Chris Hennes

Nothing is on fire (as far as I can tell) -- the upgrade appears to have succeeded.

The upgrade was rescheduled for July 1.

Our hosting provider is upgrading the OS on our server this evening: other than eG being completely unavailable during that window, there should be no other user-visible effects (famous last words, I know). Everyone cross your fingers...

Nope, there for a dance competition.

I just really like gumbo . Just fried onions.

Last meal of this trip was lunch at Palace Cafe. Gumbo (shock!): Pecan salad: Moules Frites: Pecan-Crusted Catfish: All good: the gumbo was among the better I've had, and my wife reports that the pecan crust was delicious. Despite the hyper-touristy location, I think it's still worth eating here.

For dinner that evening we went to Le Chat Noir, which is a bit of a departure from our previous destinations -- it's not really cajun, more "New American with some Cajun Influence" (if that's a thing...). At any rate, this was a communal dining, order-many-things sort of experience. I may have gotten distracted by eating and failed to take photos before I started in... "Bread Royale": Bone marrow and chicken liver mousse (with toast, not pictured ): Roasted carrots: Blackened summer squash: Tomato salad: Roast pork: Roasted potatoes: This meal was fantastic: we enjoyed everything, but standouts were the tomato salad, the chicken liver mousse, and the squash (which was very spicy).

Next up was Redfish Grill. You will be shocked to know I started with the gumbo: And my wife with tomato bisque: Then I had the shrimp and grits: And my wife the Cochon de Lait & Eggs: Everything here was very good: the gumbo was both rich in flavor and light in texture, the andouille in it excellent, and the relish on the shrimp and grits was a great accent to what can otherwise be a sort of overwhelmingly rich dish. The shrimp and grits also had "beef debris" under it, which was good but probably unnecessary, IMO.

Last year I was in NOLA for the first time, and did a short foodblog about it. In that trip I ate at Luke, Herbsaint, GW Fins, Willie May's, Cochon, Galatoire's, Pêche, and the MSY airport location of Leah's Cafe. I was back again this past weekend, so figured I'd keep on documenting... First up is Trenasse, where we'd intended to eat last time and been forced to divert due to construction that ended up closing the restaurant. I started with the gumbo: My wife with the tomato bisque: They were out of shrimp enough to do the shrimp and grits, but could do the "Taste of Trenasse" which consisted of smaller portions of three different entrees, including the shrimp and grits. So I went with that (Louisiana Crawfish Pie, Pan Fried Redfish Meunière, Shrimp & Grits): And my wife went with blackened redfish: Nothing was bad, but it was pretty forgettable. The Crawfish Pie was probably the highlight, but unless that's really what you're craving I'm not sure there's a lot of reason to seek this place out. Then again, it's attached to the Intercontinental, so if you happen to be staying there you could do worse.

You are right about the garlic on the marinara as well, but I found it less offensive than the oregano (there was just so much of it!). That said, the garlic was so undercooked I question whether it was actually added after the bake instead of before. Regarding the aesthetic of the margherita, I see what you mean, but from a flavor and texture standpoint I personally prefer smaller, more well-distributed chunks of mozzarella, and was happy with this one (recall also that the pizza above is huge, so so size of the chunks is a little deceptive in that photo). Then again, no one has ever accused me of being a "purist"!

It was not shredded, just torn into strips.

I ate there tonight and overall it was quite good. I had a marinara and a margherita: I was surprised by the basil and dried oregano on the marinara: I won’t go so far as to say they “ruined” the pie, which was fine, but Bianco’s was far superior. The margherita, though? Perfection. I’m not sure what sort of mozzarella it was (cow’s milk I’d guess), but it was perfectly salted, flavorful, well-distributed, and basically as good as margherita can get. ETA: I should point out that these pizzas were enormous compared to the Neapolitan I am used to: 14” maybe? The waiter was pretty surprised we wanted two.

Pre-orders just opened for the Spinzall 2.0 -- it sounds like they did a lot of work to address common user issues with the first model. https://modernistpantry.samcart.com/products/spinzall?utm_source=banner&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=spinzall&ref=mp

I've made basically every base dough in Modernist Pizza (not New Haven yet...), and it's really only the Neapolitan that absolutely requires Ludicrous Speed baking (as @scott123 points out, and whose Ooni Koda 16 recommendation I wholeheartedly agree with). For the majority of the pizzas you're looking at ~5 minutes at 480°F, though the truly thick crust variants do take longer than that. ETA: On a steel pizza "stone" that is.

Another "deep dish pizza" -- based on a Cook's Illustrated Vegetable Torta. I think I've gotten pretty far afield from "pizza" here, even by Chicago-style Deep Dish standards.