The Delachaise

French fries at The Delachaise.

Wine bars are an anomaly to many people, including myself. We want our lives to be easily defined and compartmentalized, and most wine bars are neither. So when deciding where to go for dinner on a Friday night and someone suggests The Delachaise, the next question is usually: "Is that a bar or a restaurant?"

To me Delachaise is a bar, although one that serves excellent french fries. The long, narrow space which widens as it progresses further away from St. Charles streetcar tracks reminds me of a wine bar on Isle St. Louis or in the Marais. The decor is raffish - stools and benches with unsecured cushions, plywood underneath the bar, and stacks of wine crates impeding traffic to the restroom. On the wall behind the bar are chalkboards listing every food and drink offering, while Christmas lights illuminate the rest of the room. It's charm is in its imperfections.


The Boz sandwich.

 Most are familiar with the story of how Chef Chris Debarr gained a cult following for serving creative and unexpected dishes from the tiny kitchen at Delachaise. Chef Chris has of course moved on to The Green Goddess, but his legacy is still evident in the eclectic menu where Moroccan chicken tagine lives comfortably alongside smoked Salmon johnny cakes and an upscale grilled cheese sandwich.

Even though the Delachaise is a bar, you can still eat dinner here, and I almost always do. The most daunting task between you and dinner may be securing a table when it's crowded, and it almost always is, as I learned on a recent Wednesday night. The best strategy is to divide and conquer. Dispatch one or two members of your party to the bar to secure a bottle of wine and glasses while the rest scope out the lay of the land and try to figure out where to sit. Once you have secured seating, head back to the bar to order food. After taking your order, the bartender will ask where you are sitting, you will point to a general area, he will nod his head in affirmation, and somehow your food always safely arrives at your table. I am always paranoid that instead of table numbers the servers employ colorful descriptions such as "guy in blue oxford who outkicked his coverage."


Flank steak bruschetta.

The menu offers plenty to snack on if your main motivation is imbibing. I thought the $16 cheese plate was a tad expensive but really enjoyed all of the selections in the trio as well as the accouterments of spiced pecans and thinly sliced apple. The french fries really are excellent. Fried in goose fat (though that flavor was lost on me), the crispy fries of medium thickness and varying length are served with a malt vinegar aioli and spicy satay for dipping. Don't be surprised if you find yourself digging into the bottom of the wax paper cone to fish out the last one. For carnivores, the trio of flank steak bruschetta ($10) is a good choice, though the quality has varied. On one visit, we were presented with overcooked beef overpowered by the Peruvian garlic sauce. A week later, the same dish featured perfectly cooked wide, rosy red slices of beef double stacked upon bread smeared with the perfect amount spread.


Gnocchi with pork ragu.

Those hungrier souls can partake in more conventional menu selections. Perhaps a daily special of large, soft (maybe too soft) gnocchi was topped with an acidic pork ragu and griddled manchego, which was an unnecessary addition. An everday choice of twice cooked pork was crispy, but a little dry, which made the orange mojo sauce a nice touch. Sandwiches include the Boz, a rich trio of St. Andre cheese, Tuscan ham, and arugula on ciabatta. The Anabella grilled cheese is even richer, but a dip in the tomato soup - not too sweet or too spicy, with a mellowed acidic taste - helped balance the flavors.

The bar has a very deep wine list, including 58 selections by the glass and $5 daily wine specials - 1 red, 1 white, and 1 sparkling. Unfortunately, none of the reds offered by the glass and very few of the reds sold by the bottle are temperature controlled. This is a personal crusade that I will continue. If you paid $55 for an entree, would you be mad if it was served luke warm? The same standard should apply to wine.

Service is usually a point of contention when discussing The Delachaise. I will admit that the manager/bartender with the French accent can be rather brusque and unpleasant, although I have not seen him express that attitude toward patrons who lack a Y chromosome. All of the other staff though have always been friendly, helpful, and accomodating. And after a rather snarky exchange at the bar one night, Frenchie and I shared gratutious words on the patio as he helped bus our table. Forgiveness is a virtue.

While rereading this post before publishing, I asked myself: "It seems that you could not say one good thing about Delachaise without mentioning an aspect which you did not care for." And that may be true. But the most important question is this: Do I enjoy myself while there? And when it comes to grabbing a glass of wine, a bite to eat, and maybe sitting outside when the weather is nice, Delachaise is one of my top choices in the city.

The Delachaise - Par/Birdie
3442 St. Charles Ave
(504) 895-0858
Open Daily 5:00pm till

Cooking With Wine

The wines made by Abe Schoener are unique, to put it mildly. His Scholium Project crafts wines which often bear no relation to any wine you have ever had. Take for instance, his wine called the Prince in His Caves, which is a sauvignon blanc aged in old red wine barrels. The wine is bottled unfiltered and with a mild orange hue,  it looks more like a wheat beer and tastes like biting into a grapefruit. It is perhaps the strangest, and most memorable wine, I've ever tasted. So when Mad Max's box o' wine revealed the 2009 Naucratis, let's just say a straightforward dish would not due. This wine is made from 100% Verdelho, a varietal more common in Portugal and used almost exclusively for Madeira. The wine is lush, almost oily in the mouth with crisp acidity.

So with those flavors in mind, we wanted to do something that would be able to stand up to the heft of the wine while benefiting from its palate cleansing acidity. What resulted was a leftover meal fit for a king. I must confess though most of the heavy lifting was borne by Lindsay. Should be no surprise then, that this was our favorite wine and food pairing so far.

Mexican Chicken Pot Pie

The night before, Lindsay made chicken enchiladas based on a recipe pulled from one of her television boyfriends, Tyler Florence. The recipe left us with a large pot of black beans and chicken in a tomatillo veloute. So we took a logical step and combined a cup of the beans with the remaining chicken veloute. We tucked it into ramekins and topped it with sheets of puff pastry. Then bake it at 350 degrees until the top is brown and crusty.

Chicken Pot Pie is often boring and bland. This one was anything but. Robust, spicy, with deep flavors and varying textures. Plus, anytime you can add puff pastry to leftovers, you create a dish much greater than the sum of its parts. Which sort of reminds me of Schoener's wines. You can find the 2009 Naucratis at August, Rue 127, Loa, Delachaise, Rambla, Wino, Dick and Jenny's, and Cafe Amelie. It retails for just under $20.

The Heat Is On

Look, I understand that we live in a man-made concrete jungle in the middle of a swamp, but the heat lately has just been ridiculous. I appreciate this morning's gift of a taste of fall, but unfortunately I realize that the previews start at least a month or two before the premiere.

I was at the farmers market on Saturday morning for a total of 15 seconds before my shirt looked like it had been sprayed down with a gardening hose. You take one step outside of your air conditioned comfort zone, and it's like your entire body is instantaneously covered in one of those hot towels that the server hands you when you sit down at a sushi restaurant. Living downtown and having the luxury of walking to work has been transformed to a game of cat and mouse between finding the shadiest route and timing your departure so as to avoid having to wait for the crosswalk signal.

The Folk Singer has resigned to driving to work. We live three blocks from her office.

This August has almost sucked all of the enjoyment out of eating. I was craving a po-boy over the weekend, but knocking out a hot sausage po-boy from Parkway I had to take an ice bath for 3 hours just to get my core body temperature back down to 98.6. Firing up the grill outside is like paying russian roulette unless you have grilling tongs which stretch from your kitchen window out to the old Weber. Turning the oven on just seems completely counter intuitive considering that your primary goal is to keep your house as cool as possible. It's too bad that braised dishes are out of the question because you could cook osso buco simply by throwing a few veal shanks, tomato, and wine in a dutch oven and leaving it on the front porch while you are at work.

But all hope is not lost for culinary delight in the land of the 110 heat index. Here is a list of my favorite foods that help stave off the summer:

• Cold Soups - Gazpacho is the most well known (and rumor has it that Coquette's version is one of the best in town). At last week's Tuesday market at Tulane Square, I had an amazingly refreshing and flavorful vichychoisse served up by La Divina under the Green Plate Special tent. On the menu this week is a chilled cucumber soup with housemade creme fraiche and dill that sounds equally delightful.
• Pate, Cheese, & Olives - And wine of course, and maybe a loaf of bread. St. James Cheese Company is an obvious choice, but don't forget about the affettati misti at Domenica or the long list of offerings at the Delachaise.  Or stop by Butcher and build your own.
• Sushi - I won't open that can of worms again by telling you where to go, but let's just say that I have ejoyed a few strong meals at Horinoya over the past few weeks.
• Cold Crabmeat & Shrimp - Nothing wrong with a generous portion of shrimp remoulade or crabmeat maison over mixed greens with maybe a few slices of avocado or hearts of palm. I'm partial to the chilled roasted beets topped with crabmeat in a horseradish emulsion at La Petite Grocery.

Or you copy my dinner from last night by skipping dinner and knocking out a pint of mascarpone and lemon zest ice cream from the Creole Creamery.

What are your favorite foods that help beat the heat?

We Should Have Read The Sign

I hate when a restaurant stinks. No panacea exists for a bad meal; it lingers and stains the rest of your evening and sometimes week(end). Every time you drive by the restaurant or someone mentions it, you react in terror. The meal haunts you.

Unfortunately, Lady and I had that experience last night. People have raved to us about The Delachaise for months now. Well, everything missed the mark last night, from service to food it was a study in blah. However, I think the bar area is nice and I would go there for a drink again, just not to eat.

The Delachaise operates on St. Charles, down the side street from the old Hyde Park (the one where Come on Be My Baby Tonight bartended during Real World: New Orleans). Its quaint, European, and reminds one of being in a rail car. All very good things.

We walked in and wandered. The place was packed, seemed to be a good vibe but where was a hostess, maitre'd, waiter, to steer us in the right direction. We ambled toward the bar and stood around wondering if we were hip enough for this spot. The answer no.

Finally I spotted someone who looked like they may work here or at least someone who looked like they might know a person who worked there. "So how do we grab a table?" I asked.

"Didn't you read the sign? Order at the bar," he said scurrying off.

So after waiting at the bar for about 5 minutes finally I got two orders of Spanish white and a menu that came on a board. Ok, frites, bruschetta, and the pasta of the day (lasagna). More ambling, dang we just missed a table. Finally one opened up. We grabbed it and I dutifully went back to the bartender to tell him where we were sitting. I was instructed to do so in a tone reminscent of Mom.

Out comes the Bruschetta. Charred bread topped with skirt steak, arugula, and two colored Bobby Flay-esque sauces. First bite wonderful. Beef had a good flavor, the sauces seemed to work together and the arugula added pepper. Next bite, something began developing that reminded me of Little League. No, not that I was sitting on an uncomfortable bench. It was the unmistakable salinity laced flavor of sunflower seeds. Chef must be a smoker, this dish had some salt to it.

Here come the frites. Fried in duck fat these are supposed to be the best fries in the city. They were not. Greasy and flaccid these frites did not deserve the French name attributed to them by the menu. I hope this restaurant is not so hard on money that they could only dole out a teaspoon of sauce per dipping container. I wish I could remember what the sauces were, but there was so little of them it does not seem worth mentioning.

Tried to go get another two glasses of wine, this time a Sangiovesse. You can't order anything from your table, remember the Sign. Took 10 minutes all the while the lasagna at the table sat patiently. Lasagna complete failure. Again the salt overwhelmed the entire dish. Our mouths began to tingle; a sensation we are both still dealing with 12 hours later.

Someone came out from the kitchen to bring us the creme brulee (Honey apricot and viognier with ginger sugar), and asked how we liked the lasagna. When I told him it was over salty, he informed me we must have gotten a super salty bit of ricotta in ours. I wish he would have left the creme brulee back in the kitchen. The brulee suffered from being over thought out. Honey is good, and so is ginger, and apricots, so together they must be awesome. What resulted was almost perfumey, but mostly disgusting.

All the dishes suffered to me from the same fault. They were not as thought out in whole as they were in their component parts. If you know the ricotta is salty, then use less salt throughout the dish. If the beef is not tender enough to break off when you bite into the bruschetta, then change the way you present it so I do not have a chunk of meat hanging from my lip. Those fries I can kind of forgive as it was busy. But that creme brulee lacks precision and flavor.

Service requires one to be hip. Although to be fair, they did take five dollars off the price of the lasagna. I think I understand what they are trying to do at Delachaise. Pair wine, good beers, and liquors with good food. Upscale bar food, gastropub fare, and whatever other trendy name aside, it missed the mark.

When I go out to eat, I liked to be welcomed in, shown a place to sit, given a good drink, a menu, talk to a waiter about what is good, eat at a nice pace, and enjoy my meal. When I leave, I want to be asked to come back soon. At Delachaise, none of that occurred.

When we left, Lady and I both said to each other, "I had a feeling when we walked in it was going to be bad." We should have read the Sign.

Bogey.