ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be no issue of Mariani's Virtual Gourmet next week (Dec. 4) because Mariani will be off in Eastern Europe seeking to find the best Austrian, Czech, Slovakian, and Hungarian food and hotels for his readers, and to buy a sturdy pair of lederhosen.
 The next issue will be Dec. 11.

    Believe it or not, New Orleans is not a city that never sleeps.  By nine PM things quiet down and by ten, it gets quiet, at least outside the French Quarter's bars and nightclubs.  And the pace of that mid-evening dinner figures into the city's charm, for the civilized soul of New Orleans lies in its restaurants.  Here are some wonderful ones.

 

CAFÉ ADELAIDE

Loew's New Orleans Hotel
300 Poydras Street
504-595-3305

 

The Adelaide in question is one of the Big Easy’s legendary grande dames, Adelaide Brennan, aka "Queenie" and "Auntie Mame,” described by her family as "a striking redhead who marched to her own drummer.” Her favorite saying was, "Sparkle plenty." She's painted into the triptych above, for she must have had the joie de vivre of three people.
    Lally Brennan and Ti Adelaide Martin (above), who share much of their aunt’s irresistible exuberance, opened this tribute to her with verve. Café Adelaide has certainly won its bona fides in a post-Katrina world, though you don’t hear as much about it as some of the other Big Deals in town, including the Brennans' own Commander’s Palace.  Still, it’s a big colorful room with striking artwork, the effervescent bonhomie of New Orleans waitstaffs, and, now, a new young chef, Meg Bickford (right), a rare woman in a top kitchen position, who has brought the restaurant even further into the city’s high firmament.
    While maintaining Café Adelaide favorites like white shrimp remoulade on celeriac slaw ($12), Commander’s turtle soup ($8.50) and “Duck, duck, duck…” with sugar-cured duck ham, confit salad with dried cherries and blackberry duck fat vinaigrette ($27), she has added dishes that are among the most inventive and admired in the city, starting with her Poor Man’s Foie Gras of creamy chicken liver pâté with blueberry-sherry jelly, hot boudin beignets, spicy mustard, sourdough bread  and pickled “stuff” ($16). Her New Orleans East Style BBQ Shrimp & Grits includes seared wild white shrimp over crab boil kimchi, charred chilies, pork belly and creamy stone ground grits with a spicy Asian style barbeque glaze ($24), and she really ups the ante on salads with her Louisiana blue crab and heirloom tomato salad with mozzarella, lemon oil and a cherry balsamic  dusted with herbs  ($8.50).
    Don’t fill up—portions are large—because you need room for the superlative Creole  cheesecake with blackberry sugar cane syrup and the white chocolate biscuit pudding with candied pecans and white chocolate ice cream. 
    If you want to know what the expression “let the good times roll” means, you’ll find it at a dinner table at Café Adelaide.

  Open for breakfast daily; lunch Mon.-Fri.; dinner nightly.

 

REDFISH GRILL
    115 Bourbon Street

        504- 598-1200



    It is high praise to say of a restaurant, “I’ve never had a bad meal there,” which can apply to the grandest of haute cuisine restaurants as much as to storefront eateries.  Redfish Grill is that kind of a casual place where every dish belongs on this menu of traditional and modern Creole cookery.
    Ralph Brennan is one of several family members of the Brennan clan who separately run restaurants in and out of New Orleans, including Brennan's on Royal Street, profiled last week. This is a far more homey place with a canny road-house look of peeling brick walls, folkloric murals, and a funky fake palm tree in the middle of the dining room.
    Best way to go is with Chef Austin Kirzner’s seafood sampler:  barbecued crab claws; alligator boudin balls with peach pepper jelly; and Creole fresh Gulf shrimp with red pepper and onions ($29.95).  There are plenty of oyster offerings, of course, and the Redfish bisque ($7) and alligator sausage and seafood gumbo ($8.50) are as good as any in the city.  The crabcakes are made with true sweet lump crabmeat ($28), and  shrimp and grits are lavished with parmesan cheese, roasted tomatoes, fried okra and a jalapeño buttermilk ranch dressing ($25).
     Otherwise, stay simple with any of a dozen local fish ($21-$34) cooked over a wood-fired grill, with a selection of six sauces.  Then finish off with double chocolate bread pudding ($9.50) or a bourbon-laced pecan pie ($8.50); there’s also a bananas foster ice cream cake with rum ice cream flamed tableside ($9).
    I could eat here three times a week and take a couple of months to go through the menu, and it would always be with enormous pleasure.

Open for lunch & dinner daily.

HERBSAINT

    701 St. Charles Street
         504-524-4114

    I put Donald Link in with chefs like Mike Lata of Fig in Charleston, Steven Satterfield of Miller Union in Atlanta and Frank Stitt III of Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham who  have truly changed the way Southern food is regarded in their cities.
    When Link opened Herbsaint more than a decade ago, he not only went beyond the entrenched clichés of Creole cuisine, but he lightened things up and brought in global influences, not least French and Italian notes.
    The restaurant itself has always been one of the cheeriest and brightest, with olive, yellow and white colors throughout, big windows on the corner, a nice small bar and a small peek into the kitchen.  Alas, like Link’s other restaurants, Cochon and Pȇche, Herbsaint can get very very loud, piped in music included, so go early or late (as noted,New Orleans restaurants start to empty by 9 p.m.), and you’ll probably get a window seat.
    Then tuck into Chef de Cuisine Rebecca Wilcomb’s sumptuous dishes like an excellent duck and andouille gumbo (below; $8) and some of the small plates, like marvelously lusty beef short rib with roesti potatoes and horseradish cream ($15), or baked asiago cheese with a sprinkling of oregano and a touch of lemon ($11) to slather on warm country bread. Gnocchi (left) with tomato, pancetta and purple hull peas ($14) is a bit overwrought; the spaghetti with guanciale ham and a fried-poached egg ($14) is a better choice as pasta.
    For entrees there’s always a fish of the day, simply prepared, and I most recently favored jumbo shrimp callaloo with tomato-chili vinaigrette and crispy rice ($29), and the very rich, slowly roasted kurobuta pork belly with bacon-braised field peas and pickled chilies ($28). It was also good to see fideo, a Spanish thin pasta dish cooked in broth with a tomato confit ($9),  as a side dish.
    For dessert you won’t go wrong with any ($8-$9): coconut custard pie with buttermilk Chantilly and orange caramel, a brown butter banana tart, and especially a malted milk chocolate mousse with malted crème anglaise.  Consider one of the many dessert wines suggested on the menu with these sweets.

 

Open for lunch Mon.-Fri., dinner nightly.

 

GALATOIRE'S
    209 Bourbon Street
    504-525-2021



    I’ve been having an annual lunch at Galatoire’s for some time now, but with nothing like the fidelity of its local clientele, who may stretch back generations, as do some of the staff at this marvelous old, splendidly refurbished Creole restaurant. Chef Michael Sichel maintains a kitchen of remarkable consistency, keeping all the old items on the menu and adding new ones according to what swims into the market.         
       Galatoire’s is a mystical place in the hearts of many New Orleanians whose families have been coming here since French immigrant Jean Galatoire opened up on Bourbon Street in 1905.  It’s a tradition to stand outside on Friday at lunchtime minutes or hours before opening, and, despite the heat of summer, women dress in pastel linen and men in seersucker, bow ties and white panama hats abound. (They take reservations for the upstairs dining room.) But on other days and nights of the week, it’s not nearly so tough to get a table, which is when I like to go.
    What changes there are at Galatoire’s are subtle—some new waiters on the floor, the pacing is a bit faster, the wine list much better than it used to be. But when you sit down you still get a bottle of ice water, hot French bread and a generous slab of butter, all to be replenished throughout your meal.
    There are few flourishes in the plates, just straightforward traditional dishes that include soufflé potatoes with Béarnaise sauce to nibble on as a starter ($7.50), spicy, cold shrimp remoulade ($13) and one of my favorite items, sweetbreads with a lemon caper beurre blanc ($11). The day’s catch, whether it’s trout, sole, grouper or pompano, can be enhanced with a mound of jumbo lump crabmeat.  The redfish with almonds ($25) is something I never fail to order if it’s on the menu, lush with lemon caper butter (left).
    The creamed spinach ($6) is always a mushy, creamy joy, the garlicky Brabant potatoes ($5) a winner, too. For dessert the bread pudding is not fancy but it’s good, as is the sweet potato cheesecake with spiced pecans and chocolate shavings ($8.50).
    People tend to linger at Galatoire’s, some right through lunch and then into dinner, but no one ever eats and runs at a place designed to keep you in your seat by lulling you into becoming very mellow very quickly.

Open Tues.-Sun. for lunch and dinner.

 

  STAYING PUT IN NEW ORLEANS

    In recent visits I’ve become comfortable checking into Le Meridien New Orleans on Poydras Street, whose $29 million  transformation makes it the most modern hotel in the city, and its location outside the Quarter and main thoroughfare makes for far easier access and egress.  The lobby is striking, styled around bookcases filled with an amazing array of art and style books, and there is a little café counter where you can get breakfast or drinks, as well as a restaurant named LMNO. 
       My suite, done in pastel shades of gray and white, overlooked the city and the Mississippi, and had a well-stocked in-room bar area, and fine amenities throughout, especially the work space area and electric outlets and WiFi accessible units. The bathrooms are very large and very well lighted and equipped, and I’ve found the service staff gets better and better.

 

 

 

  

NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

        If you follow California wines, you’re familiar with the Judgment of Paris of 1976, the historic, first blind tasting of American wines against the great names of France.  Nine judges, all French, gave American wines top honors for Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, and occasionally mistook French wines for their American competitors. The French were embarrassed. The startling results of that promotional event laboriously assembled by wine merchant Stephen Spurrier (left), put California wines on the map, and served as inspiration for winemakers throughout the world.
  
Photo: Bella Spurrier

    The Judgment of Paris gave recognition to a sleeping giant, the American wine industry, and the story was told in 2008, in Hollywood fashion, in the movie “Bottle Shock.” The film focused on Jim Barrett and his slacker son, Bo, at Château Montelena, whose 1973 Chardonnay was the big winner in Paris. While the film paid a lot of attention to the differences between father and son, it gave very little attention to the man who crafted that winning Chardonnay for Montelena, Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, a humble immigrant from Croatia.
    Grgich’s life would make a more interesting story. He was the last of 11 children in a family of impoverished peasant farmers in a small village. Wearing hand-me-down clothes and often going hungry, with only a smattering of schooling, Grgich spent his earliest years tending sheep and crushing grapes with his feet for the family’s wine. At age 14, he was running a small grocery store when communists ravaged the village and confiscated his stock. In 1943, scrambling for a route toward a career in a free land, he saw that the communists employed many bookkeepers, and made his move. Grgich attended business school in Zagreb, and worked for a year behind a desk, quitting after he formulated another plan.  He signed on for the enology program at the University of Zagreb, looking toward becoming a winemaker in California, his promised land.
    In 1954 he applied to study plant genetics in West Germany, which was his way of getting out of Communist Croatia. He crossed the border in fear with five dollars stitched into the soles of his shoes to escape confiscation and possible imprisonment for smuggling cash out of his homeland. He purposely overstayed his visa until the West German government interred him in a refugee camp. The farmer, whose land he had worked as a student, paid for his release and he went back into the fields as a laborer for nearly two years. After two years of frustration, he abandoned his efforts to win a U.S. visa and instead applied for work as a lumberjack in Canada, where it was easier to obtain papers. He worked several years in a variety of menial jobs until a relative, a Canadian priest, advised him to contact the Christian Brothers winery in California. That move linked him with Lee Stewart at the small Souverain winery in Napa who sent him the  letter of employment he needed to earn that treasured American visa.
    Finally in his promised land, Grgich was on his way, with tattered clothes, little cash, and a bare room in a barren hotel. The Souverain job led him to Robert Mondavi, where all his training enabled him to become a trusted aid to that California icon, who had just built a showcase winery. Mondavi gave Grgich great responsibility and encouragement to polish his winemaking skills, but warned him that the prime positions were reserved for his sons.
     Grgich produced the 1969 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, a highly regarded wine that enhanced his reputation and this prompted a financially rewarding offer from Jim Barrett at Château Montelena, a much smaller winery. Mondavi gave Grgich his blessing to move on and promised that he could always return.
      Barrett asked Grgich to develop a business plan for a winery to produce world class Cabernet Sauvignon. Grgich advised Barrett that a red wine would produce no income for five years and wrote a program to include white wines that would yield more immediate cash flow. This was the basis for Montelena’s award-winning 1972 Chardonnay and the historic 1973, which cemented the winery’s status.
     A winery of his own was now possible and the once penniless immigrant realized his dream, founding Grgich Cellars and picking up accolades as the king of Chardonnay, while creating a battery of classic red and white wines. A bottle of the    1973 Chardonnay was enshrined  in the Smithsonian Institution as one of “101 Objects That Made America,” ranking along with such icons as Abraham Lincoln’s hat, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone and Neil Armstrong’s space suit.
    Grgich, at 93, remains active in the winery, which his daughter Violet now directs.    Together they published his dramatic memoir, A Glass Full of Miracles.
      In New York recently she showed his 40th anniversary Napa Valley Chardonnay ($50) and several other wines. It’s a totally elegant, limited example of his art, crisp with apple and pear flavors and strong, but not overpowering, acidity.  The 2013 Chardonnay ($43), which also was on the table, was equally classical, though slightly more mineral in composition, with peach, mango and tropical flavors.
      Grgich had been instrumental in formulating Mondavi’s Fumé Blanc, so named when the producer felt Americans might not be comfortable pronouncing Sauvignon Blanc. Rich in aromatics, Grgich Fumé ($31) is high in tropical fruit flavors and lemongrass ones and matches well with everything from fish to cold veggies and roasted beet salad, a dish served at the presentation. On the red side, we enjoyed his 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon ($185) based on vines planted in the late 1950s, among the oldest  in Napa. It is a wine of concentrated intense flavor, well balanced, with flavors of blackberries and black licorice and a rich, lingering finish.