Boots in the Oven

Remember the 1970s?

'Cause I don't.

I hear they were a classy time, full of discotheques and polyester and the commercialization of the hippie movement, where everyone traveled to school and work via the power of their hip rollerskates while wearing little vials of cocaine around their necks.

Foodwise, there was fondue, and Caesar salad made tableside was starting to die out, and you couldn't find decent sushi to save your life.

And your city didn't appear on the scale of awesomeness unless it had a rotating restaurant.  Chicago had one.  Even Columbia, South Carolina had one, though by the time I made it there for college in 1997, it didn't so much rotate as loom immobile over the end of USC's campus.

But there's one in Houston that still works, and though their menu has been updated a little and no longer includes lobster Thermidor and Steak Newburg (or did I get that backwards and inside-out?) you can still order a large lukewarm martini and watch the skyline float by in a manner that, well, makes you stick to just one martini.

It's the Spindletop, and it's right at the top of the Hyatt in the middle of downtown.

My brother, his lady friend, my husband, and I settled into one of the tables, which at the time was located on the east side of the building.

This place was seven kinds of cheesy.  The elevator to the top was outlined in light bulbs, which were just calling for a little light Kool and the Gang.  There was a salad bar.  The food we saw being carried by jutted out in every direction from the oversized square plates.   It was fancy circa the mid-90s.

And on we traveled, light reflecting off the surrounding skyscrapers.  Thinking we were smart, we'd timed our visit to this odd throwback for sunset.  Any dreams we'd had of an unparalleled view of the setting sun were sort of crushed by the fact that the entire westward sky was, well, blocked by buildings.  Oops.  Perhaps in 1973, the view would have knocked us right out of our rainbow-striped knee socks.

I won't lie, it was kinda pretty seeing the lights come on around us.  A fair complete with brightly lit Ferris wheel beckoned, but we had approaching dinner reservations. 

January's Gourmet featured a restaurant in Texas - rare enough that we'd remembered and decided to drag my poor brother and his lady there.  From the forty-word blurb, Danton's Gulf Coast Seafood Kitchen sounded like it would be a roll up your sleeves kind of place, where the walls were covered in fishing nets and everything was fried.

Well, the reviewers apparently haven't been within a hundred miles of a real country seafood shack in the last twenty years, because Danton's is emphatically not that.  Yeah, there's crap on the walls, but the decor is decidedly American bistro, all black and white and wood. 

They have great prices on some of the best Gulf oysters I've had, though, even if their prices have gone up.

The bear and I ordered two dozen right off the bat, because we're just those people, while DJ and M looked at us a little askance.  They were game to try one or two each, but I'm not entirely certain I've gotten them converted.  DJ did a great job at the crawfish boil he attended with my in-laws a couple years back, though, so I'm not concerned.

Plus, he saw redfish on the menu, said "what's that?" and immediately ordered it stuffed with crab and with a side of red beans and rice.  I'm telling you, we know how to eat in this family.

Redfish is such a delicious fish, all firm and white and mild.  No wonder Paul Prudhomme almost drove it extinct when he started off that blackening craze.  I split a grilled fillet with the husband, and it was very nicely done - and their okra and tomatoes were the shizz, if you're into okra, which holy crap - yes please.

We returned the intrepid pair to their studies and drove the three hours back to Austin.  On the way, we saw an enormous house fire with three fire trucks, a bunch of cop cars, and a posse of uniformed folks just watching it go.  We didn't stop for pictures, but we should have.

Spindletop at the Hyatt, 1200 Lousiana Street, Houston.  713.654.0195.
Danton's Gulf Coast Seafood Kitchen, 4611 Montrose Blvd., Houston.  713.807.8883.

By the way, did you know that the Houston/Galveston area has one of the largest Vietnamese populations in the US?  This is oddly evident in Houston, at least when you look at the parking meters.

I'm really starting to think Texas is overcompensating for something. If you catch my drift. Ahem.

My brother had but one request when he came through Houston a little over a week ago. 

"PLEASE OUTSIDE PLEASE PLEASE.  SHINY YELLOW ORB SO PRETTY WHAT IS IT?"

Yeah, my brother lives in Chicago. 

So, while his lady M studied, we drove out of town towards the Armand Bayou, where there's a big interpretive center and a boardwalk and the chance to see a crocodile.  But we got there late, and no amount of charm oozing off my husband would entice the mean meanie interpretive lady to let us in (though they weren't actually closing for another 45 minutes).

This meant that we'd be heading to another nearby outdoor attraction, the San Jacinto Battlefield Monument in Laporte. 

After driving through lots of bustling industrial smokestacks and gawd knows what, we arrived at the tallest monument tower in the world, built in the 1930s to commemorate the Battle of San Jacinto, when Texas won its independence from Mexico.

Seriously, the thing is 15 feet taller than the Washington Monument, and it's sort of off by itself in a field.  The base houses a museum and interpretive center, which is free and full of tidbits like Santa Anna's glove and Stephen F. Austin's china service.

Austin's own sculptress Elisabet Ney, whose museum we went to a couple of weeks ago (not that you'd know it by looking at the blog, dammit) was represented.  Here's her bust of Sam Houston.

Plus, they've got fun stuff like a raisin pitter for making mincemeat and an old-fashioned waffle iron, that looks like an enormously impractical extravagance.  I felt it burning me through the plexiglass display cabinet.

But the fun fun thing to do is take the elevator up to the top for $4.  The operator didn't appreciate our joking about our limited stop options - say, letting us get off halfway.

The view was marginally interesting.  There was a reflecting pool, I guess to invite further comparison to DC's monument, which - did I mention - is 15 feet shorter.

There's also a view of the wetlands heading off towards the Gulf.

And then some of the industry the area's famous for, of course. 

Yeah, well.  You're in Texas, so there's none of that nonsense about being able to see other states, and you're in East Texas, so the topography is just flat and wet. 

One father beckoned his children over to a set of pay binoculars.  "Hey, you can see all the way to I-10 from here!" 

Wow - I-10!

Next stop - outside!  Bro was thrilled.  There's a fairly short boardwalk that keeps you above the boggy ground.  Little minnows and guppies and something larger and floppy moved around under the surface of the water, and red-winged blackbirds and bluejays and grackles alit on the trees and bushes.

It was actually a nice little walk, with only a couple of other people around.  Here are a couple of the important men in my life, who don't look quite this much like each other in real life.

There were cool views of the monument from the trail, but unfortunately that was facing just about due west.  Oh well.

There's a little bit of Texas history for y'all.  If you'd like to learn more about the battle or the monument, go here, to the memorial's site.  They're having a big party there in a couple of weeks to mark the anniversary of the battle, so hey - go!

We took the long way back into town to fulfill another request of my urban planning geography brother guy.  The Fred Hartman Bridge is an over-engineered cable bridge spanning the shipping channel. 

It's another thing you can see from the top of the Battlefield Monument - hey, it's not all I-10 around here, baybee!

We got one picture of it in all its glory through my filthy windshield, highlighting the eyelash or something that's found its way into the inner sanctum of my tiny Canon.

And, if you're wondering, this is what it looks like when a $117.5 million dollar bridge decides it wants you for a tasty snack.

After a nice afternoon of unabashedly dorky fun, we regathered Lady M and went to a rotating bar.  Where it's hard to take pictures, but I tried.  Laters.

Xiong's Cafe - I welcome our dumpling overlords.

Last week we drove to Houston to piss off a waitress.

Naw.  Actually, we drove to Houston to see my broheim and his ladyfriend, M, who's attending Rice. 

Pissing off the waitress was gravy on the cake.  Or is that icing on the turkey?  I don't know, my brain's pretty much completely stopped working after four weeks of reading those essays by our Texas 16 year olds. 

Where was I?  Oh, right... DUMPLINGS!

We left Austin a little later than we meant to last Saturday to meet these dear family members, so we asked them if they'd mind meeting us in far west Houston for a few hundred dumplings.  They kindly obliged, so we met in the middle of what seemed to be a freaking mile of various Asian businesses, all in huge strip malls, at Xiong's Cafe.

The dumpling house itself was completely full, but they accommodated us next door in the tea house.

Where we did a good bit of dickering about what to order.  When we finally did get our order together and presented it to our by now already suffering waitress, she said "You can't eat that."  So we dropped thirty dumplings off the list and looked at her hopefully.  Pass.

The first two things she dropped on the table were still wrapped in plastic.

First - preserved egg and jalapeno.  Fugly dish.

I actually liked this a lot, though it was sort of challenging to eat with chopsticks.  I've had preserved egg once before and thought it was a little ammonia-ey (though maybe that was just a bad egg?), but none of that flavor came through here.  Just nice comforting eggyness and a tiny, tiny bit of spice.  Tiny.

And spicy bamboo shoots,  with a fresh bamboo snap and again, like no spice.  Still tasty.

We nibbled on these for just a couple of minutes until the next dish came out.  This wasn't on the menu, but the waitress suggested it after seeing my disappointment at the lack of soup dumplings.  It's a pan-fried beef dumpling with soup in it.  Eeeeeeee!

Turned out to be my favorite by a nose, and it came out first in the dumpling extravaganza.  Go figure.  It had that delicious greasy fried dough thing, with the crunchy outside and the slightly gooey middle where the soup resided.  The beef was a little difficult to keep in the dumpling, but was seasoned nicely with pepper and onion.  Here's a bit of an innards shot for you.

This is making me hungry.

Husbear put together a nice spicy vinegary dipping sauce for our dumplings.  The man can't be stopped if there are seasonings around.

We had a few minutes to commune with our new beefy soupy dumpling friend before the next dumplings were deposited on our table.  Next up - spicy szechuan dumplings.  These were $3.25 for an order of 12 - a good deal, even if they were teeny little guys.

These were pretty strongly reminiscent of Asia Cafe's Xhong dumplings.  Porky goodness with a slightly thicker dumpling skin, barely keeping above the level of the chili oil.  Very nice.

More pork next, with a dish that had specific favorable reviews - Boiled Pork and Cilantro dumplings.  Comes in an excessive order of 15!

I did like these, there were just so many of them.  They had a VERY strong cilantro flavor - I'm a fan, but I'm aware there are some insane people out there with a genetic predisposition to hate the delicate leafy guy, so if that's you - don't order these.  Man, this dumpling skin was good, though.

A brief break from the pork (don't worry, it will be back) for a green onion pie, which seems to be the same as a scallion pancake.

M, who was raised in Bangalore, took one look at these and said "Hey, that looks like something my grandma used to make."  Ah, the universal cultural glue that is the flatbread.

Good, if a little greasy?  These definitely benefited from a dunk in that chili oil/vinegar concoction.

And back to the pork.  That didn't take long, huh?  The waitress walked over with this plate, scornfully surveyed our overflowing table, and said "Make room for this."

I'm pretty sure these pan-fried pork dumplings were the first open-ended dumplings I've eaten in a Chinese restaurant.  Dang, were they good.  All fried and porky and conveniently tube-shaped.

And then we had to consolidate a bunch of dishes, because a huge wok steamer arrived at the table bearing an order of mixed steamed dumplings.

The huge braided ones were the vegetable dumplings, which the table didn't really care for - lots of, I think, green onion tops made for a slightly bitter and not totally agreeable veg flavor.  This from a lady who's a freak for greens.  Don't worry, my champion eater of a brother helped us out.

On the top, with the unfortunately split skins, were the pork buns.  I was expecting, you know, pork buns, not these dumplings, but they were certainly good.  They may even have been Husbear's favorite, with their delicate skins and savory porky interior.

On the right - lamb!  I seem to recall lamb dumplings in a Tibetan restaurant in Vienna in 2001, but I don't think I've seen any on a menu since then.  If you like lamb and dumplings, you'd like these lamb dumplings.  Very lamby.

And, well, that's it.  We followed M and my brother back to her dorm, where she had a bunch of work to do in the afternoon.  We kidnapped bro for an afternoon of being outside (after all, he's been in Chicago for the last few months).  Later on that.

Xiong's Cafe is at 9888 Bellaire Blvd # 150 in Houston.  713.771.8448.  I think they're open until like 2 in the morning, but you might want to call them to check that.

Ah, DC. Let's get some Spanish food!

This is one of those posts where the pictures have been uploaded for a WEEK over at Flickr, yet they've escaped being blogged over here so I could rant about nasty Austin restaurants and spend too much time reading about Super Tuesday results.

GOBAMA!

Anyway, you may remember that we spent a long weekend in DC in January?  Well, that Sunday we drove downtown with my aunt and grandmother to meet up with my uncle for a bit of museuming.

First stop - the National Gallery!  More specifically, the I.M. Pei-designed East Wing.

Unfortunately, the building leaks - it suffers from a little bit of the old form over function problem.  Though it wasn't actually raining while we were there, there were buckets scattered haphazardly through the lobby.  Condensation, maybe, since it was 23 degrees outside!  Fahrenheit!  Yowza!

My friends who live in Boston and Chicago and other points north are cursing me right now. 

The National Gallery is... interesting.  Great, even.  It better be, with a name like that.  They have a good bit of Calder, not just in the form of the enormous mobile they've got hanging in the lobby:

They also have a small room stuffed to the gills with Calder, where I got in trouble for taking this picture.  There hadn't been any signs in the rest of the museum, and I was happily snapping away (they're all blurry... oops).  I walked into the Calder room and took a few pictures before a large guard in ill-fitting pants - not that uniform pants ever really fit anyone well - walked over to me and said,

"Ummm... what are you doing?"

I was a little surprised, since I thought it was obvious, so I may have stammered that I was taking a picture.  "Ma'am, you didn't read the sign," she said, and pointed over my left shoulder.  Oops.

Oh well.  At least she didn't confiscate the camera and demand baksheesh...

We also enjoyed various other portions of the museum, including some cutouts done by Matisse in the last few years of his life.  Interestingly simplistic.

This whole time, my grandmother, who'd been up since 7 AM and had breakfast pretty soon thereafter, was getting more and more ravenous.  After a brief stop in the gallery's awe-inspiring gift shop, where we bought a little something for the nephlet, we walked down the street for lunch at a place my uncle was recommending.

Jaleo.  Here in Austin, we only have one fairly mediocre tapas place that we haven't visited in years.  Come to think of it, Malaga may be due for a retry.  Anyway, yay for tapas!

After being seated immediately and shrugging off the topmost of our many layers, we were presented with pickles.  Luckily, because we were having to hold Nana back from chewing on the table.  I also gave her my airline peanuts.

After a good bit of discussion, the five of us ordered thirteen dishes.  Hey, they're small!  It's tapas!  Yay tapas!

We also ordered a delicious bottle of crisp sherry with a slight tang - Manzanilla la Gitana.  Though my family was pretty skeptical, having mostly been introduced to sherry as either a sweet after-dinner drink or in its cream form, everyone who tried it really liked it.  Yum, good sherry.

Thank goodness a basket of bread was the next thing to hit the table.

The bread was good and fairly crusty, though it was unfortunately right at room temperature.  The olive oil, on the other hand, was delicious and peppery with lots of vegetable notes. 

While we waited for the dishes we'd ordered to begin making their way out of the kitchen, Husbear took a couple of shots of the restaurant.

Lots of natural light made picture-taking in here easy.  Some of the tables were topped with intricate mosaics and a large mural that looked a bit like a meeting between Kahlo and O'Keefe covered a wall.

We only had a couple of minutes to wait.

First out, Ensalada de remolacha con citricos - a frisee salad topped with beet shavings and quarters, nicely supremed citrus segments, and picon cheese, a creamy Spanish blue.  Not an earth-shattering pairing, but a solid one.  Plus, it managed to convert my beet-suspicious vegetarian uncle!

Barely behind our salad arrived the Espinacas a la Catalana - quick-sauteed spinach with pine nuts, raisins, and apples.  One of the standouts.  So good, in fact, we ordered another dish of it immediately.  The spinach must have been in the pan for just seconds, long enough to wilt and get a nice oily sheen.  I don't know where the comforting savoriness came from here - perhaps the pine nuts - but the bitter, sweet, and savory were balanced oh so well. 

Up next was an almost equally yummy dish - Pimientos del piquillo rellenos de queso de caña de cabra a la plancha.  I can't even say that one time fast.  It's stuffed peppers, cold, stuffed with creamy tangy goat cheese.  Very nice, though I guess I thought we were over microgreens?  Apparently José Andrés isn't.

Next was the first non-vegetable to arrive - ‘Esqueixada’ de bacalao.  This is a salad of salt cod with tomato and olive oil, and I think perhaps chives and shallot.  Husbear and I have had some good bacalao (baccalà in Italy) and some mealy and bad, and this was definitely up with the best.  The texture was closer to that of raw fish, so I think we were predisposed to enjoy it, but the flavors were all nicely put together, too - salty olives, peppery/grassy olive oil, and the slight fishiness of the bacalao.

Then, well, hopping into meatier territory - chorizo!  Homemade!

For obvious reasons, we're very interested these days in homemade sausage.  Someday, I hope Husbear will have a spare minute to write about the half-pig we brought to Louisiana for Christmas and turned into sausages, boudin, loin, belly, rillettes, and head cheese... but not today, unfortunately.

This sausage was good and spicy, though I preferred the potato puree, honestly.  What's not to like about creamy wonderfulness?  The sauce was way rosemary, though, so that I wasn't as much of a fan of.

Next?  Mushrooms!  I've been to Madrid one time (and need to get back, I know) and I remember the mushrooms served at a gypsy cave restaurant very clearly.  Garlicky, with that earthy mushroom flavor and a grilled savory backnote.  These were close, but not quite.

The mushrooms came out at the same time as two other hyper-traditional tapas.  The first was the tortilla de patatas - this is the egg and potato round omelette that you can get at just about every single tapas place we visited in the various regions of Spain.  This was a good version, though again I could have done without the microgreens.   

The other was dates wrapped in bacon and fried - delicious sweet-salty little fritters.  I wonder if the dates are a hand-me-down from the Moors?  I know the bacon wouldn't be.

We had a bit of a break before the next dishes arrived, thank goodness, because we were running our of room on the little appetizer-sized plates we'd been given.  We sat back a bit, just in time to be served our last few dishes...

Trigueros con salsa de romesco re-started things.  Though Trigueros apparently translates to wheat dealers, at least according to Babelfish, here it meant asparagus, served with that most noble of Spanish sauces - romesco.  Tomatoes, almonds, vinegar, peppers, it's a very assertive sauce.  I wanted more with our wheat dealers - there wasn't really enough for us all to get a hearty taste.

This is an awful lot of dishes to blog!  At least they were mostly good to great... except this next one.  Salmón a la sidra con huevas de trucha.  Salmon with an apple sauce and trout roe, also with diced apples.  And more microgreens, yay.  Again, I start out biased against the cooked fish, which was done just fine, but the whole dish together was just too sweet.  Salmon is a pretty sweet fish, and when you back it up with lots of apple, yeah... sweet.

Lucky, then, that the next dish out was one of mine and the table's favorites, the coliflor con olivas y frutos secos.  It was quick-cooked, still toothsome cauliflower tossed with olives and dried fruit and topped with a whole lot of flavorful Spanish paprika, or pimentón.

I think I must have been getting pretty full by this time.  I know this looks like a lot of food, but please also remember that there were five of us eating... and the servings are tapas-sized, after all.

The next dish made no impression.  I think I remember it being good.  I would have thought a stew (and the chorizo) would be the perfect dish for that day, but to be honest, I preferred the other vegetables and the bacalao.

And then, the very last thing to get carted over to our table (well, with the exception of the second spinach dish) was a dish of costillitas de cordero con calabaza - lamb chops with butternut squash.  Good and grilly... but I shockingly prefer my lamb a bit rarer.  The butternut squash was good, though, as was the rich jus.

All in all, a very good meal.  Were I to go back, I think I'd stick more heavily to the vegetables - the chef has a real hand with them, and while the meat dishes aren't bad, exactly, they just didn't stand out.  With the exception of that delicious bacalao, of course, and maybe those date and bacon fritters.

We really, really didn't want to go back out in the cold, but eventually we couldn't put it off any further.  While walking over to my uncle's car, we stopped in a great little gallery where Husbear and I discovered an already well-known artist and came fairly close to dropping $900 we REALLY don't have right now on a very cool print of apples fighting it out.

Here's Robert C. Jackson's website, if you've been wondering what we'd really love for our fourth anniversary (May 30!).  I love this whole series, but especially this one, "Operation Food Fight."

After that, we went over to the Hirschorn Museum, which is mostly full of the kind of modern art that leaves me cold... though they did have some more Calder.

They also had an exhibit showing a piece of performance art wherin a woman carved hundreds of names on herself (gay and lesbian people who'd been victims of gay-bashing attacks, if I remember correctly) and pressed papers against her wounds, creating a print of their names in blood.

Well... I guess it made an impression.

My favorite exhibit in the museum, however, was out in the hall.

Wait, what's that say?

Oh.

I got barbeque sauce all over my triumphant return!

I'm back!  Husbear got back yesterday!  The cats are more well-adjusted than I've ever seen them after we've left them alone for a couple of days, so yay to the cat-sitter (who bought them toys and completed an adorable journal wherein she noted that the cats' priority appears to be FOOD FOOD FOOD TREATS FOOD FOOD)!  Catherine of Catherine's Pet Sitting kicks a ton of ass.

My flights today were uneventful - only two hours late, and the pilot had to circle once more on the approach to Austin because we were about to rear-end an ExpressJet plane.  Yes, he announced this over the intercom system.  It added a sense of fun and barely controlled insanity to the proceedings.

Actually, it was lucky that my second flight was running late, because that meant that I got to indulge a craving that was threatening to take over my entire soul during the DC - Memphis leg, that is, a barbeque bologna sandwich from the Jim Neely's Interstate Barbecue at the airport. 

Grilled bologna doused with sweet/spicy barbecue sauce, emphasis on the sweet, topped with deliciously vinegar creamy coleslaw, on two pieces of texas toast that are rapidly disintegrating, threatening to lose all form before you finish the sandwich?  That's my Memphis airport comfort food, apparently, which I discovered when I had to spend three hours in the Memphis International Airport in September.  Another time Northwest was running several hours late.

Great, the craving's returned.

We had a lovely and delightful trip to Washington DC for my grandmother's 85th... lots of family, lots of wine, lots of museums, lots of fun.  Pictures later.  For now, unpacking!

FLYING!

Well, we spent most of the day today on planes... first, Austin to Houston, a very bumpy ride that at least was over quickly, and then from Houston to Washington DC.

We're here for my grandmother's 85th birthday party!  Wheee!

A couple of pics from the plane, to tide you over until we can put together an actual post...

I still think it's a hoot to order minibottles on planes.  They're like toys!  For drunkards!

After drinking my tiny bottle of gin (cut with tonic water, I'm not insane) I spent a good chunk of the rest of the flight taking pictures out of the window... at least until it got too dark, at which point I tried playing around with 4 second exposures.  Turns out I can't hold cameras still for that long.  Who knew?

At least I got a cool shot of the wing before things got all trippy and dark.

G'night from Alexandria, VA!

Reviewing everything in New Orleans

Yeah, not quite.

Actually, not even close.

Now we have a reason to return.

We did put a muffuletta-sized notch in our belts over Christmas, though, and followed that with several sazeracs, some absinthe, and a pool full of oysters!  Wanna see?

We only had a day to spend in New Orleans, and we got a very late start out of Mandeville. 

First things first: Lunch!

We met up with our friend Robert, who needs a nickname, and made our way over to the Central Grocery - with one stop to buy a hat, which you'll see later.  They're the originators of the now-famous muffuletta sandwich (which my spellcheck refuses to recognize, but my stomach does).

This was pretty late lunchtime, but there was still a substantial line.

Luckily, there are all sorts of things to peer at and poke while you wait your turn.  Like cheese.  There was a $50 tray of anchovies in the cooler, too, but surprisingly few people were poking those.

It would be easy to be paralyzed at the front of the line, having waited all that time, but luckily your choices are extremely limited.  There's muffulettas, half or whole.  And a few kinds of drinks and some chips.  They advertised a couple of different kinds of marinated veggies, but nope... all out.  Ah well.

The three of us ordered one sandwich and two bags of chips to share.  These sandwiches are monstrous - though we did see a couple of people who'd ordered a full sandwich for themselves.  They looked confused and chagrined.

This picture makes me want to hum the theme from 2001.

By the way, Zapp's are some dang good potato chips.  I don't know if they're distributed nationwide, though I remember being able to get them in South Carolina.  The spicy creole tomato are a plus one.

And the sandwich?  Besides being huge, which we've already established?

Surprisingly good.  The bread is nice and full of sesame flavor.  The meats and cheeses were ok, but the true star here was the olive salad.  Theirs was full of olive halves, and included carrots and cauliflower in fairly large chunks - more like a olive-heavy giardiniera than the chopped mush you often see on muffulettas.

I think the sandwich would be even better if you let it sit for a while, to let that tangy salty salad really soak into the bread.

After lunch, it was time for a walk around the French Quarter.  And self-portraits.  Indulge me.

This is Robert and The Hat.  And us.  We loved his outfit, as did lots of drunken middle-aged tourist ladies!  (This is one of the reasons I love New Orleans - it encourages people to really dress.)

The stores in the Quarter are always fun to walk through.  Lots of them specialize in feather boas and enormous beads and tourist t-shirts, but there are some pretty great finds too. 

If you spend your time in New Orleans only in the Quarter, it's easy to forget about the storm that hit here over two years ago.  Except for the omnipresent anger.  The real devastation was outside of the quarter, where whole neighborhoods are still rubble.  It's absolutely ridiculous and infuriating to me, so I can't even begin to imagine what the people that lived and live there are feeling.

I had a small shopping errand I had to run at the Lush outpost.  They were in the middle of a HUGE after-Christmas sale - think buy one, get two free - so we were there for quite some time and ended up spending a bit more than we meant too.  I was in such a frenzy I forgot to take pictures of the shop.

We emerged from Lush just before 6, I'm sure stinking of their perfumes (you can smell their stores around the corner), ready to have our first drink.  I've lately become a little obsessed with the sazerac, which I had for the first time several months ago here in town.  Turns out that not only is this one of the oldest cocktails, it's also quintessentially  New Orleans.  Bill, the bartender at Fino,(and the best bartender in Austin as far as I can tell -L. Pants) told us we had to have the sazerac at the Napoleon House in New Orleans.  So.

We turned up at the stroke of 6, ready to begin our sazerac-inspired tour of the Big Easy, only to be greeted by a big CLOSED sign.  NO!

But there were still people drinking inside!  It turns out that the Napoleon House closes at 6 because of a lack of staff.  Again, blame Katrina.  Husbear went inside to speak to the bartender, Lenny, who relented and allowed us inside for one drink apiece.  YAY!

The Napoleon House is  one of New Orleans' truly historic bars - it's in a 200 year old house that first belonged to a mayor of the town in the early 1800s.  The name may seem incongruous, and the bust over the bar out of place - but it's not.  In 1821, the house was offered to Napoleon in exile as a place from which to presumably plot his triumphant return to France... but oops, he died before he could take the city up on its offer. 

Now, we only need to go to St. Helena to complete our exiled Napoleon world tour!  (Here's our visit to Elba last Spring.)

Lenny made us three beautiful Sazeracs.  They were everything Bill had promised.  These were made with Herbsaint - I wonder if bars will start making them with absinthe, now that it's legal again?

Robert was dressed perfectly for the bar and the drink. 

Though there were still a few people left at the bar, we quickly moved on after finishing our drinks.  It was really nice of them to let us in.

Onward and upward!  Not very much upward, though we did have to climb a few steps to get to our next bar.  It's a true American oddity housed in the Hotel Monteleone.

The Carousel Bar was installed in 1949.  The name sort of gives it away - it's a round bar that revolves around a center area filled with bartenders and bottles of liquor.  It's sort of hilarious to sit there at the bar, ever moving to the right.  It's probably less enjoyable after a couple of drinks, though - I certainly wouldn't end my evening there!

A couple of drunk older men rearranged half of the people at the bar so we could sit there - we bought him a sazerac in thanks.  Thanks, Jimmy Dale!  You were hilariously good company.

These sazeracs weren't nearly as good as the ones from the Napoleon House.  They ran out of the "sazerac" rye whiskey they were using and topped it off with bourbon!  No no!

Plus, these were three dollars more apiece than the Napoleon House's version.  Now, I'm willing to pay a little extra to experience the bizarre carousel bar, but not for more than one drink.  So, onward!

To food!

Next stop, after passing up long lines at the Acme Oyster House, was the Bourbon House Seafood and Oyster Bar.  And their sazeracs, of course.

Better than the Carousel Bar's, but not up to the Napoleon House. 

While we sipped on these, we perused the menu and ordered a buncha oysters and some crab fingers - a cute name for cracked crab claws.

The trio of cooked oysters was the first to arrive - we had oysters Rockefeller (spinachy, though I gather that's not traditional), Bienville (shrimpy/cheesy), and Fonseca (sausage/tomatoey).  They were very, very rich.  I'm not really a fan of cooked oysters, but the toppings on these were so creamy and yummy that I'd definitely recommend them. 

This bar was a little crazy when we were there, by the way.  We were surrounded by people, some of whom had probably been drinking since they got out of bed, and this led to a couple of hilarious run-ins.  At one point, a drunk Atlantan (North Atlanta I might add) probably in her 50s followed Robert outside (he was having a smoke) and sang Tom Cochrane's "Life is a highway" - with one astonishing difference...

"Life is a HIGHWAY," she sang; "I wanna ride YOU all... night... long."

Then adding, by way of explanation, "It's the hat."

Meanwhile, inside, some dude in flip-flops was making his way up and down the bar, grazing.  "You gonna eat that?  How about that?"  The conference-goers to our left donated a couple of baked oysters and a crab finger.

In the midst of all this, we ordered some raw oysters.

The one on-duty oyster shucker was pretty overwhelmed by the crowd pressing against the bar, not to mention the full dining room.  He was working slowly and methodically, and while we may have had to wait a while for our oysters, they were very tasty and well-cleaned.  We sympathized with his busyness when he came to deliver our platter, and he must have liked us, because later on he dropped a couple of truly enormous guys on our plate, "for the lady".

MINE MINE NOM NOM UMPH. 

Where should we tote our bellies, now full of oysters?

The Old Absinthe House, of course!

Why not?  Absinthe was illegal in the US for 95 years.  Now that it's legal again, we had to order some in a bar - and the Old Absinthe House seemed ideal!

We were a little surprised when they set fire to the absinthe.  Not traditional, but lots of fun.  Apparently there's a society of peoplethat are pissed to no end to learn of this travesty... methinks some people should just sit back and perhaps have another slug of absinthe, mixed just so with the proper spoon and ice-cold water?  Calmate, per favore?

Sometimes setting things on fire is fun, no two ways about it. 

After this, the picture-taking stopped for several hours.  Another bar was visited, then One-Eyed Jack's, where we danced for several hours to '80s music.  Yes, we dance.  RARELY.  Robert, I blame you!  And the 1980s!

Our night ended at Molly's at the Market with a big ol' greasy pizza.  Yum.

Phew.  No worries - we'll be back.  We have to try more than three sazeracs, of course! 

Happy weekend!

Central Grocery, 923 Decatur Street, New Orleans.  504.523.1620.   Lunch only... until like 5 pm.

Napoleon House,  500 Chartres Street, New Orleans.  504.524.9752.  Limited hours for now - call ahead.

Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone, 214 Rue Royale, New Orleans.  504.523.3341.

Bourbon House Seafood and Oyster Bar, 144 Bourbon Street, New Orleans.  504.522.0111.

The Old Absinthe House Bar, 240 Bourbon Street, New Orleans.  504.523.3181.

Molly's at the Market, 1107 Decatur Street, New Orleans.  504.525.5169

A very merry Louisiana Christmas!

Happy Holidays from us and ours (well, the cats...) to you and yours!  We're about to get to work on an honest-to-goodness Christmas goose, which none of the folks in attendance has actually ever enjoyed. 

Christmas geese are such an archetype, but I actually don't know anyone who's ever indulged.  Huh.

This time last year, we were leaving for a month-long trip through Sicily and Southern Italy... this year, we drove from Austin to Mandeville with a half of a hog, two cats, and the aforementioned goose.  What a difference a year makes!

Leaving for Louisiana

Well, we're packing up the car and leaving for Louisiana tomorrow, ready to spend Christmas with the in-laws.  We're going to end up looking pretty much straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies, but instead of the truck piled high with furniture we've got a Saturn piled high with meats. 

I believe I've mentioned on here the half a pig we're bringing - add to that a goose (none of us have ever actually eaten a Christmas goose), and two cats.  No, we aren't eating the cats, though the thought did cross my mind when Fatty leapt up on our entertainment console the other day and knocked the oolong teapot we bought in Hong Kong off the side, breaking the top.

Luckily Husbear fixed it, or Fatty would be in kitty traction.  (I assume there is such a thing.)

The best thing about road travel to southern Louisiana is that the state has possibly the best roadfood in the entire country.  We've found several gems, mostly through Jeffery Steingarten's article on turducken from It Must've Been Something I Ate, but our favorite so far has to be Poche's in Breaux Bridge.

Poche's is, of course, where the andouille for the Turducken was purchased, and I have to say it's the best andouille I've ever eaten.  It's so good that we went an hour out of our way last trip to get their andouille - a gas explosion may have closed down I-10, but that wasn't going to keep us from our sausage!

Inside, there's a huge freezer case boasting such delights as boned chicken stuffed with crawfish dressing, pistolettes (stuffed rolls) with five or six different kinds of stuffing, tubs of jambalaya and etouffee, and multiple Cajun sausages.

Then, there's a not-frozen area with fresh sausages and stuffed pig's stomach (seriously - it's called chaudin), and a steam table with fried chicken and potatoes and corn and more jambalaya and etouffee. 

We've tried their andouille and bought a bag of pistolettes, which are delicious, but the thing that always makes us get off the road is their boudin.  They've always had the two types when we've been to visit - crawfish and pork.  Both sit poaching in a pot of water just behind the counter, and when you order, the girl behind the counter whips one out, slaps it on the scale, and charges you like a dollar.

Both of their boudins are very good - nice and wet and spicy.  They have a good organ-meat flavor without being overpoweringly livery.  The casings are a little tough - this is definitely the type of boudin that you squeeze out into your mouth.

The first time we went, we had to try the Cajun roadfood staple - cracklins.  It's what's left when you render a pig's fat and skin; you get a barrel of lard and a barrel of cracklins.  One time we were in Poche's and a man walked out with a 5-gallon bucket of the treats.

These artery-cloggers were delicious.  Though they soaked through the inner of the two bags holding them, they somehow didn't taste all that greasy.  Could have used more salt, though, but that's just us - the seasoning was otherwise good, with a nice spicyness that makes you just keep eating.

So, you know where we'll be midday on Saturday - somewhere in the vicinity of Poche's.  Let us know if we can pick up a chaudin for y'all.

Poche's: 3015 A Main Highway (seriously, that's the address), Breaux Bridge, LA.  800.3.POCHES.

Elizabeth's, for those of you who like your food fried in cream sauce - and who doesn't?

You'd think that the aforementioned turducken would have supplied all our calorie needs (and then some) over the course of the long Thanksgiving weekend, but sometimes the tastebuds tire and need a jolt of new stuff.

Plus, we wanted to drive down to New Orleans to see our friend Robert.  Brother Brandog was happily still in town and was even willing to drive us across the freakishly long Causeway.

After a slow amble up and down Magazine Street and a visit to a cute little tapas bar, we made our way over to Elizabeth's, just around the corner from the Quarter.

Cute, no?  It's a two-story restaurant just up from the water.

Nicely and comfortably decorated, too, with a bakery container in the corner stocked with yummy dessert treats.

We then just about made Brandog weep with delight when we ordered the entire appetizer menu.

Hey, appetizers are usually more attractive than entrees, right?  And, well, too be fair, we ordered the appetizer menu minus two of their offerings.  And we did order an entree to share, because sheep's head over wilted spinach just sounded too good to pass up.  (For those of you who are, like I was, envisioning the whole head of a ruminant, a sheep's head is a kind of white-fleshed fish.)

The deluge began with a quickness.

Fried Green Tomatoes with Remoulade was first to hit the table.  A delicious cornmeal breading formed a crunchy barrier, holding in the tangy green tomatoes.  I just about always like these, and Elizabeth's were a great example of why.

Barely behind the tomatoes, the restaurant's mildly famous praline bacon arrived.  We could barely wait for the pictures to be taken before we pounced.

Yeah, you heard right.  Praline.  Bacon.  Savory, smoky bacon with a caramelized layer of brown sugar and tiny pieces of pecans.  Ho boy, were these good for the tastebuds and bad for the waistline.  If only they were coated in chocolate...

The next treat to settle on our table was a seafood stuffed mirliton in a cream sauce.  I'm not going to give you a picture here, because stuffed things in cream sauce - well, they don't photograph all that well.  Mirlitons, known as chayote squash everywhere else I've seen them, are in season right now in southern Louisiana, and man are then good.  They have a delicate squash flavor that's perfect with a light seafood stuffing and a drenching in thickened cream sauce.

Probably a good thing we were splitting all of these...

Next came the appetizer some considered the belle of the ball - the boudin balls.  We're eating our way through Cajun country's boudin offerings, and when you take the filling and fry it, and then throw the rice/liver/pork sausage over the top of some good Creole mustard, well jeebus.

No, these were not the size of my head, thanks for asking.

Next up?  A rather untraditional meat you don't see a lot on American menus, though we saw it all over the place in Italy.

Rabbit Tenderloin in a Tomato-Basil "Coulee".

The rabbit was perfectly fried, nice and moist, but the sauce tasted a little too much like tomato soup. 

Appetizers kept coming, a little parade made up of what we soon realized were either fried dishes or dishes in cream sauce.  Or both, like this one:

Blue Cheese Oysters.  I am a big blue cheese fan, and while it was interesting to have a yummy blue piquant blue cheese sauce on these of course perfectly fried oysters, I'm not entirely convinced by the combination.  The only solution must be to have it eight or ten more times to see if I can formulate a considered opinion.

The Beer BQ Oysters, on the other hand, were good enough to make me consider seriously the idea of returning the next day for their Sunday brunch.  Tangy, smoky, rich, on the again perfect oysters.  I don't know who they have back there doing their frying, but damn.

At this point, we were thinking "Surely that's it?"  But no...

Out came the last appetizer, fried chicken livers in house pepper jelly.

I would never have thought to apply pepper jelly as a sauce for fried tidbits, but this very good jelly cut right through the double richness of the liver and the frying.  I've never had fried chicken livers before, and now I know I'm a convert.

Don't worry, we didn't only have fried things in cream sauce.  We also had sauteed things in cream sauce, in the form of the nightly special; sheep's head in a spicy cream sauce served over wilted spinach.

We got to choose two sides, so what you see here is red beans and rice and green beans.  Bigger than any green beans I've ever seen, but hey.

That's a huge amount of food!  I can't imagine one person eating it, though everything was so flavorful and well-seasoned that I'm sure plenty of people do just that.  This cream sauce was very light and didn't overpower the fish, and their red beans and rice are primo. 

We really weren't going to order dessert.  I mean, did you see what we ate?  I know there were four of us, but still...

But then we asked the waitress what this "ooey-gooey cake" was that we saw on the menu.  And when she told us it was a pound cake with a cream cheese icing, we couldn't help it.  And as long as we were ordering that, we figured we should probably give the buttermilk ice cream a try.

My friends, these desserts are evil seductresses sent from the land of the happy 400-pounder.  They were both so good, the rich thick sweet gooeyness of the cake and the nicely sour buttermilk ice cream - a great match.  Yipes.

In short, I'd definitely recommend a visit to Elizabeth's, though I can't speak to the entrees.  Just order everything and smile.

Elizabeth's Restaurant.  601 Gallier Street, New Orleans, LA.  504.944.9272.

BTW - on a bloggy business note, over in the lefthand column you'll see a new feature highlighting the most popular pages here on Boots.  Check them out, if you haven't already!