t gluten free so they don’t have to run back to the kitchen every time you ask a question. I’m sure my friends would really love this dish I had for lunch, except for the fact that it is a sandwich. May I present the soft shell crab BLT.

All I can do is stand witness for you that this sandwich tastes just as good as it looks. Same for the banana pudding that followed. There’s a strawberry shortcake on the menu you need to plan for as well. Not cheap, but money well spent.