New Crush

I have a new crush in the world of cooking. And she is a older woman from the Mississippi Delta. I've only met her once but in between her offering me booze and giving me tips on pimento cheese, I fell in love. I am talking of course about Martha Foose. Her two cookbooks, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea and A Southerly Course, are simple, intelligent cookbooks that should be on everyone's shelf.

I particularly like the stories that accompany each recipe. Rather than just focusing on herself, these stories share a part of her culture and a sense of place from where the recipe developed or as is most often the case was passed down. You will read about people with names like Redbone or learn how to socially wait for the mailman. The recipes themselves range from the easy, yet sublime Bacon Crackers (ingredients: bacon and crackers) to homey cornbread, deviled eggs, roast duck, and of course that pimento cheese.

Recently, I used her basic deviled egg recipe and sexed it up with the addition of bacon marmalade, a bacon chip, and a thin slice of jalapeno. Although Ms. Foose wasn't there to comment on the dish, I have a feeling my love may have been reciprocated.

Winesday

Peter - Put my nose in the glass and get this chocolate aroma. But then take a sip and the wine tastes surprisingly juicy with a little smoke. Seems remarkably smooth at first, but then about halfway through the glass I start noticing some spice on the end. It's delicious all the way around. A perfect pairing would be the andouillette in mustard sauce that I had at L'Amphitryon in Lyon back in 2007, but the cost of airfare will force me to settle for the choucroute maison from Luke. (Give me 2 lbs of pork products and take me straight to heaven.) Or I could finish my meal at Cowbell by pairing a glass with a slice of their Chocolate City.

Rene - Best to let this bottle sit and open up. On the nose, I smell cedar, a cigar box or humidor. Taste red fruit and licorice with almost a sherry-like dryness. High in alcohol but not harsh and long finish of spice. Would like to have this wine over the course of two dishes at MiLa. First the sweetbreads with truffled grits and bacon sherry jus would pair nicely with the woodsy and spice flavors. Then the braised veal cheeks would get along quite well with the juicier flavors of the wine after it has opened up.

Joe the Wine Guy - Here we have the Orogeny 2007 Green Valley Pinot Noir. This wine displays crystalline and red fruit character from grapes grown within Sonoma County's Russian River Valley. The texture is opulent, with a firm, integrated tannin structure at 14.4% alcohol. Hints of toffee from barrell aging heighten the nose and linger on the fruit-imbued finish. Enjoy this pinot noir's lush flavors with a broad range of entrees, including beef tenderloin, roast lamb or poultry, grilled pork or salmon, and especially pasta or risotto dishes laden with wild mushrooms. This wine retails for $39 and is poured at Emeril's Delmonico and Le Foret.

Vinterview

After graduating high school in New Orleans, Joe Briand enrolled at Loyola and began working in restaurants. Eventually he found his way to Herbsaint where he climbed up the ranks to general manager and wine buyer for the Link Restaurant Group. Last fall he left the Link Restaurant Group to begin working as Manager/Wine Buyer for Hopper's Carte des Vins. The new wine shop, which should open shortly, is located on Magazine St. across the street from Whole Foods. 20 ish questions on the clock.

I was working at Vaquero's with a friend when we decided to go work at this new Susan Spicer restaurant called Herbsaint. While working at Vaquero's we would get really excited if we sold $400 of margaritas in a shift. When I got to Herbsaint all of a sudden I was selling $1200 of wine a night. So there was a financial draw first into wine. But the initial group of waiters and managers at Herbsaint was very strong wine wise and we would do blind tastings on Sunday afternoons.

The wines that changed everything for me were two bottles of Burgundy. Both came from vineyards less than 2 miles apart. One was a Chambolle-Musigny that had a perfume of what I then imagined the winemaker's sexy, French wife would have smelled like. The other had that dirty, in a good way, musty, barnyard funk, it was a '96 Nuits St. George. I was fascinated that two wines from same varietal and same area could be so different.

Leaving the Link Restaurant Group was the toughest decision I ever had to make. I have a wife and son, with another on the way, and I just needed to be able to spend more time with them. Donald tried to change my responsibilites and job to keep me on and we are still very close. In the end after 10 years of working in restaurant business, I knew the demands of the job and how you really have to throw your whole self into the job. It was like a divorce, but a friendly divorce (laughs).

The misconception is that Hopper's is a wine shop filled only with high end bottles. In fact, 40% of the bottles are under $20. At Carte des Vins, I want to offer people the most bang for the buck. The core of our offerings will come from the Old World, sort of like the wine list at Herbsaint. I really like the fact that I can sell a Rhone wine for $15. A wine that was made over there with care and dedication, bottled, and shipped, and it is great for only $15 bucks. That is amazing. I'll try to turn people on to wines they haven't tried previously.

It is important for the casual wine drinker to find a retailer they trust and develop a relationship. It is easy to do. Walk into a retailer, introduce yourself, and ask them to put together a mix case of wines for you at such and such price a bottle. I dont understand why people are afraid to ask questions when it comes to wine. In every other merchant transaction, the customer has no problems asking questions. Look, when I go to wine tastings, I am constantly asking questions. Customers should do the same.

I'll tell one story about the foolishness of wine tasting notes. I was at a tasting once of German wines. And the person leading the tasting had some initials behind their name. German wines are incredibly confusing. The names on the labels, the styles, the language. I love German wines but they still confuse me. A wine buyer from a restaurant asked a question and in the question he mentioned he "got an herbal note." So the person leading the tasting says, "Yes, I get a lot of blackberry leaf." I spit my wine out and started howling laughing. Seriously, who the fuck has ever eaten a blackberry leaf? Nor remembered it how it tasted to compare it to a wine.

I don't like that kind of talk. I tend to describe wines very basically. Is there red fruit? black fruit? What is the weight like in the mouth. Heavy tannins or light? I've never had a gooseberry and I don't know anyone who has, but there it is apparently inside of every bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. I don't talk like that because the average wine drinker drinks the wine and gets discouraged because they don't taste "blackberry leaf."

After Katrina, my wife and I rebuilt a double. She got the bathroom and big walk-in closet and I got a wine cellar with a cork floor. In there, I'd say 60% is red and white Burgundy. I have a good chunk of Rhone wines, some Italian, some Germans, of course a few cases of Champagne. 2 cases of Sauterne, about the same of port. I hold some cases for some friends. All in all, I have about 400-500 bottles, but the capacity to keep around 1200.

One section of my cellar I like to call the "You don't have to ask me if you can open this wine." It is about 10 cases of everyday wines. And this is where the other wines from around the world are represented. Some great Spanish whites, these Greek white wines I really like, basic burgundies.

We eat out a lot, so I do pay attention to wine lists. Some that really impress me are Commander's Palace and Stella! The Windsor Court has really made some great strides. Sarah (Kavanaugh) has a very enviable wines by the glass program. And then of course Galatoire's.

When food is too spicy, it makes pairing wines incredibly difficult. And so being that much of New Orleans food is spicy, that can sometimes cause a problem. But in general, the food of New Orleans is based on the cuisines of the Old World where they have been drinking wine for thousands of years. I find that Rhone wines go very well with Cajun food. The wines of Southwest France also, which has similar use of one pot cooking and heavy use of sausages.

Seafood gumbo, I'd pair a pinot gris from Luxemburg because it has weight, fruit, and is not too sweet. With trout almondine, it has to be white burgundy. For grilllades and grits, a Vacqueryas or Gigondas, something from the Rhone valley, but lighter. Bread pudding is so sweet that I would want to pair it with something with a good bit of acid and lesser sweetness. So maybe a muscat based wine from the Languedoc or an Icewine.

Most people drink their whites too cold and their reds too warm. Stick that red in the fridge for 30 minutes before you open it and let it sit for 10 before you drink it. Take your whites out of the fridge 30 minutes before you want to drink it. You will notice a much better wine drinking experience. Also, remember you don't have to spend a lot of money to drink aged wines. Buy a case of simple Bourgogne
Rouge or Bourgogne Blanc at $15 a bottle or so, and just sit on it for 2-3 years. Wines like that really benefit from just a few years of aging. If you can commit to leaving stuff alone for a few years, you will always have a ready supply of fantastic wine to drink. One last tip, buy white wines in winter and reds in summer. It will sort of force you not to touch them for a while, and you can get better deals because merchants are looking to last seasons whites or reds from their inventory.

We typically figure out what we are cooking first, than we pull the wine. The other day I got some fresh speckled trout from a friend. So came home, made a courtbouillon, and opened a Sancerre that had a good bit of richness.

I love rose. And sure it is cool and trendy to be into rose, but I love them. They are good with food, but they are also good without food. So in summer I drink a lot of roses. I also like mineral driven crisp whites, wines from the Jura region of France, and the perhaps the best summer wine, basic Chablis.

Windows on the World by Kevin Zraly. The Wine Atlas by Robinson and Johnson. Adventures on the Wine Route by Kermit Lynch.

I'd like to see wineries stop reacting to market first rather than paying attention to their location second. 15 years ago Syrah was planted all over California, now you can't give it away. Look, France has had 1,000 years on us to figure out what grows best where. No reason California can't figure that out also. And I am completely over the "Super" thing. the other day someone tried to sell me a Super Sicilian. Look just because you add Cabernet, it doesn't make it super.

I'd like to see more blends from California or at least more transparency in the labeling as to what grapes are actually in that wine. I've drank far too many California Pinot Noirs that have Syrah in them. Italy had a huge scandal a few years ago with some unscrupulous vintners. Look, there are vintners in the Languedoc who choose to label as a vin de pays rather than AOC because the non-AOC wines just does better on their lands. There is nothing wrong with that. Grow, bottle, and sell what grows best where you are.

A restaurant is incredibly expensive to operate. If people knew how slim the margins are they wouldn't complain about the mark up on wine. And look, that cocktail you are drinking instead of wine? That is marked up much more than the wine. I tell people this all the time, when you go to a restaurant, order wines you like and know rather than taking a flyer. If you gamble and lose, that markup hurts a lot more.

After tasting wine all day, most of the time I just want a nice, cold beer.

One case of wine with money no object? Fine, but they all get to be magnums. First, I'd get one of those bottles of Veuve-Clicquot from the 1800's they just found at the bottom of the ocean. Then 1 each of the Grand Crus from Domaine de la Romanee Conti, let's say Romanee Conti, La Tache, and Romanee-St.-Vivant. A Raveneau Grand Cru Chablis from a really great year. One bottle of First Growth Bourdeaux pre-phylloxera. A German dessert wine selection from Crocker like a Trockenbeerenauslese. A '98 Beaucastel made from 100% Roussanne. An old bottle of Saumur-Champigny from Domaine Clos Rougeard. A bottle of '51 Y'Quem. My wife's favorite champagne is 96 Demiere Ansiot, so would need a bottle of that. Finally, a Musigny from Comte de Voguey from 1978, my birth year.

The Fried Shrimp Po-Boy

Fried shrimp po-boy from Tracey's.

If the roast beef po-boy is the most infamous sandwich in the city, the fried shrimp version may be the most popular, especially with tourists trepidatious of dripping debris on their clothes. What better way to taste the bounty of our local waters than fried golden brown and stuffed between two halves of french bread? (To answer my own question, how about two halves of pan bread a la Casamento's?)

Let's break down what makes a top notch fried shrimp po-boy.

Shrimp Size - Bigger is always better, right? I'm not sure if that's necessarily true when it comes to fried shrimp. At one extreme are those who say that jumbo shrimp are preferred because they deliver a higher ratio of crustacean to coating. But it's tough to really "pile on" U-10s, and there's nothing more disappointing than finding only 6 shrimp in your po-boy, as large as they may be. On the other hand, popcorn shrimp were designed for over stuffed po-boys, and some purveyors (like Crabby Jack's) load up their loaves to the point more shrimp spill onto the butcher paper than stay between the bread. Of course, I like my shrimp sized medium.


The shrimp runeth over at Crabby Jack's.

Shrimp Coating - I like flour on shrimp and corn meal on fish. A thin coating is preferable to a thick batter and crunch is key. Bland is bad; if the coating on fried shrimp is not seasoned with enough salt and pepper, you may as well be eating paper mache. Additional spices - namely cayenne and lemon - are acceptable as long as they are not overpowering. But you know what I notice most about fried shrimp? Where the batter sticks to the shrimp.

Dressed - In my opinion, pickles are the most important dressing on a fried shrimp po-boy. You need that acid to cut through the fried goodness. Now, I go 2 ways when it comes to dressing. Option #1: "The Standard" - lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and mayo. Option #2: "The Purest" - buttered bread, pickles, and hot sauce. If I'm feeling wild and crazy, I may even opt for remoulade or tartar sauce. (Blasphemy!)

What are the criteria for your perfect fried shrimp po-boy and who serves the best one in town? We're all ears in the comments.

Weekend Roundup

All day Saturday and Sunday, the French Quarter plays host to Vieux To Do, which rolls three free festivals into one great weekend. The Old U.S. Mint will be the site of both the Lousiana Seafood Festival and the Cajun-Zyeco Music Festival, while just around the corner the Farmers Market will be celebrating the Creole Tomato Festival. Delicious food and great music - what more else do you need?

On Saturday starting at 2:00pm, the ordinary men with extraordinary moves will be stomping through Mid-City for the second performance of the 610 Stompers Ball Crawl, stopping for libations at various bars along the way. For $35, you can join in on the fun without growing a mustache.

Velvet

A tea cake at Velvet Espresso Bar holds all of the joy of cake in a fraction of the size.

There are certain things I am willing to let other people do for me because they can do it better. Examples include oil changes, haircuts, flight, and making coffee. Coffee has just never really been something I really saw the use in fussing over. It is early in the morning, you are tired and grouchy, someone hands you coffee and then your day begins.

Places like Starbuck's, CC's, and PJ's have built empires based on the fact that they can make a cup of coffee better or at least more conveniently than you. I like that about America. Velvet Espresso Bar on Magazine across from Whole Foods has started out pretty strong in this vein..Tucked into an space no bigger than a dorm room, Velvet prides itself on sourcing the best coffee from around the world. Here you can find coffee beans from exotic locales with cartoonish names like Tanzania or offerings from roasters such as Stumptown, who appear to be the coffee roasting equivalent of Domaine Romanee-Conti  Read here: I googled it.

The espresso machine and the grinder were not getting along when we visited, so we instead we opted for a siphon with beans from Guatemala, which I used to enjoy fresh when I picked beans there, fresh coffee right off the trees, I mean. A siphon basically works like this. Some water is poured into a small container and heated to boiling. When it boils pressure or science or something forces it into a second vessel which has the ground beans placed into. After some stirring and a few minutes, a cold, wet rag is placed around the bottom vessel. The temperature lowered, the coffee drains through a filter and into the original vessel. It is then poured into your cup. In college, people did this all the time, but not with coffee.

This was a very good cup coffee. Rounding out the experience were a selection of tea cakes. Miniature cupcakes really, but with interesting fillings like peanut butter, orange, and strawberry. There are worse ways to start your day than a piece of cake a fine cup of coffee.

Velvet Espresso Bar- Birdie
5637 Magazine St.
450-2129

Winesday

Peter - Ah, bubbles. Effervescent refreshment just in time for summer. This glass of bubbly is well balanced - not too sweet or too dry. Would make for a delicious kir royale. While I know that sparkling wines are more versatile than we realize, I am partial to a glass at either the beginning or the end of a meal. For the alpha, a trip to Boucherie for their long, thin french fries drizzled with garlic butter and sprinkled with parmesan. For the omega, the strawberry shortcake from Commander's Palace.

Rene: This wine is pale golden in color in the glass. On the tongue, it is creamy with a touch of honeyed sweetness and a sharp streak of acidity. Maybe a little bit of peach flavor, but nothing overt. The sweetness and bubbles make it perfect for something spicy and salty. Wine with bubbles happens to be my favorite wine to drink with food. Why? Because you can pair it  with food just as you would a cold beer. For that, the Kon Po chicken from Jung's Golden Dragon, studded with those raisined hot peppers or maybe the hot beef soup from Korea House would do. Then again the red beans and rice with hot sausage and a side of fried chicken from Dooky Chase's would be perfect with this wine.

Joe the Wine Guy: Glad to see yall enjoy the finer things in life like this 2009 Stellina di Notte Prosecco. This affordable sparkling wine opens with delicate aromas of citrus, pear, melon, lemon and almonds. Those flavors are catapulted on the palate by the elegant bubbles. The wine's body is light, with a lovely balance between crisp acidity and a hint of sweetness and minerals.  This wine retails for $15 and you can find it at Dorignac's, Oak, and Ste. Marie.

All Alon the Watchtower

Chef Alon Shaya heads up the kitchen at Domenica in the Roosevelt Hotel. He is also an actor who has received critical acclaim for his role in Treme as the dans le merde grill cook. A native of Israel, Alon spent a year in Italy before opening Domenica with his partner Chef John Besh. 20ish questions on the clock.

I was really young when I got into cooking. My mom worked two jobs, so I became in charge of cooking for the family in 1st grade. Always looked at cooking as necessity...to do my part to help the family.

After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, I went to work for Jean Louis Palladin in Las Vegas. Spent three years out there working in a variety of restaurants inside the Rio Hotel. Then worked in an Italian place in St. Louis where Octavio (Manilla) worked. Then, came to New Orleans and worked at Besh Steakhouse.

The idea for a John and I to do an Italian place came about before Katrina. I had always cooked Italian food and it was my dream to open an Italian restaurant. John also had passion as he had visited often while training in Europe. So, Katrina hits and all that, took us a few years to get Besh Steakhouse back on track. Then time came for me to go to Italy and so off I went for a year. Knowing we would open Domenica when I came back. Originally we wanted to do a real family focused place with spaghetti and meatballs and the like, but then when Roosevelt had an opening we refined the idea.

First stop in Italy, was in Bergamo. Marc Vetri flew to Italy with me and took me to the family in Bergamo that he had worked with. Bergamo lives very much in the past and culinararily they never really had much of an identity and borrowed from many other regions. Then after a few months I went to Parma, where I worked from 6 am til 3 learning how to make salamis and then from 3 til midnight in the family's restaurant. I stayed in Parma for 7 months and that family became my second family. Then I went to Bussetto for a few months.

On my days off I would explore restaurants, or other villages or towns, or we would all just gather and eat. Sunday's were the time when family and food came together, and I wanted my restaurant to have a similar vibe. What is so interesting about Italy is that in many things like style, architecture, technology they are fashion forward. But in cooking, they are all about preserving the past. For instance, you will go into someone's modern kitchen and they make lasagna bolognese. In some ways the interior of Domenica reflects that.

Anolini filled with nutmeg, Parmagianno Reggiano, and mortadella is a textbook dish from Parma. The Bolzano pizza represents my time spent in the Alto Adige, where you get lots of smoked meats, specifically pork. That pizza has roasted pork shoulder, fennel, bacon and fontina cheese. The panna cotta on our menu is the recipe from a panna cotta I had in the Piedmote which was just the best panna cotta I'd ever had. The culatello is from Bussetto.

The anolini is traditionally served in broth in Parma. When we did that here people did not like it, they found it very underwhelming. So now we serve those anolini with tomato sauce and people love them. Another example is there is a Venetian dish of fish in a sour sauce with pickeld veggies. I love it, but I think I was the only person. So we try to stick to simpler, which I find always translates to be best.

Peaches are coming in soon as well as blueberries. So thinking of putting those peaches on a pizza with gorgonzola cheese. Watermelon and goat cheese salad will soon go back on the menu. And in summer we start pickling things. There will be fried artichokes and asparagus, prosciutto with melon. We try and take a micro-seasonal approach to cooking here. That is how the Italians cook as well.

My culinary approach is not to do much inventing. I pull from my time in Italy where regions have had the same dishes for centuries. These dishes never change and are unique to each region. Our menu is based off of first what is seasonal and then doing the best you can with that ingredient. I like taking those old dishes from Italy and introducing them to New Orleans. For instance, octopus carpaccio is a snack on the beaches south of Liguria. Or the passover meals. I love doing those meals. In fact, many of our guests for those meals were Catholic priests who wanted to eat these foods they had studied in the Old Testament.

I don't like not having as much time to spend with my girlfriend. She is awesome, graduated from Tulane a few years ago and is originally from Georgia. She spends time with her family back in Georgia and being a head chef means many times I can't go with her because it is NOWFE or Mardi Gras or Easter or whatever.

My favorite part of being a chef is mentoring young cooks or disadvantaged people jobs that lead to careers in the food world. Angel, one of our cooks, came from Cafe Reconcile and she has become such an integral part of our team that I can't imagine our kitchen without her.

I really like making pizzas. Working with with the wood burning oven (at right) and the dough is more akin to dealing with people than cooking. The dough is alive and each day it needs to be treated differently.

The wood burning oven is my favorite kitchen tool. You can do everything in there from breads, sardines, roast goat, spinach and ricotta crespelle, you name it, I would like to cook it in that oven.

The Encyclopedia of Italian Cooking which is 1,000 pages long and all in Italian has references to every Italian dish. Marc Vetri's cookbook, il Viaggio. Salumi, another 1,000 page behemoth that I use all the time for salumi making. And then my mom sends me all these Jews in Italy books which chronicle the food of Jews in Italy. Reading those always makes me fall back in love with being Israeli.

I'd love to cook and eat with Mario Batali for obvious reasons. Marc Vetri who has been a big influence on me. Jean Louis Palladin, who although he is dead, first saw me as a poor fish cook and I 'd love to show him what I've accomplished. And Watch Chupal, a Thai chef from Vegas I worked with. I haven't cooked for him in at least a decade and I'd like to do so again.

I don't like crazy fusion. Cooks are bastardizing culture when they combine traditions. That and the trend of trying too hard. They just end up screwing it up.

Parma. I spent so much time in Parma that I am really drawn to that regions' style of cooking. Parma swears it is the best region in Italy. The people never get tired of prosciutto or Parmagianno cheese. I love the fact that these people live off of these ingredients. You know here in America, you have success with a restaurant and everyone asks, "What is your next restaurant?" In Parma, and Italy on the whole, a family has one restaurant, and everyone works there, they aren't opening any more restaurants. I plan on Domenica being a restaurant I have for the rest of my life.

I love Vietnamese food. I go all over. Dong Phuong for the pork pastries and banh mi. Ba mien for squid. 9 Roses for the BBQ grills. Kim Son for fish. Tan Dinh for shrimp in house sauce with pickled veg and rice.

No. Uh oh. No music in my kitchen.

Love that I don't feel like this is a job. This is my livelihood. Making people happy through food. It is a good calling to have.

No, never worked in the front of the house. But have always had a strong connection with customer experience. I never want to lose touch with their experience because their experience influences what happens in the kitchen. The back of the house works so hard, I need to insure that translates to a great experience in the front of the house.

After work, I love going home, hanging out with girlfriend and dog, having a glass of wine. In general, during my time off I don't go out on the town, I much prefer to spend time with the people I love.

A Taste of Summer

Seasonality. It's a fancy way of saying "cook what is fresh." The best chefs and home cooks realize that food tastes best when cooked and served when nature tells us that it's time.  Right now, along with sweltering heat and humidity, summer in New Orleans brings us delicious things like blueberries, softshell crabs, creole tomatoes, and more.

If you have been following this blog for more than a week, then you know that Rene handles all of the recipe writing in the Blackened Out kitchen. My dining prowess has long surpassed my cooking skills. But if you hand me a minimal number of impeccable ingredients, it's amazing what I can do.

It helps the only "cooking" required for this recipe is a few slices of a sharp knife.

Caprese Salad

• Ingredients
• Creole Tomatoes
• These came from the garden of the father-in-law of one of the secretaries at my office. Access to home grown creole tomatoes is one of the best job perks in the legal world.
• Fresh Mozzarella
• $10/lb from St. James Cheese Company.
• Thai Basil
• $3/bunch from the Saturday morning Crescent City Farmer's Market.  Why Thai basil and not sweet basil? Because that's what the vendor had.
• Salt & Pepper
• Olive Oil & Balsamic Vinegar
• Directions
• Slice, chop, sprinkle, and drizzle.
• Try not to screw anything up

It's going to be a long, hot summer. We might as well take advantage of everything the season brings us.

Blue Dot Special

Doughnuts were standard Saturday morning fair growing up. While most of you exalt the rather dry and commissary style doughnuts of McKenzie's, we opted instead for Ross's Donuts at the end of Metairie Road. Besides being an incredible baker, Ross also had a bit of a stutter and liked to tell jokes. The result was a run for doughnuts could easily eat up your entire morning.

Recently, Blue Dot Donuts opened on Canal St. which just so happens to be well-positioned as a detour following an early Saturday morning walk around City Park with The Hounds. The Hounds are fans of the glazed ones, but only with a cup of coffee and the Saturday cartoons. What a bunch of weird dogs.

While the regular doughnuts at Blue Dot are nothing to sneeze at, it is the special flavors that really grab my attention. Peanut butter and jelly just so happens to be one of the all time greatest flavor combinations known to man. And here it is, a jelly filled doughnut with a topping of creamy peanut butter, some chopped peanuts and then a wedge of strawberry. It is as the French would say, "Pretty bad ass."

Lindsay is very partial to cake doughnuts. We have been searching for a chocolate cake doughnut throughout the the Gulf South for the last three plus years to no avail. While we did not find the elusive Black Pearl at Blue Dot, she did find a very good selection of flavored cake doughnuts like the strawberry, blueberry, cake with strawberry icing, and a chocolate and coconut one. The strawberry cake was her favorite, and I must say she has impeccable taste.

Finally, because what good is a meal without dessert, we had a red velvet cupcake. I've never really understood the appeal of red velvet cake as it really just seems like a conduit for cream cheese frosting. But this doughnut was moist and a damn fine conduit at that.

Blue Dot - Birdie
4301 Canal St.
218-4866

Atchafalaya

Restaurants like Matt & Naddie's, Dante's Kitchen, and Dick & Jenny's have gained a strong reputation by filling a niche between the larger factions of gourmet bistros and neighborhood joints. The premise is simple - serve dishes just a few ticks lower in sophistication than the former but at prices a few steps above the latter. This winning formula has boded well for the aforementioned eateries, and the same can be said for Atchafalaya, whose menu execution falls squarely in between those two genres. Which is to say, right where it should be.

Atchafalaya has been quite the hot ticket lately, to the point where walk-ins are rarely accepted during dinner or the uberly popular weekend brunch service. (We actually walked out one recent Sunday after calling 10 minutes ahead and giving our name for an available table, then waiting for 30 minutes while others were seated before us.) Even if your table is reserved, be prepared to wait in the small bar area where a group of musicians (a pianist, maybe a trumpeter or a bassist) play slow soft tunes. A wooden, hollow jigsaw puzzle creates a faux wall which separates the bar from the main dining room, and I have yet to dine with a person who did not say, “I love that little fake wall thing.”

The list of small plates includes my favorite dish in the house: the veal cheek meat pies. A thin, crunchy exterior protects a succulently shredded, almost creamy, interior. I could eat a dozen of these and have no regrets about missing anything else on the menu. Fried green tomatoes ($12) are sauced with remoulade and topped with an avalanche of crabmeat. Nothing wrong with that. The standard cheese plate is porked up with the hogshead variety. Well played. Roasted beet carpaccio ($9) was a vegetarian delight on the first take, underwhelming on the second.

Pastas dishes consistently fell short of expectations. Free-form Crab Ravioli ($14) had thin sheets cooked far short of al dente and a beurre blanc that was a little weak/bland. Pasta Atchafalaya ($18) has perfectly cooked crawfish and shrimp tangled among fettucini, but the sauce was thin and watery.

For entrees the Boudin-stuffed Quail ($20) is difficult to pass up, with a crispy jock-strap of bacon surrounding a partially deboned quail filled with creamy boudin. The accompanying collards had an excellent vinegary flavor. Shrimp & Grits ($23) are served head-on in a spicy, buttery sauce. Stuffed Flounder ($23) was topped with a heavy shower of crispy breadcrumbs and a scatter of crawfish tails that acted as the “stuffing.” An interesting update to a dish which can be overwhelmed with heavily moistened bread crumbs, but the jury is still out on which version is preferred.  A daily special of pan seared snapper was slightly overcooked, but the crawfish dirty rice accompanying the latter was made with a short grain variety that created the right amount of stickiness that I just love.

For dessert, most tables gravitate toward the moist red velvet cake with a restrained application of cream cheese frosting (and for good reason). But don't overlook the peanut butter fudge brownie ice cream, whose flavor profile conjured images of a frozen jar of JIF which fell into a Duncan Hines mixing bowl. I loved every spoonful.

Owner Anthony Tocco (of the Circle Bar and Snake & Jake's fame) is running the show and is a friendly host. In fact, the staff on the whole is quite knowledgeable, from the bartender suggesting a newly received Italian selection as an alternative to our Godello, to the server pointing us to the freshest seafood available that night. The beverage program is very strong - the wine list has both depth and diversity in terms of price and grape varietals, and the self-service Bloody Mary bar makes waiting for a brunch table infinitely more tolerable.

Atchafalaya - Par/Birdie
901 Louisiava Avenue
(504) 891-9626
Dinner - 7 Nights
Lunch - Tues-Fri
Brunch - Sat & Sun

Winesday

Peter: This wine is intense. Dark color. Strong tannins. Drinking this wine tastes like staring into the abyss, but in a good way. If I had to guess the grape, I would say Petite Sirah. This would go deliciously well with a bittersweet chocolate dessert. Maybe the chocolate decadence cake from Cafe Degas (courtesy of Maurice's) or the molten chocolate cake from Chateau du Lac.

Rene: Big structure to this wine, it cascades from cherry to spice and then a meaty finish. I don't even want to go out to dinner with this wine. No instead, I want a cold January night, some friends, a roaring fire, some leather chairs, a big wheel of blue cheese, some spiced pecans, and hours of conversation. To do so, we would need more than one bottle. There will of course be a hangover in the morning, but it is a price we should all be willing to pay.

Joe the Wine Guy: 2004 Rosenblum Cellars Santa Barbara County Syrah is what you have in your glass. This offering is sourced grapes grown in the warm days and cool evenings of Santa Barbara County. The enticing opaque purple color and room-filling aromas of blackberries, smoke, plum, licorice, and cracked black pepper give way to a lush palate loaded with dark berries, roasted herbs, and black currants. This wine is perfect with roasted meats, pasta in red sauces, and ripe cheeses. It retails for $15 and can be found at Leblanc's and Tsunami.