HungryC

Griddled ham & american cheese from the original incarnation of Parkway Bakery, when the old dude behind the counter wore a dirty apron & grease strings 3' long hung from the outside of the kitchen exhaust fan. Cheap deli cold cuts on slightly stale bread from the Com-Pak Food Store (aka Young's/Jung's) on the riverside corner of Magazine & Walnut streets. The whole building fell down in Katrina; now it's just an empty lot. And, the incomparable roast beef poboys from George's in Larose, LA.

Concidentally, I was just in this very shop last week. That pizza ebraica was amazing, as all of the bakery stuff from the Antico Forno del Ghetto just around the corner. With La DolceRoma down the street, it's a great little corner of Rome.

Just returned from Italy, where I picked up a taralli habit! As I am slowly eating my way through a delicious bag, I realize that I need to learn to make these suckers or I will suffer withdrawl pretty soon. I've briefly searched the web, poked through a few cookbooks, but I know that eGulleteers will have the straight skinny on taralli making. My gold standard were purchased from Forno Roscioli in Rome; the bag lists flour, olive oil, onions, and red wine as ingredients. They're somewhere between a cracker and a cookie in texture, not shiny, and don't taste as though they're yeasted. Has anyone out there experienced taralli success? Please share!

You're also right in the middle of King Cake season....you could gain more than a few pounds sampling various king cakes 'round town.

I'd vote for Emeril's, too. Nothing wrong with Delmonico, it's comfy & has lovely rooms, as well as delicious beef. But somehow E's feels more festive to me.

Curious about the ones you purchased at Wild Oats: where were they grown?

Mandarins/satsumas make good jam, but you have to bump up the acidity with a little lemon juice to get a good gel set (unless you LIKE runny jam, some people do). Just be sure to peel off the membranes surrounding the segments or your jam will be gross & pithy. They also make mighty fine orange wine...five lbs of sugar, a bunch of peeled fruit mashed up real good, and a stoneware crock is all you need. Stir well to combine, cover with clean cheesecloth, and put in a warmish corner of the kitchen. It will begin to "talk" to you after a week or two; when the fermentation seems to slow, start tasting it. Bottle when it reaches a nice level of alcohol. Mandarin vinegar is good, too, but you need a vinegar mother to get off on the right track. Regarding the "right" time to start picking, it depends on the weather, age of tree, etc. On a loaded tree, it's easy: you pick one, taste it, and keep trying every few days until they're sweet enough. When you're hoarding just a few fruit and don't want to sacrifice any, give 'em a gentle squeeze every week or so. I find that they're sweetest when the skin has just barely begun to separate from the fruit--you'll be able to feel a slight "space" between the skin & fruit, esp on the blossom end. Generally, I start checking a week before Halloween (and incidentally, when I was kid, satsumas were a common trick-or-treat favor).

I've seen quite a bit of fruit on trees in orchards in Lafourche parish & in backyard trees in my 'hood. Unfortunately, my (relatively young) backyard trees decided to grow a bunch of new limbs this year so almost NO fruit set in the spring. I have ONE satsuma, THREE LA Sweet oranges, no blood oranges, no key limes (though my neighbor's tree has plenty).

I actually have respect for places that keep it cash-only (some of my favorite places don't take plastic). Just goes to show that you can run a business the old-fashioned way, even in the present day, whatever the reasons. When I discovered that Camellia Grill took plastic, it was a bit sad (though I admit that I paid w/debit card on my last few visits).

I think that Williams Blvd is the center of the best-eatin' neighborhood in town right now.

Thanks to both of you guys for posting all of this good stuff. Finally--a message board that is ahead of local print outlets! You both rock. Somebody tell me more about the Korean places....is either of the new ones going to offer BBQ? Like hibachi, it's not posh but it IS fun & delicious.

Since a fair number of displaced folks moved to other parts of LA, I wonder if new restaurants are opening in the areas with the greatest number of new residents (like St. Tammany, Ascension Parish, Tangiphoa, etc)?

Thank you thank you thank you for the real apples-to-apples comparison of all food outlets w/Board of Health certificates, before and after the storm. Makes perfect sense that they're tracking the population figures. Does DHH classify the licenses into categories? That might reveal some interesting things, too. Deep pockets survive trying times, as do family operations that can rely on free labor or in-kind services from a large social network, or an extremely dedicated clientele.

Another thought about this issue: the huge nosedive in population isn't evenly spread across the socioeconomic spectrum....we've lost a HUGE number of the very poor and a substantial number of upper middle/slightly wealthy folks. So perhaps the post-storm demographics favor certain kinds of restaurants?

Any word on when she'll open again for us regular folks?

I think the answer to your question depends on where in NOLA a person lived. Many of us patronize neighborhood restaurants that aren't "destination" dining, yet still capture a fair portion of our food budgets. I'm thinking of corner poboy shops, pizza joints, hot-wings-n-shrimp-fried-rice outlets, smaller boiled seafood vendors, convenience stores w/lunch counters, coffee shops w/sandwiches, etc. If these places disappeared from your Gentilly Woods, NO East, Mid-City, Lakeview, or other neighborhood, perhaps you're driving farther afield to dine out than pre-K. For example, MeMe's market (on Canal Blvd) made pretty good poboys before it got flooded out, Plantation Coffeehouse had pastries/snacks, and Lakeview Fine Foods sold a bunch of take-home meals stuff. None would rank as a restaurant in any official count except the Board of Health's food outlet licensing numbers. So if you have returned to Lakeview and your old spots aren't open, maybe you're driving into downtown now, or heading up Vets. I know that this shift in population has impacted my dining out, and I don't even reside in a flooded area. I frequented the Pho Tau Bay in Fat City a couple times a month when I found myself in the area; it's gone, so I don't hit that neighborhood for errands/shopping as much as I once did (I can get the same stuff on the Westbank, so I've shifted my travel routes & dining destinations). Another factor that might be driving some of the dining out is the limited access to grocery stores in the larger Lakeview/lakefront area. Meme's, Lakeview Fine Foods, Roberts...all are still closed. So perhaps a larger proportion of this fairly affluent neighborhood has increased its dining out because it's easier than driving to other areas to buy groceries?

I think you have to remove Sushi Brothers from the "new" list, as it is just a new name/new ownership for the old Tokyo bistro--decor, menu, etc are substantially the same. I get the general sense that quite a few places are barely holding on....if we don't have a good fall season, you'll see some additional closures by Christmas--mostly the sort of places heavily dependent on tourists. But back to your analysis: to make sense of the entire picture, you have to count the number of restaurants missing from the Zagat's 2005 to 2007 editions (within the same price range as those "new openings" you mentioned). How many places simply didn't reopen after the storm? Despite a certain local critic's assertion that we have more restaurants than ever, I can think of some mid-range to high-end places that are gone, so perhaps the dining public has fewer overall choices? Smith & Wollensky, the original Ruth's Chris, Mandich, Chateaubriand, Brunings, Sid-Mar's, etc etc. I'd be interested in the LA Restaurant Association's pre- & post-storm membership comparisons, or a real analysis of the Board of Health's pre- & post-storm restaurant licensing.

I think the worst way to prepare alligator is fried. It's too easy to overcook and it ends up tasting like batter. It's much better in a sauce piquante or stew or in a mixed sausage. I think it tastes like a combination of fish & chicken...not quite as dense & grainy/fibrous/meaty as chicken, but definitely more textured, with longer muscle fibers than fish.

Holy crud, pu pu platters AND Johnny Winter at Kowloon? That's what I call livin'.

Here's a link to a NZ media story that seems to quote the same story--it might give you enough detail to track down the actual study: http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/story21175.html

The exterior of La Divina made it to the show, but it was not mentioned. It was mostly a filler exterior shot depicting Magazine Street.

Did anyone see the premier episode of Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt? He's traveling up the Mississippi, and he started out in Venice. I was a little disappointed that he didn't visit any commercial fishermen, but he made up for it (a little) by hanging out with the guy who owns Big Fisherman uptown. I was also bummed by his visit to Mulate's, and a very weak attempt to distinguish between cajun & creole food. He didn't hit a single poboy joint, either.

Interesting note on Ruth Fertel's tomb: she had the thing built well before her death, and she hosted a big party at the cemetery when it was completed--here's a link to a CNN story on the event: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/STYLE/design/...s.ap/index.html

Timh, have you been to Restaurant da Piero in Kenner on Williams? Not creole italian or "brooklyn" italian at all.

Mauthe's Dairy Farm, mauthesdairy@aol.com; really nice people, good products. Smith's Creamery, Mt. Hermon, LA: Smith's butter won a national taste-test a few years ago. I love their chocolate milk. Chef John Folse's dairy operation produces great cheeses & yogurt, but I don't know if he's using local milk or not. He also has an olive grove near Donaldsonville that I'd love to see--so you can now buy local olive oil, too. Whispering Pines Farm in Loranger has grass-fed beef and some poultry. Another family-run concern--here's the contact info: http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M9764 In fact, the Local Harvest website is a great resource for family farms, organic farms, small producers, etc. Just search "louisiana" and you'll get a nice listing of our local resources.