Feast your eyes, lambs

...because unless you're ridiculously fortunate, your eyes will be the only things feasting on this marvelous array of foods from French Laundry in the Napa Valley.


My family used to vacation in Sorrento, Maine, and we'd always stop at this restaurant on the water where one could get the freshest of fresh Maine lobster for a ridiculously low price, considering. You sat with bibs at picnic tables, swabbing your lobster in melted butter, while water rushed over rocks in the river. So of course, lobster is sentimental for me as it is. It's like dessert, no matter how you do it. In this case, it's poached in butter and served with King Richard leeks, pommes maxims (imagine a gourmet potato chip), and red beet essence. Mmmm.


It seems that this is essentially a glorified chocolate-mint ice cream sandwich, done with Thomas Keller's unique finesse.


These are the truffles they serve you at the end of your meal. The ones second from the left look like Sucre's port chocolates. They're all beautiful. For some reason, the one on the right cracks me up -- it's faceted like a precious gem!

Credit to Google Images. I wish I could say I'd taken them.

Looking forward

to a day of great food. Today is the second annual Po-Boy Fest over on Oak Street -- I didn't go last year since I heard about it too late, but apparently it is a bastion of every possible variation on the po-boy theme. I'm hoping the samples are small because I'm not sure how many different regular-size po-boys I could eat...

Then tonight I'm hosting a potluck! Those are always fun because they are an excuse to eat comfy simple food. I'm making spaghettini with garlic-infused olive oil, red pepper flakes, and mushrooms. Mmmm. Should be delightful.

ALSO: my first issue of Food & Wine came in the mail yesterday and I'm in the process of reading it cover to cover. It practically oozes fabulosity. I'm loving reading about the ten best restaurant dishes of 2008- each one is inspirational in its own right, although it's all I can do not to eat my hand. One of the dishes -- a lovely crawfish ravioli -- is actually from Bistro Daisy here in New Orleans. I guess I'll have to make it a point to go there sometime soon. I'm particularly enamored of the duck-fat fried chicken... who can possibly resist an upscale, clever take on a comfort-food classic? Now I just have to wait for the first issue of Gourmet to arrive before I can be truly immersed in love and hunger.

Mahony's Po-Boys

One would think we'd have set some sort of quota for po-boy restaurants in this city. There's Domilise's, Crabby Jack's, Guy's, Magazine Street Po-Boys, Mother's... those are just the first few that come to mind, and I guarantee you we've got more abounding in every pore of this city. That said, I was a little surprised when a new place called Mahony's opened on Magazine a few blocks off Louisiana Avenue. It seems just a tad superfluous, but I guess the philosophy is that you can never have enough Leidenheimer's bread and fried oysters in a city like this one...

With that said, it's fairly implicit that each of these subway meccas must find its own hook, its own tagline, its own claim to fame. I would imagine that this has been easier for some than for others. Mother's and Domilise's, for example, are just permanent fixtures, and we love them as much for their decadent roast beef po-boys or interminably long lunch lines as we do for their familiarity. But for the places that aren't older than God and have had to work to win locals' respect, one fact is of the utmost importance: New Orleans will find justification to eat a po-boy just about anytime. So, even though Magazine Street Po-Boy is by no means remarkable, I eat there because it's just a few blocks from school. Guy's has a grilled shrimp po-boy, which is fairly rare. I'm sure you get my drift. Both places have earned special places in my heart because they have certain assets, insignificant or imperative, that set them apart.

Luckily, Mahony's has a few things to its advantage. The ambiance is casual and (as one would expect of any self-respecting po-boy establishment) exactingly no-frills, with old football memorabilia decorating the walls and a video game machine. Unlike some other dearly beloved locales, it's welcomingly and abundantly spacious, with simple chairs and simple tables scattered throughout several rooms and a big bar up front where you can sit and chat with the very friendly hostess/bartender/waiter. There are two front doors, each decorated with its own charming "In" our "Out" sign. Nobody really questions the fact that, sure, the "Out" door can, in fact, be entered from the outside. Mostly, people are reverent of the doors' designations.

Then there's the menu. Ironically, this is important, and that's coming from someone who is loath to eat anything other than a half-shrimp, half-oyster po-boy, no matter where I am. Mahony's menu is generous and diverse, with the old staples as well as some new additions. Most notable are the onion rings. They're not the most substantial things I've ever seen (as substance goes, I think College Inn on Carrollton takes the cake with its giant juicy rings of thickly sliced onion); rather, they're shredded like cole slaw or like the lettuce you get on a burger. This makes the ratio of fried batter to onion inordinately and extraordinarily high, and while I nibbled on them, I realized how perfect it would be to stick some on with my po-boy. It was sheer bliss- like a whole new level of onions on sandwiches. For that alone, I recommend Mahony's, though the po-boy was good enough on its own that the sandwich joint managed to weasel its way into a corner of my heart...

Oh, and

http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/index.html

Molecular gastronomy, meet reckless conceptualization.

Some pictures, which I must attribute to blogs and photographers only Google Images could find:

The item on top is short rib. The red sheet below consists of Campari, beet root juice, cranberry, salt, sugar... etc. The chef then added agar agar, which gives the sauce its suddenly jellyish consistency, thus allowing it to be manipulated as such.

This is a photographic representation of the 24-course meal that Alinea calls "the tour." If you want to actually read about each of the dishes, feel free -- I found the description here: http://www.foodite.com/foodite/2006/09/alinea.html#more

Potato soup chilled to 30 degrees Fahrenheit, served with a ball of potato heated up to 275 degrees Fahrenheit, a single black truffle, and Parmesan cheese. It's designed to be eaten in a single bite so that one has time to enjoy the nuances of flavor as they naturally progress.

Hearts of palm. (!!!!!) Who knew?

Bacon. Somehow, the assortment looks at first like a stage of dancers in frilly green tutus. Why? No one knows, but I for one will not ask any questions...

Crab apple.

Chocolate, passionfruit, lemongrass...!

What sweeps me away is the utterly romantic notion that food can be as much an artistic medium as oil paints -- it's an idea I've always believed but never seen in practice to such a degree as this. I'm dying to go and aching to figure out some sort of bribe involving someone taking me to Chicago to eat at this restaurant... hmm. Let me know if you have a brainstorm.

Ode to Appetizers

Well, hello, it's been a while. Mainly because I've been borderline nomadic and haven't dabbled in many culinary wonders of late. HOWEVER, this weekend... everything changed.
You see, my best friend flew in from college, and in doing so unleashed as much of an extravaganza as could be fit into the course of 24 hours.

First:
Surrey's- breakfast for them, "lunch" for me (I had previously devoured a CC's chocolate chunk cookie, which, by the way, is sent directly from Jesus to us). I haven't gone to Surrey's much because it's on Magazine Street way down where it turns one way. For some reason, this repels me; presumably because it's one way the wrong way when coming from my house? So psychologically, I reason that the restaurant doesn't want me to come. Every time I'm there, though, my heart breaks a little. It was there that I enjoyed the greatest bowl of shrimp and grits I have ever, ever encountered, and it was there this past weekend that I devoured a fabulously perfect Cuban beef sandwich, comprised of realllly really tender beef, ham, Muenster cheese, and dill pickles that tasted homemade. All on sourdough. Need I say more? It was juicy.

Then:
My monthly venture into Sucre- six each of the Gianduja Crunch, Avery, and Bolivian Palet D'Or, plus two Passionfruit for the road. The guy who was ordering before me seemed to be waffling and amateurish. I didn't let him go before insisting that he try the Gianduja Crunch. Other moments: Joel, who works there, surveyed my selection and said, "Ooh, that's gonna be a good box." I explained to him that I knew what I was doing; in fact, I wrote my college essay on this, such is my expertise. He shook my hand and snuck me a free tasting of macaroons -- two pistachio, two strawberry. I had one of each yesterday, and I now know NEVER to pass them up again (I was previously a bit wary of their colors and went straight for the chocolate-hazelnut ones instead). Sucre macaroons melt in your mouth; they retain a perfect gooiness redolent of chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven. I'm not sure if this is an accurate representation of the Idea of the Macaroon, but whatever it is, it's AMAZING. I'm going to get every color of the rainbow next time I'm in.
Before I left, Joel introduced me to Tariq Hanna, Sucre's chocolate chef, and explained that I had written the essay that might determine my future gushing over his creations. Then... the man KISSED MY HAND. My hand has been kissed by the genius of Sucre. It was a major watershed.

Last:
Baru- A veritable deluge of tapas! And oh, what amazing inventions they are. After all, why would you limit yourself to the steak entree when you can order 10 tapas with three friends and enjoy a bit of all of them? Every time I am at Baru, I am struck by how obsolete the idea of traditional dining is nowadays. All I have left to say on this subject is that the Mazorca -- a plating of smoky roasted corn, Salao cheese (a farmer's cheese), "pink sauce" (a sort of tomato aioli), and potato sticks (imagine whisper-thin crunchy potato fries) -- will save my life. That, and I want to devote my entire life to the ceviche there. It's superb.

A picture of me basking in the glory of my Cuban sandwich will be up as soon as I get it from Jenna.

Maple Street Cafe

I had dinner Friday night at Maple Street Cafe, a cute restaurant uptown in the Riverbend vicinity. I remember picking up dinner from there and eating it for dinner from way back when I was a little kid, and even though I hadn't been there in an awfully long time, it's a fixture in the neighborhood and seems to have an inherent feeling of familiarity and warmth that lends a lot to the atmosphere of the restaurant. All of the tables are in one room, and everyone there seems to be in good company, talking and laughing and eating and connecting. There isn't an ounce of pretension, noise levels are perfect, and while the degree of frilly luxury stops with the fancily-folded napkins, it really just works.

I am a firm believer in bread at restaurants. It's a quick and simple way to exponentially up the feeling that you're being served -- it's just an added bonus that, in my opinion, sets the distinction between a great meal out and a great meal at home. This bread was crusty and rustic in all the right ways, with teeny morsels of garlic (but not too much at all) baked in. The butter was to die for. I wish I knew what they put in it. It was both sweet and savory and turned into this succulent melting yellowness on the warmth of the bread. To start, Mom got a Caesar salad, which, quite frankly, I hated. With something like a Caesar, it's all about getting the details right, since there's so little room for creativity. I found the dressing tangy -- cloyingly so -- and the consistency was off.

Nonetheless, dinner itself was scrumptious. Mom got mussels in a really fresh red sauce that offset the mussels nicely and made us both wish for more bread. I got a pasta dish that just really epitomized everything I look for in a pasta dish. It consisted of angel hair pasta in butter and olive oil. There was a generous amount of three different kinds of wild mushrooms. The best part, though, was the crushed red pepper, which was invisible but which really added the kick that was necessary to take a dish from simple comfort food to quintessential delightfulness. Truthfully, the only downside was the service, but all in all, we left the restaurant content and excited to see The Funky Meters playing for Tulane's homecoming weekend.

Well, hello!

It's been a little while; I took a weekend trip to New York and got back in school yesterday, so schedules have been tumbling around and crystallizing. The good thing is that my girlfriend-who-doesn't-know-she's-my-girlfriend, Gloria Steinem, wrote an article about Sarah Palin, and it was nothing short of kickass. More good news: I definitely won't be short of things to talk about; in fact, I'll bullet them out now so that, as I catch up with everything, I won't forget:
-lunch at Max Brenner's
-breakfast at Sip
-mushroom brie cheese
-superb macaroni and cheese

But for now, I'm going to talk about Criolla's, where I had dinner on my last night in Florida. Rather than get entrees for everyone, we split into two "teams," if you will, and ordered an inordinate amount of appetizers. On the menu for us:
West Indies crab & Johnny's guacamole with tropical root crisps
Griddled black bean queso cakes with tomatillo-avocado salsa
Flash-fried domestic calamari, island-spice dusted, with Creole mustard and key lime aioli
Criolla's Caesar salad with Cascabel Chile dressing, cumin flatbread, Dry Jack cheese, and applewood smoked bacon

I wanted so badly to get the plaintain-encrusted fried oysters with green tomato chutney, marinated cabbage, grilled cornbread and coconut creme fraiche, but alas, it appears that oysters aren't as agreeable to everyone as they are to me. As for the entrees, there were some tempura-fried Maine lobster tails on a sweet pea risotto cake and served with heirloom tomato jus that sounded divine; how could it not when it was a culmination of tempura, Maine lobster, sweet peas, risotto, and heirloom tomato? Given, I've never thought too heavily about the idea of fried lobster, nor of the idea of risotto in a dense cake form, but I can't imagine it would be possible for anything to go too terribly wrong.

So back to my praise, critique, and analysis. The crab was in the form of a dip -- a yellow one, curried, at once spicy, sweet, and creamy. I love crab, but I have to say that I'm a bit of a purist, or at least a traditionalist, and a devout New Orleanian at that; as such, I have a hard time enjoying crab when it strays too far from its perfect form, unless we're talking about the fried softshell crab po-boys at Jazz Fest or numerous other decadent New Orleans creations. Nonetheless, I am sure now that crab shouldn't be combined with curry. Like steak and ice cream, they're both amazing on their own, but shocking and offensive when combined. The guacamole, however, was to die for, and I'm such a freak for foods' consistencies that I seldom like the mushiness of guacamole. The chips were fried, paper-thin slices of "tropical roots" (which roots, I do not know), perfectly salted, and they were divine.

The queso cakes were... alright. A little bit grainy and just a bit bland for my taste; I would've loved just the slightest hint of jalapeno baked into the cakes. As it were, they tasted exactly how they sounded -- like warm black beans with a small core of melted white cheese and some cornmeal thrown on for kicks -- and left very little to the imagination. Swished around in the salsa, which looked like a thinned-down version of guacamole, they were infinitely more enjoyable, though still probably my least favorite dish of the night.

I have to admit that I was very bitter when I started eating the calamari because, as I said, I was so eager to have the plantain-crusted fried oysters, but my mother made the spur-of-the-moment decision to get the more innocuous calamari instead. They didn't knock my socks off (I don't think it's possible to do a truly OUTSTANDING version of something as simple and as relatively common as fried calamari), but the delicacy of the batter and the combination of flavors -- key lime, island spices, and that Creole mustard I know and love so well -- was harmonious and delightful. Like designer potato chips, though, they were ultimately unremarkable, despite how easy it was to eat them ceaselessly.

For me, the Caesar salad truly stole the show -- and that's saying a lot for such a simple salad, but I guess the originality lacking in the calamari took center stage with the salad. It wasn't even like any Caesar I'd had before; imagine it as the Caesar's sultry and enigmatic older sister, who has exotic coloring and knows how to tango. The dressing, first of all, could be bottled and sold as shampoo; I'd buy it simply because it's invariably flawless -- smoky, spicy, warm and autumnal. Bottom line: it tastes like hearth and woodburning ovens and smoky little chiles. I didn't even try the flatbread, but the cheese, which was nutty and hearty with a bit of grit, was a perfect complement to the dressing, and the bacon (I don't even like bacon!) added an ideal crunch and an extra layer of substance. Toasted pumpkin seeds made it feel like a true present.

We were all so sated that by the end of the meal, none of us really wanted dessert. However, being the true dessert aficionado that I am, and given the fact that one of my major criteria for a good restaurant is a great dessert menu, I needed to at least see it... but you know how that goes. I laid eyes on the chocolate gateau with ice cream of the day and raspberry coulis and couldn't pass it up. This is one dish that requires no innovation, no excitement, and no creativity to satisfy me -- all I need is mastery, and the dessert chef at Criolla's definitely had that to spare in this case. The chocolate ice cream was so creamy and smooth; the coulis waxed fudgey in its perfection; and the cake was the awe-inspiring combination of textures, consistencies, and nuances that it should be at its best.

All in all, a good meal for me and a great meal for Grayton Beach. I wouldn't describe it as the "cutting edge, dazzling" cuisine as it has been described, but it was undoubtedly a nice change from the Italian and Asian fusion foods I'm so used to, and in a town that has, I'd guess, 8 restaurants, Criolla's is definitely worth a return trip.

A while back,

I went for a mother-daughter double date with my best friend to a beloved restaurant with which you'll quickly become acquainted if you have any plans of reading these blogs even just fairly religiously: Lilette. The ambiance is that of a clean, happening Parisian bistro; the feeling is very clean -- the main restaurant is one big room, tiled, a former drugstore from the 1800s. Whenever we go, we sit in rich cream leather booths. At this particular dinner, Jenna serendipitously discovered that even the tables are cushioned at the bottom -- a nice little luxury for diners' knees was the only purpose we came up with.



I mention this occasion because it's among the best, most memorable meals I've ever had. All four of us had made up our minds for both appetizer and entree (after a good deal of agonizing, I might add) when the waiter came to us and elaborated on the specials. Our previous reassurance was shot to hell: how could we possibly pass up a Kobe beef New York strip with diced roasted potatoes and flash-fried gremolada? Remaining buoyant, my mom piped up with the solution to all our problems. "This might sound appalling and piggish," she said diplomatically to the waiter, "but we'll start with the Kobe, cooked however the chef would have it, with four plates, please." And then we went on our merry, meal-ordering-as-usual way.

The steak was phenomenal, cut in impossibly thin strips that divided perfectly between the four of us, but the potatoes, too, were not to be outdone (which is saying a lot when they were alongside Kobe beef): delicately, perfectly crisp on the outside and flaky yet creamy on the inside. Altogether, not too much, not too little -- just a perfect amuse-bouche, we all agreed.

My appetizer salad of shaved fresh Hawaiian hearts of palm with parmigiano reggiano, lemon juice and olive oil was nothing short of gorgeous in its simplicity; each bite was a multi-faceted little gift- tart, smooth, hearty, and fruity, in perfect succession. Mom's chilled corn soup with crab and avocado bucked every ounce of my skepticism with its comforting/novel/summery-fresh hybrid of inspiration- I'm sure there's a psalm written about it somewhere. Holly got sweet-and-sticky fried short ribs with a lime-ginger vinaigrette that stole the show (though in truth, there weren't enough short ribs for me to take what most normal humans would consider a "bite," so my assessment may not be fair). And, of course, Jenna got the classic grilled beet salad that I've only recently been able to quit: dense, sweet, rich purple beets, grilled and served in a little puddle of olive oil with walnuts, mouth-watering goat cheese, and a few chives for kicks. What it lacks in originality, I can assure you it boasts in angel-chorus-caliber heavenliness.


But truly (and if you know me, you could've predicted this), the lifeline of this post is surely the Alaskan king crab claws, which come in a pool of none other than the passionfruit butter that inspired this blog in the first place (if you could've heard the gleeful squawking that ensued after my first bites of this dish, you'd understand -- but I'm jumping ahead). As someone who always likes a challenge, I took well to the crab, which was truly a labor of love, as a tiny fork was my only tool of defense against the rock-hard shell that encased the crumbling, velvety, snowy-white meat. To the enchantment of my tablemates, I intrepidly approached that crab with full intention to extract every last morsel -- and I did. Though my obsessive nature triggered this spree, I quickly reaped the benefits, as each little bite that I postponed was bathed in that delightful delicacy that is Chef John Harris's rendition of passionfruit butter. Needless to say, the minute I was sure that both claws had been thoroughly drained, I shamelessly devoured my meal, torn between wanting to share this newfound bliss with those loved ones around me and wanting to hoard it selfishly in the realm of my own shallow bowl. So as those around me delighted in roasted chicken breast with balsamic-glazed onions, mushroom vinaigrette, and only the most delicate outer leaves of baby brussel sprouts, my crab and I loved with a love that was more than love, with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted it and me...