Bayona: Is It Worth It?

A collection of cocktails at Bayona

Susan Spicer has been a culinary bad ass for about thirty years longer than the cronut will be popular. Bayona, which she opened with Regina Keever almost a quarter century ago, has been welding cuisines together long before the term fusion. A look around at the chefs of the city's newest darlings reveals that many of them made a stop on Dauphine at one time or another. Spicer's cookbook is solid gold and Mondo is a worldly enough neighborhood restaurant that stock in it could one day be traded on the NYSE. Hagiography done.

But eating at Bayona? Does anyone do that enough?

The answer is probably not. 

It is easy to draw parallels between the interior of Bayona and the much missed Bistro at the Maison de Ville. This would make sense as Spicer was the opening chef of that vaunted establishment. Dark, rich fabrics, sturdy furnishings, paintings, and tablecloths cloak the successive rooms in what would give a modern restaurant designer a heart attack. Service is considerate, young, and punctual enough for you to offer them a job babysitting. They'll even track down a cocktail recipe, should you ask. 

The food at Bayona has always begged to be defined but rarely captured with a simple phrase. Creole seems too generic, world cuisine too self-important, eclectic too dismissive. The food is fantastic. Let's just define it like that.

Spicer's best work is in the early stages of a meal. Her sweetbreads know no peer. Plump and crisp their creaminess plays foil to crisp potatoes and earthy beets. Italian arancini get a Provence, Yall twist with tart goat cheese and Alabama peaches filling in for mozzarella and red gravy. Simplicity as the rule applies on her crouton plastered with goat cheese and adorned with mushrooms in a Madeira cream. A roasted garlic soup is just that: roasted garlic, onions, stock, thickened with bread. 

The smoked duck PB&J is too rich by half and I always regret ordering it. In theory, it sounds like a winner. Smoked duck, cashew butter, and pepper jelly piled onto toasted bread; but the sandwich's flavors come across as muddled and confused. Better is a bowl of barbecue shrimp, pimento cheese grits, and greens which is like putting together an awesome plate of food at a heavenly church picnic.

You likely haven't been to Bayona in some time. Remedy that. And one more thing, get the watermelon jalapeno cocktail. After you do, email me for the recipe.

Bayona: Is It Worth It? Yes.
430 Dauphine St.
525-4455

Dining Al Fresco

The courtyard at Martinique Bistro.

Although it's a rainy Monday morning, these past 2 weekends of beautiful weather have proven that Spring has begun, and with it the countdown has started on the fleeting outdoor dining season. When the sun is shining and the mercury reads 75° or lower, any time spent indoors seems like a missed opportunity, and that includes time spent eating.

Most of my outdoor dining is done on Saturday or Sunday during lunch, and at those times I usually have zero motivation to dress well enough to enjoy the setting of Commander's courtyard or the patio behind Bayona. Luckily, there are plenty of options casual enough to only require throwing on a pair of jeans.

Two weeks ago when I walked my dog through Exchange Alley, I could not believe how many tables The Green Goddess had set up outside. There had to be at least 40 diners enjoying Sunday brunch in the sun, and another 20 or so waiting patiently for the next available table. A few blocks away at Sylvain, the rear courtyard is usually full at all times, and that particular day was no exception. Headed toward Uptown, Martinique is always one of the first restaurants that come to mind during this time of year and is on a surprisingly short list restaurants that offers lunch/brunch on Saturday. Dante's Kitchen is also in that category, as is St. James Cheese Company, which is probably my favorite spot in the city for an outdoor lunch on Saturday.

What are restaurants to do when people are anxious to eat outside but they have no courtyard or patio? Throw a few tables out on the sidewalk, of course. La Petite Grocery and Coquette both offer front row seating to Magazine Street. The sidewalk tables at Cochon are usually full on almost every night during dinner. And although its not open for lunch on the weekends, it seems remiss to write about great outdoor dining spots without mentioning Herbsaint.

Yesterday as I drove down Freret Street, I noticed that Company Burger had set up picnic tables outside, and I had to appreciate the great lengths that restaurateurs will go to accomodate our ever so short al fresco dining season. Whether you are dining on Shrimp Henican in the courtyard at Commander's or scarfing down a roast beef po-boy on a white picnic table in the back parking lot at Parkway Bakery, be thankful that you are enjoying it while you can.

Dueling Bloggers: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Last Saturday while poking around the Farmer's Market, a devoted reader who is not related to either of us, asked, "You guys should debate restaurants that never change their menus." The reader went on to note that they had gone to Lilette the night before "for about the thousandth time" and that the menu never changes. "We really like Lilette, but come on!" he implored. So without further ado, let's debate menus and restaurants.

Rene: The idea of the ever evolving menu at a restaurant is a relatively new one. Well, that is not entirely true. Places like Chez Panisse and the thousand of French restaurants it was inspired by have served different menus everyday. Certainly a restaurant with an ever changing menu has become very popular in the last ten years. This is mostly due to the proliferation and abundance of farmers markets along with a growing sense of seasonal based cooking. All of which is a long winded way of saying, while I enjoy restaurants that are always challenging themselves to work with what God gives them, I am not sold that a restaurant has to use that formula to be considered great. The idea of a restaurant constantly changing its menu is more a reaction to what the consumer wants. Through magazines, shows, etc... the way a restaurant appeals to consumers is by being "market inspired". While it is a noble and delicious goal, it tends to make many restaurants seem monotonous. I want more personality out of a restaurant.

Peter: You know what lacks personality? Tomatoes in December and oysters in July. Should a chef force himself to use scientifically altered produce and frozen seafood just because his customers want to eat the same crawfish etouffee in November that they did in May? Or does it make more sense for a chef to talk to his suppliers, figure out what the harvest brought this week, and decide what to tailor his menu toward the freshest ingredients available? Changing your menu to reflect the seasons is not monotonous; serving Oysters Rockefeller and Baked Alaska everyday for 170 years is.

Rene: Distilling it down even further, there are chefs the world over who have created dishes people travel to taste. I am thinking of bites like Robuchon's pommes puree, Thomas Keller's Oysters and Pearls, or Drago's chargrilled oysters. Dishes define restaurants. No trip to Herbsaint is complete for me without an order of spaghetti with guanciale and fried poached egg. There is no reason for a menu to change completely when there are dishes that can stand the test of time. I don't begrudge either tactic a restaurant may take, but I get cravings for specific dishes or specific approaches to food more than I get cravings for a specific restaurant. Imagine the horror if you walked into La Boca and learned they had become vegetarian?

Peter: My worst nightmare is walking into La Boca and having Jared tell me that the sweetbreads and hanger steak have been replaced by watermelon carpaccio and eggplant stuffed with bulgur wheat. That being said, I understand that sometimes I can order flash fried brussels sprouts with my skirt steak and other times I have to settle for asparagus. Just as the crops change with the seasons, so do my tastebuds, which is why I'm more likely to opt for a restaurant that serves vichychoisse in the summer instead of one that insists on serving gumbo even when its 110 degrees outside. And maybe if we as consumers are more willing to accept the fact that we can't always order what we want, then our ecosystem will become more sustainable and less reliant on foods with artificial preservatives.

Rene: Take for instance, Boucherie which is always cycling in new dishes, cuisines, and techniques into their repertoire. Go there this month and Indian may be the theme. However, one is always guaranteed to find a few select dishes - the boudin balls, the grit cake with blackened shrimp - never leave. They don't leave the menu because they are an anchor to the chef's vision. A constantly changing menu is a sign of a chef who is both continuing to learn and also unsure of his or her food personality. I don't mean to say a chef should ever stop learning and expanding, but rather I like them to know a hit when they taste it.

Peter: You have enunciated what is known as the Great Compromise, a/k/a the Three-Fifths Compromise. If a restaurant allocates 60% of its menu to the greatest hits and the other 40% to dishes comprised of seasonal ingredients or the chef's own innovations, then harmony is achieved both by giving the people what they have come to expect from the kitchen and by allowing the chef enough room both to stay creative and to take advantage of nature's cycle. Boucherie and Herbsaint are great examples, but Susan Spicer has it down to a science at Bayona. On the left side of the menu are the signature dishes - goat cheese crouton, garlic soup, sweetbreads with sherry mustard - and on the right side of the menu are the nightly specials that change with the chef's whim and whatever raw ingredients are available. A little something for everyone.

Bayona

"Our restaurant gives you New Orleans. Our menu gives you the world."

Long before Chris DeBarr introduced far out foods like huitlacoche and uthappam at The Green Goddess, fans of Chef Susan Spicer had eaten around the world more times than Jules Verne.  At a time when stalwarts of creole cuisine are fearful of pho and barbacoa tacos surpassing gumbo and po-boys in terms of popularity, no one seems to acknowledge that Chef Spicer has been successfully integrating foreign cuisines into the local repetoire for over 20 years.

Bayona (pronounced "BYE-own-uh") reflects a lifetime devotion to great food from both near and far. Paris, Acadiana, Alsace, the Mid-East, and the Far East are all represented on the menu, which is divided into two sections: "Bayona Signatures" on the left and the nightly specials on the right. In an era where bistros have cut the number of appetizer and entree selections down to 7 or fewer, Bayona usually offers double digit choices in both categories.

But before you make it to your table, you first need to get in the door. Reservations at Bayona have been tough to come by in the past few months, even on Monday nights. Walk-ins are for the most part non-existent, and I counted no less than 10 parties who were turned away while we sat in the lounge for 5 minutes waiting for our table on a Thursday night.

It's tough to veer away from beginning a meal with the garlic soup or goat cheese crouton whose foundation is softened by a madeira cream sauce and earthy mushrooms which can make you swear off the slimy steakhouse versions forever. But I always tell myself, "I can order those any time I come here." So instead I opt for specials like lengua pupusas with a flaky exterior that had the texture and taste of grandma's pie crust made with lard (which is to say that it was delicious). The dish was completed with an earthy mole and wedges of tomatillo whose tartness cut the richness of the rest of the dish.

But even though I can order the sweetbreads any time I come to Bayona, I'll be damned if they don't make an appearance at some point on my table. For every time that La Boca persuades me that grilling sweetbreads is the best way to go, Bayona's classic version sways me back the other way with its lemon caper butter, slices of carrot, and diced beets. Rabbit is a mainstay on the nightly special menu. On my last visit it was a roulade stuffed with chorizo and paired with a deboned frog leg that was chicken fried perfection, with vinegary collard greens and thick-cut sweet potatoes with a sticky-sweet molasses glaze completing the dish. Steaks are always available as a special, but the standard cut of red meat is a crusty lamb loin served with a winy zinfandel sauce.

Usually by the time that dessert rolls around, I am struggling to overcome my satiation. But that hasn't stopped me from sampling a rich chocolate torte with caramel or black forest cake layered with vanilla and a spike of kirsch. I've tried both lemon and almond versions of the semifreddo, and while the texture of both were initially brittle, they melted away into creaminess just from the heat of the tongue.

During my last 3 visits, there has only been one disappointment in service and one on the menu. If I am spending $70 on a bottle of wine, I don't think it's asking much for it to be served at the proper temperature. Not one bottle of red wine that I ordered came out of temperature controlled storage. The lone culinary misstep was a "shaved" squash salad sliced much too thick and tasting overwhelmingly bitter flavor. Donald Link executes a much more successful version of this dish at Cochon, leaving you to wonder if the student has surpassed the teacher?

Not likely.

Bayona - Birdie, after missing a putt for Eagle by two feet
430 Dauphine Street
(504) 525-4455
Lunch: Wed-Sat
Dinner: Mon-Sat

A Cookbook You Should Own

Many restaurant chefs attempt to write a cookbook filled to the brim with authentic recipes from the kitchen of __________. Most of the times these books fail. This is due to a variety of factors. First, they have skills that pay bills. Second, they have kitchens the size of your house. Third, they have a team of assistants and chefs who ply them with things like lobster stock and hen of the woods mushrooms caked in mud.

Susan Spicer, along with Paula Disbrowe, has pulled off the impossible in Crescent City Cooking. Together they have crafted a cookbook which not only makes you want to go to Bayona, but also to cook her food at home. And for the most part, the brilliance of her cooking translates into dishes you can actually make And without needing a flock of sous chefs or immersion circulators.

Chef Spicer's Garlic Soup has been a mainstay on our table at Thanksgiving for the last two years. Here is the essence of the recipe: low heat, loads of garlic and onions, let them turn mahogany as the bird in the oven, add stock, chunks of day old french bread, blend. That didn't hurt one bit, did it?

Over July 4th, the blog tested her jalepeno roast pork. Again here is the jist: take jalepeno, garlic, olive oil, mash em together, and coat pork butt, roast low and slow and covered, for four hours. The meat shreds into a succulent, earthy expression of X Rated Pork. You can feed an army with this recipe for about $10. The following day the remainder of the pork went into a pot with some tomato sauce, cumin, and beer to create a delicious taco filing.

Jalepeno roasted pork with queso fresco, hot sauce and parsley

Crabmeat is da bomb dot com blackslash your mom (trying to avoid spam mail) right now. I am not a fan of hot crabmeat, to me it always seems a poor use of a brilliant ingredient. Chef Spicer's cold crabmeat salad is tart and tangy, a delightful foil for the buttery rich crabmeat blessing our markets right now. While it may seem a little unnecessary to blanch diced carrots, if that is "hard", take a week and try to make Keller's salmon cornets.

Cookbooks, for me, are often just a great insight into the mind of a cook and a place to learn new flavor combinations and techniques. But somehow through a combination of charm, sincerity, and toughness, I find myself not only following Chef Spicer's recipes to the T, but also wanting to experiment with her ideas (see tacos). That's a good book in mine.

FYI: Ms. Disbrowe also co-wrote Donald Link's cookbook which I have merely glanced at, but I hear it is just as good.

Crescent City Cooking-Eagle.

Chef Spicer's Pickled Shrimp Boil

A Look Ahead to the Weekend

Are you going to be in New Orleans this weekend? Maybe for a wedding? Looking for something to do to pass the time? Want to get a jump on your Christmas shopping? Well, you could go to SOFAB on Saturday at 11 am to hear Susan Spicer of Bayona talk about her runaway best seller "Crescent City Cooking."

Spicer's tome chronicles not only her style of cooking, but New Orleans cuisine as well, and not just the French elements. Rather Spicer explores the varied and complex food traditions and influences that shape her cooking view and ultimately New Orleans cuisine. Following a presentation, Chef Spicer will sign copies of her book.

If you are a museum member, the cost is free. If not admission to the museum is $10 and the seminar is free.

Plus, you can take a look at the mess on the river.