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Aaron Manter, chef/owner at The Owl, aka the Only Greenville Restaurant That Matters, drops some wisdom:
Bear this in mind the next time someone tells you about a lunch special that is a BLT, but the bread, and the L and the T are made out of different kinds of bacon, and you eat the sandwich in a bacon fuck swing, covered with bacon lube. (All of this is a leadup to a post where the Cod argues that Benton's bacon is health food.)
Congratulations to the Baltimore Ravens on winning the AFC Championship, and punching their ticket to New Orleans for Super Bowl XLVII! As a service, former NOLA native The Gurgling Cod has some tips to make your trip from Charm City to The Big Easy as fun as possible:
1) New Orleans restaurants = seedy! Louisiana's state restaurant inspection system is broken.Your best bet? Stick to reputable chain restaurants. Luckily, there are ten (!) Subways within walking distance of the Superdome, so you won't have to worry about being hungry!
2) The same thing goes for New Orleans hotels. Also seedy! Just look on Tripadvisor. Your best bet is to stay near the airport, in either Metarie or Kenner! A taxi ride from there to the Superdome is about 5 minutes, and will cost no more than ten dollars. Also, three nearby Applebee's for celebrating after the game!
3) That said, don't miss the chance to interact with the colorful locals! If you need some "walking around money," someone will bet you where you got your shoes. How could they know? Cha-ching!
4) Bourbon St. is known for its exotic local cocktails - for a local treat, walk into any bar and ask for either a FEMA or a Goodell! You are in for a treat!
5) Finally, a history lesson: Louisiana was originally settled by the French, and legacies of that culture remain. You see lots of streets with french names, and the state legal code is the Napoleonic Code. One quirk of this legal system is that stabbing people outside of nightclubs is against the law. So be careful!
Through the good offices of Mr. Hall. Fake Guy Fieri drops some knowledge w/r/t homophobia and Notre Dame. And his hair is better than Michael Warner's! The whole Teo thing really only makes sense if he was making up a fake girlfriend as a way to get out of having a real girlfriend, which would not be a problem were it not for football's culture of compulsory heterosexuality. (Case in point: mention the possiblity that Teo is gay, and watch Domers rip you for "accusing" him of being gay. You can accuse someone of racketeering, which is a crime, but you cannot "accuse" someone of enjoying Lillet, which is not a crime.) But! most alarmingly, the Old Skool Pepperoni Pizza Eggrolls that I presumed to be a satiric concoction of EDSBS turn out to be all too real:
It's early yet, so let's call this a contender for Guiteau Monday.
Where other chefs of his ilk hobnob with Padma, or open up steakhouses in Vegas, Tony Maws has moved very deliberately. When he moved Craigie St. Bistrot out of its home in the 02138 all the way across town to where La Groceria used to be, he closed his old place, and focused on Craigie on Main, a larger place, giving room for a bar w/ one of the most ambitious spirits programs in town, not to mention all sorts of pasta experiments, and any number of other things.
Now, news that he's finally opening a new spot, where the Kirkland used to be, next to Dali, (or next to where the Peasant Stock used to be, if you're nasty). A, B, and C represent the former, current, and future strongholds of the Maws empire, which is to say you could walk from the old spot to the new spot to the next spot in about an hour. Evidently the new spot will be more "rustic" and "casual," which frankly there is room for, next to Craigie. The dining room side of COM has always felt a bit less neighborhoody than CSB's, and the merge of the bar and dining room menu makes it harder to get a snack at the bar than it once was. No word if the signature burger will be on the menu at the new spot, but don't bet against a strong move hot dog wise.
So, I put a picture of last night's dinner on the internets, and folks liked it. Some more background. Underneath, rice grits from Two Boroughs Larder. Not perfect on this but a nice change from grits, and somehow more soigne than rice. The actual succotash (I am not clear on what succotash really is, and aim to keep it like that) I'd made the day before, because of leftover dark butterbeans from making Sifton's Oxtail stew. The next part is probably not necessary, but I did have some old odds and ends of Benton's hanging around, so in the interest of conserving our dwindling supply of Benton's bacon, I cubed the ham, and cooked in a little butter and then braised in vermouth. Good flavor, but a little on the chewy side, as one might expect from a country ham with some years on it. To return: I then quickly cooked red onion and carrot and celery I had around in the ham pan, and tossed all that w/ the butterbeans. I then tossed the butterbeans, etc. w/ a dressing w lots of minced shallots and Zatarain's mustard (increasingly the house mustard around here).
I'd been thinking that the succotash alone would make a nice lunch, but then yesterday was my first pickup from the CAFE, and I wanted to do some things with my stuff. So, I cooked up a couple of strips of Benton's after all, then cooked down turnip greens in that, w/ a splash of cane vinegar (the definitive all purpose vinegar around here). Finally, I poached the gorgeous local eggs from Son Rise Acres, and scattered the radishes and bacon around the perimeter. A pretty satisfying and not too hearty meal, employing mostly stuff that was around.
For the Cod, Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note is a propos. The next two weeks hold nothing but incessant repitition of the world "Harbaugh," seasoned with higlights of especially inspirational club stabbings. But two chefs the Cod admires have similar SB specials in the pipeline:
Meanwhile, in NYC:
Interesting to see that Chang is taking one of his signature dishes South of the Border. Thanks to NYC operative and Bar Book Project hostess Liz for the Chang tip. For those of you of a more DIY lean, Ms. Sarah Sprague has all of your SB food needs locked up.
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