“You at the Rio Mar party? Is that tonight? Bourdain is there.”
Rewind: Thursday night
Rio Mar had a “kegger, Basque-style” where Chef Adolfo tapped a cask of txakoli and planned on pouring the whole thing. I made reservations to go with a large group, but they all backed out and so I canceled too. Instead, I wound up with Triple B and two others at Sukho Thai, where I received the above text message from Rene.
Upon reading this message, I immediately called for the check and headed for Rio Mar. Triple B decided to tag along too. When we arrived, there were far fewer people than I expected, and the cask of txakoli was long gone. “Is Bourdain here?” I asked. “Yep. He’s in the main dining room,” replied a waiter. “Really cool guy. Go get a picture.”
I waited next to the greeting stand while Triple B powdered her nose in anticipation of her glamour shot, but next thing you know Anthony was strolling past me on his way out. I stopped him, said hello, and asked for a picture, to which he graciously obliged. Triple B was right behind me and snapped one of her own.
So now what? We walked outside to contemplate our next move, and Anthony said goodbye to his companions and made his way down Julia toward the river. “We should have asked him if he wanted to get a drink,” I said. On our walk back to the car, we noticed Anthony standing on the corner waiting for a cab. This was one of those moments. I wish I could say that I played it cool instead of acting like a 1980s Aerosmith groupie reincarnate, but we were basically stumbling over ourselves to catch him before he left. I sent Triple B in first because as a member of the light-haired female tribe, she is much more convincing than I.
“Do you want to go get a drink with us?” she asked.
“No, I am exhausted,” Anthony smilingly replied. “I’ve been on this corner for 5 minutes and already 3 people have stopped and said, ‘Hey, you gotta go to this bar.’ Plus I have a flight to Prague in the morning.... How do you catch a cab around here? When the light is on, that means there is already somebody in there?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you a cab,” I offered.
“I’m staying at the W next to the casino,” he said, " but I have no idea where I am."
“Well, that’s right there,” I pointed. “We’ll walk you over.”
So we walked. And talked. Anthony told us that he was in town to meet with writers for “the coolest f*cking thing on television,” but he was tight-lipped on the details. We told him how great it was for him to film an episode here back in 2007. I asked him what he thought about the food at Domilise's, to which he responded, “You know, you can probably get a better tasting po-boy elsewhere, but that place has history. It's been open for a long time, and it was perfect for our show. It’s the neighborhood and the people which makes that place great.”
He asked if I had ever been to Prague, and I told him yes. “How’s the food?” he asked. “Eh,” was my reply. “That’s what everyone else has told me,” he said. We talked about his daughter and how she loved olives and sardines and everything salty, and how when he gets back to New York his wife is going to handover the reigns for a while because she has been on solo duty for long enough.
But mostly we talked about New Orleans and what a special place it is. He asked if we had grown up here and told us how great it was that we stayed. “Every time I come here, it’s like a big hug,” he said. "The chef and cooking culture here… it’s like coming home. Nowhere else in the world is like it. I just feel this warm embrace whenever I am here.” Triple B and I told him why we thought NOLA is such a special place, but I’m embarrassed to say that Anthony probably said it best: “People come to New Orleans, and they either get it right away or they don’t. They either say, ‘OK, this is why this is an amazing place.’ Or they just never will.” I offered to take him to the Westbank for Vietnamese for lunch, but I’ll have to wait for another time. “In a perfect world, I would stay here for a week and eat at all of these places that everyone keeps telling me about. It would be two o’clock in the morning, and I’d be scarfing down Verti Marte.”
I wish that I could tell you that this story ended with Anthony, Triple B, and I downing Flaming Dr. Peppers at the Goldmine followed by a 4:00am feast on an All That Jazz. But I cannot tell a lie. When we got to the W, Triple B and I offered to buy Anthony a scotch, but he politely declined and thanked us for our hospitality. And then he was gone.
I’ve met Paul Bocuse. I’ve eaten at The French Laundry. Maybe I’ll make it to the Fat Duck one day. But my walk with Anthony was pretty special. I doubt it was as good for him as it was for me, but that’s not the point. And if you don’t get why, then you never will.
Please note that the camera adds 20 pounds (but apparently not for professionals like Anthony).
Triple B, the Coonhunter, and I all ordered sandwiches on our first visit, and not one of us left disappointed. The bread is of the typical sliced genre but much taller, and you can have your choice of sourdough, whole wheat, rye, or multi grain. As you can see from the Coonhunter's main street sandwich with turkey and bacon, all of the deli meats are sliced paper thin.
The "market chicken salad" is a medley of sizable chunks of white meat, dried cranberries, relish and egg mixed held together by a mixture of cream cheese and sour cream. For all you people with an aversion to mayo (and I am sometimes one of them), this is the chicken salad for you. One of the best specimens out there.
Why have I not seen this before? BLT/PC - bacon, lettuce, tomato, and pimento cheese. The homemade PC is creamy and not overwhelmed by the peppers, and when you match that with the salty crunch from the bacon, you get a great sandwich. Brilliant!
We started with an order of springrolls (no surprise there) and a mile-high pile of fried wontons. The latter appetizer is nothing special, but they were delicious - thick and freshly fried.
I had the "salt baked" fish, a description which left me wondering how they exactly cooked the fish. The crunchy exterior had the texture of deep frying, but absolutely zero trace of oil. Neither the fish nor the coating was spiced, but the addition of a heavy hand of cracked black pepper and the sweetness of thinly sliced sauteed onions provided all of the flavor which was needed. Great dish. Nothing like I had ever tasted before.
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