Domenica

We traveled to New Orleans, one of our favorite cities in the world, for a Labor Day weekend full of Southern decadence.  I am not talking about sloshing down beer-puddled Bourbon Street to catch a scintillating spectacle of bored, over-the-hill strippers bump and grind their way through Hey Big Spender, or even standing beneath balconies imploring shy, retiring lasses to bare large parts of their anatomy for strands of cheap, colorful beads imported directly from China. What I am talking about is a four day food orgy which required iron resolve, a soupcon of gluttony, and several pairs of maternity pants I had prudently bought beforehand at Good Will.

Just Like I Remember It But Cleaner

Desire Oyster Bar, Clover Grill, Somethin' Else Cafe, Lucky Dog, and of course Emeril's fantastic NOLA were all hits but the Best In Show was John Besh's Domenica at the Roosevelt, a Waldorf Astoria Hotel formerly known as the Fairmont New Orleans.  Oddly, my first trip to New Orleans was when I was in college when my French class professor sponsored a busload of sophomores to go to Mardi Gras.  Although cloaked in a transparent charade of Francophilia, I believe his motives for transporting nineteen year olds who could legally drink non-stop for 24 hours in the French Quarter were dubious at best.  The Fairmont at that time was a total dump and with four to a room the trip was relatively inexpensive for me--a young guy who rolled dough and topped it with sauce and cheese in a franchised Pizza Inn 30 hours a week.  The lobby was impressive (it still is, and now that the cobwebs have been removed from the chandeliers they are almost blinding) but the room smelled so several parties ago we were forced to drink beer in the morning to overcome it and soldier on.

Mmmmmm, Beignets

Fast forward thirty years a few years and I am back at the Fairmont Roosevelt's Domenica, sitting at a wonderful table in the window overlooking Baronne Street.  There were four of us and we decided to start with the Affettati Misti, "a salumi and imported cheese platter with sweet and savory treats."  Moments later our waitron unit brought out this veritable plank that actually groaned under the weight of all the house cured meats, wedges of smelly cheese, a jar of duck liver pate, interesting condiments like pickled watermelon rind and raisins, and a huge basket of steaming, savory beignets that had just been snatched from the fryer.  The four of us dove into the platter like Tom Daley on steroids and didn't stop grabbing and moaning until the platter was clean.

When The Moon In The Sky...

Our efficient server whose name was either Melissa or Jane forced us into another round of drinks as we composed ourselves from the meat and cheese fest, quickly reconsidering the rest of our ordering options since the appetizer course had been so deliciously daunting. We decided to split a couple of pizzas and they were both perfect.  The Wild Mushroom pie featured tomatoes, fontina cheese, caramelized onions, bacon, and a fried egg while the Calabrese was riddled with spicy salumi, mozzarella, capers and olives.  That one was a repeater for the rest of the night for my three amigos.  I, of course, never burp.

We finished off sharing a panzanella salad and also a dish called Squid Ink Tagliolini which was black pasta with a generous smattering of blue crab, herbs and olive oil.  Eschewing dessert, we staggered across Canal Street, reeling under an enormous caloric intake and discussing where we would be meeting for breakfast the next morning.

Destination Dining: Bayona

We got back from Mardi Gras last Wednesday and suffered from food hangovers for several days after.  Many people travel to New Orleans for Carnival  to get drunk on hurricanes and wade through knee-high trash on Bourbon Street. Others display creative ways to collect beads, which are quite enthusiastically thrown if one keeps abreast of the parade schedule. We go to some of America's best restaurants and stuff ourselves until it hurts to breathe.

ACME Oysters, NOLA, Sbisa, Root, Napoleon House, Clover Grill and Channing Tatum's Saints and Sinners were some of the excellent stops we made (well, not so much Saints and Sinners, that was an okay burger in a restaurant that turns into a strip club at 10 PM.  There's a pole right in the middle of the room which features red leather wallpaper, very bordello-esque.) But the true standout was Bayona, the French Quarter resto made famous by Chef Susan Spicer that has been fighting off crowds for 24 years. Chef Spicer won the James Beard, as well as just about every other award for her flawless cooking in a 200-year-old cottage on a quieter street in the quarter. (Yes, there really is one quiet street in New Orleans.)


A delightful hostess showed us to our table in the cozy cottage, and the handwritten note of welcome on the place mat was Southern gentility at its fahn-est. It was Lundi Gras (Fat Monday) and the place was totally jammed at 8:30.  We were watered, brioched and buttered efficiently while our server fetched cocktails. We shared a starter--A Goat Cheese Crouton with Mushrooms in Madeira Cream. "It wasn't even slightly rich," he said with heavy irony.  I looked around beneath lowered, sneaky eyebrows and licked the plate clean while no one was watching.

Next up for me was the Bayona Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette and Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese with Great Hill Blue.  It was stunning in its simplicity and tasted clean and back yard gardenish. D had the Cream of Garlic Soup, which was decadent and delicious, but one taste made me totally unkissable for at least three days.  It was still worth it.

My entree of Peppered Lamb Loin with Goat Cheese and Zinfandel Sauce made me wish I had a compartmentalized stomach like a cow so I could have shoved some food around inside my abdomen and then eaten another helping.  As it was, the top button on my jeans was very much a loaded projectile just looking for a target to put somebody's eye out.

We had intended to stagger stroll about the quarter after dinner to imbibe in some additional Mardi Gras merriment but we ended up zombie walking to our hotel and passing out on the bed in a delirious, calorie induced stupor.







  

Dining in the Big Easy

We just got back today from 5 days in New Orleans.  We dined around and ate so much food I barely noticed Mardi Gras was in full swing all around us.  (That's a lie, beads were flung, much beer was downed,  disrobing occurred, boas were worn by partiers of both sexes, and spontaneous explosions of mirth expressed through dance were a dime a dozen.  But this is a (hopefully) humorous food blog so I shan't dwell any more upon abandoned revelry.)

A Sign of Good Taste

Our gastronomic safari led us from the ridiculous to the sublime.  One of our first stops was the Clover Grill, an institution on lower Bourbon Street known for its greasy hubcap burgers and bountiful, heart attack breakfast fare served all day.  Open 24 hours, the joint has not been cleaned since FDR was President.  All the employees call you Sugar (even the toothless dishwasher) and most of the patrons are drunk.  We never go to New Orleans without hitting it at least once.

Shrimp Crepes N'awlins style.

We went to a landmark restaurant called Muriel's Jackson Square.  Cozy and classic Creole, it had memorable food like Goat Cheese Crepes with Gulf Shrimp (not a trace of BP Oil Spill flavoring!) and a sublime Pecan Crusted Puppy Drum over Crabmeat Relish.  Our server was a friendly woman with one of those adorable New Orleans accents which only added to her gracious and expert table maintenance.  When I declined dessert she asked me if I had a headache. Bless her heart.

I am sorry to report another return trip to Emeril's NOLA was a big let down.  I still love your welcoming maitre D', pretty hostesses, and outstanding food but our waiter skipped class on the day they taught Personalities Can Really Boost Your Tip.  He actually yawned twice while taking our order and failed to check with us after the food runner plunked down each course.  When he finally brought the check after repeated, increasingly frantic gestures, police whistling, and tabletop gyrations, I (somewhat sarcastically) thanked him and he kind of smirked and frowned and crossed his eyes.  Weird.

Slurped and Burped.

Despite the ever-present block-long line at ACME Oysters, we always go to Felix's across the street.  It's a much shorter wait because they spend more money on groceries and less on advertising than their more famous neighbor.  The oysters were nice and briny and served very cold in a round metal pan filled with crushed ice.  The Bloody Marys provided a spicy and delicious counterpoint.


The highlight this year, though, was Domenica, John Besh's Italian love song of a restaurant on the ground floor of the Roosevelt Hotel (formerly a pretty dumpy Fairmont before the Waldorf Astoria people got a hold of it.)  Although there were at least 40 tables unseated on Tuesday night at 8 PM, the hostess told us there would be an hour wait due to reservations.  This was a flat out falsehood.  It would be better to just admit that half the staff had come down with a sudden case of Mardi Gras Flu and the restaurant was in full-on damage control.  Luckily for us we snagged two seats at the bar where the amazing young man behind it, Adam, served up an awesome Arugula, Beets, Gorgonzola, and Pecan Salad,  the best coal-fired Calabrese Pizza I've ever tasted, and true southern hospitality with a blindingly white smile.  The people on either side of us were super friendly and just eccentric enough to provide a running comic dialogue.  The place charmed us so much I didn't snarkily ask the hostess when we left where all the people with reservations had gone.


Laissez le bons temps rouler, indeed.