A New Orleans Dining Travelogue (Part 2: New School) - Peche, Root, Coquette, R'evolution, Bar Tonique

In Part 1 of my New Orleans Travelogue, I stuck with the "Old Guard" - traditional places, like Galatoire's, Felix's Oyster Bar, and Mr. B's Bistro, serving mostly traditional dishes. For a long time, it seemed like this was all you could find in New Orleans. New or old, it was as if every place was required by the Napoleonic Code to offer gumbo, shrimp remoulade, étouffée, and blackened redfish. You could tell the more contemporary places because they would affix a sprig of thyme or rosemary like a flag post in the middle of the plate.

That kind of culinary solipsism is sometimes one of the trade-offs of a city with such a passionate food culture. We saw much the same thing on our visits to Spain: the food is mostly outstanding - if you like Spanish food. But nobody talks about the Italian restaurants in Spain. Still, during our more recent visits to New Orleans - post-Katrina - things seems to be changing. The city not only has more restaurants than it did before the hurricane and floods (nearly 500 more, according to Tom Fitzmorris' count at The New Orleans Menu), it seems to be more open to a greater variety of restaurants.

To start exploring what's new, I met up with good friend, talented chef, and Louisiana native Chad Galiano (a/k/a Chadzilla), who returned home this past year after an extended sojourn in South Florida. We had an ambitious plan to hit three spots in the Central Business District for lunch in one day, though sadly ran out of steam after only two (I suspect New Orleans' liberal open container policy - are "go cups" also in the Napoloenic Code? - had something to do with it).

Pêche

Pêche is a new addition to the small stable of restaurants opened by chef Donald Link. After first making a name for himself at Herbsaint, Link returned to his Cajun roots with Cochon, which opened only a couple months after Katrina (and which was one of the best meals of my last visit to New Orleans). Cochon Butcher, a butcher shop and sandwich shop around the corner, followed soon after. As their names suggest, Cochon is largely dedicated to the pig in all its glorious forms, while Pêche revolves around seafood.

So where better to start than with a big seafood platter?

(You can see all my pictures in this Peche flickr set).

Pêche's seafood platter was mostly a compilation of items that can also be ordered a la carte from the raw bar section of the menu. Oysters come from three different sources along the Gulf (on our server's recommendation, I punctuated them with a dash of the house-made habañero and sweet potato hot sauce on the table). Fresh head-on Gulf shrimp are steamed and chilled in their shells, retaining all their sweetness. A mound of smoked tuna salad has the smooth texture of deli tuna, but with a delicate perfume of wood smoke. Tiny crab claws swim in a soft vinaigrette brightened with chili and mint. A seafood salad combines cubes of raw tuna, tender cooked shrimp and fresh avocado.

I fear I will live out the rest of my years vainly trying to recreate the glory of the massive, over-the-top seafood platter we had at Au Pied de Cochon this summer; but on a more modest scale this resonated in all the same ways. There is something incredibly indulgent about having the bounty of the local waters laid out before you like this - fresh, pure, and essentially unadorned.

(continued ... read on for Root, Coquette, Bar Tonique, and Restaurant R'evolution)

A New Orleans Dining Travelogue (Part 1: Old School) - Felix's, Killer Poboys, Galatoire's, Mr. B's Bistro, Napoleon House

It's presumptuous to think you can genuinely understand a city's dining culture after only a few days. In a place with as rich a culinary heritage as New Orleans, it's downright foolish. Over the past few years I've eaten probably about a dozen meals in New Orleans - just about enough to feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of what the city has to offer. To give you a better idea of what I mean, here's my "New Orleans To Do List":

View New Orleans in a larger map

The places I've actually been to are only a small fraction of the pinpoints on that map. (Incidentally, if you find this map useful, I've got a few more of other cities and can look for excuses to post them). So I will try to restrain myself from the big deep thoughts, and instead recount a travelogue of about eight meals, and a few bars, over a recent long weekend in New Orleans:

Felix's Restaurant & Oyster Bar

I suspect everyone who visits New Orleans more than a couple times develops certain rituals. One of mine is that I like to ingest some oysters as soon as possible. After dropping my bag at the hotel, I headed straight for Iberville Street in the French Quarter. There's always a line at Acme Oyster House; there's almost never one at Felix's Restaurant & Oyster Bar, directly across the street.^[1] I'd be willing to bet at least the price of a dozen oysters that they both get their supply from the same exact place. At Felix's they're available on the half-shell, "char-grilled," or in Rockefeller or Bienville modes; I sampled a half-dozen each of the first two varieties.

(You can see all my pictures from Felix's in this New Orleans flickr set).

Their Gulf oysters on the half-shell are plump, cold, mild, and more sweet than briny - maybe not the most characterful of oysters I've had, but far from the most offensive too. They go down easy, other than the fact that their bottoms are still caked with mud, making it tricky to sip their liquor from the shell without getting a mouthful of grit. "Char-grilled," meanwhile, means shucked, warmed on the grill and slathered with garlic butter and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. Like New Orleans style BBQ shrimp, it's all mostly an excuse for dunking bread into that rich, buttery sauce - but I'll happily engage in that charade.

Speaking of rituals, I was slow to pick up on the DIY cocktail sauce program at Felix's. Every spot at the counter and every table is adorned with a still life composition of hot sauce bottles (both Tabasco and Crystal), Worcestershire sauce, and a tin of grated horseradish. An industrial size container of ketchup and little paper cups are positioned at the center of the bar, the idea being that you combine the ketchup and other accouterments according to your own taste to concoct your own personal magical blend (lemons are also available on request). For me, a dash of Crystal is all the oysters needed. As for the lady a few seats down, eating hers directly off the bar counter, with no ice platter, no plate, no nothing: well, everyone's got their own particular style.

Felix's Restaurant & Oyster Bar
739 Iberville Street, New Orleans, Louisiana
504.522.4440



(continued ... read on for Killer Poboys, Napoleon House, Galatoire's and Mr. B's Bistro)

Cobaya Tea Party with Chef Antonio Bachour

The first time I sampled pastry chef Antonio Bachour's work was at a Cobaya dinner with Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog a couple years ago. We'd held the event in a warehouse in Little Haiti which, among other challenges, didn't have the greatest air conditioning. It was probably nearly 90° in the dining room and at least ten degrees warmer in the "kitchen." Not exactly ideal conditions, and yet Bachour, with a big fan blowing in a back room, plated some absolutely exquisite desserts, even managing to turn out perfect quenelles of green apple sorbet among about a dozen other elements on the plate.

At the time, Bachour was working at the W South Beach, and the word was that he would be pastry chef at The Dutch when it opened in a few months. Instead, he took his talents to the St. Regis Bal Harbour and the very talented Josh Gripper came to the Dutch - a win-win for Miami diners.

Bachour is an incredible talent. We knew that we'd want to find a way for him to do his own Cobaya event, but the prospect of an all-desserts meal was a bit daunting. And then Mrs. F provided the inspiration: why not do an afternoon tea? It was perfect. We had a weekend afternoon event for a change of pace, with a combination of savory and sweet components, following at least loosely in the format of a traditional tea service.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Bachour flickr set.)

The St. Regis provided a beautiful venue - a lounge area in the resort - and their typical over-the-top service - sabered champagne, free-flowing mimosas, even some live music. And Bachour, with a savory assist from hotel chef Tom Parlo, provided an equally over-the-top menu.

To start, a golden egg, filled with a couple more kinds of eggs: a creamy egg salad, laid over a puddle of cucumber gelee, topped with a generous dollop of caviar. This was a delicious, indulgent few bites, fully worthy of its ornate presentation.

Next, a round of tender scones with berry jam, citrus curd and clotted cream - very classical.

A platter of savory tea sandwiches was classical in format, but modernized in the execution. It included a hearty smorrebrod with a miniature composed nicoise salad (tuna, cherry tomatoes, green beans, olives and a quail egg); a savory eclair filled with cream cheese and topped with a ribbon of smoked salmon and a salmon macaron; a burrata salad assembled over shortbread with dried tomatoes, basil and balsamic caviar; a perfect mini lobster roll tucked into a brioche bun; and a cornet filled with curried chicken salad, topped with a crisp dried strawberry.

Then it was time for a rather unbridled dessert presentation - probably more than 20 different sweet compositions assembled by Chef Bachour, on a buffet that seemed to go on forever and was replenished as rapidly as it was depleted. I don't think I managed to get pictures and descriptions of everything, much less sample them all, but here's a faithful attempt:

(continued ...)

Blanca - Brooklyn, New York

"People take pictures of each other
Just to prove that they really existed."

A couple years ago, reports began to emanate of a second kitchen at Roberta's, a funky "third wave" pizzeria in deep Brooklyn. Roberta's chef Carlo Mirarchi was already turning out acclaimed pizzas. But this was something else - delicate fish crudos and composed dishes, "fantastical tales of aged birds and beef." Soon the mainstream media caught up, and word was out on these extremely limited edition tasting menus.

Demand ultimately led to a separate venue inside the Roberta's compound for these dinners, dubbed Blanca. Since opening about a year ago, Blanca has become known for a number of things: its artful, extensive, and expensive (currently $195pp) tasting menus; its extreme dry-aged meats program (not "fantastical" after all); its location in Bushwick (Roberta's is on a "grim street" in "basically a frontier community," according to Alan Richman, though Ruth Reichl didn't find it nearly so desolate recently); its extremely limited seating (12 spots, two seatings a night); its obtuse reservation "system" (since fixed);^[1] and its no-photos no-cellphones policy.

Some of these are more important to me than others. I'll travel pretty far - even Bushwick^[2] - and navigate a pretty tricky reservation system if there's something great to eat at the end of the ordeal. And as someone who started off this blogging venture with very ambivalent feelings about photography, I never really imagined that not being able to take pictures would have any impact on my enjoyment of a meal.

And yet I find myself now with ambivalent feelings about our meal a few months ago at Blanca, and I wonder if the no-photos policy has anything to do with it. I have vivid recollections of only a handful of the 20-ish courses we were served. Many others are only fuzzy vague memories; and some I don't recall at all.

Do people take pictures of their food just to prove that it existed? Does a dish no longer exist to me if I don't have a picture of it? Have I so externalized my own brain functions that I can no longer clearly remember something if I've not digitally recorded it somewhere? Or was it something else about the Blanca dining experience?

Here's what I do recall:

(continued ...)