After Hours with DB in New Orleans

[saturnbar]

I don't know if anyone is familiar with Daniel Boulud's tv show After Hours, but he filmed two shows here at Commanders and Bayonna. If you get Cox's HD programming the show airs on the MOJO channell, 754. Basically, Boulud travels to different cities and showcases some notable restauarants by hosting a dinner with a variety of guests most of whom are local culinary professionals in some form or fashion as well a few people from the entertainement industry. Boulud usually cooks some over the top dish and the host chef usually puts on a good fead as well. Its actually my favorite food oriented show. The Commanders episode already aired but they rerun the episodes quite frequently. At the table were Ti, Lally, and Ella Brennan, Tory McPhail, Eman Loubier, Danny Trace, Lorin Gaudin, Bryan Batt, and Irvin Mayfield. Strangley, it was one of my least favorite episodes. Anyhoo, the Bayonna episode airs Sunday night and it should be interesting to see who shows up for grub. ch

[TAPrice]

Just curious, why didn't you like the episode?

I think that you can download the episodes soon. Either on Hulu or Amazon.

[saturnbar]

Just curious, why didn't you like the episode?

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A couple thongs I guess. One they just didn't develop any chemistry. The idea of the show is that the dinner takes place after service and everyone has a few and lets their hair down, which gets pretty interesting when there are some real heavyweights or highly talented newcomers sitting at the table. The Commanders epsiode read more like a formal dinner party with a bad seating chart. Also, there is something to be said about being too familiar with the subject matter, so maybe I was biased. At one point, Ti or Lally made a statement to Boulud about the best boudin being made in (eee gad, would you believe) gas stations, and Boulud's reaction was somewhere between confused and , oh really, how quaint. They had to explain to Boulud that our boudin is made with rice. At another point someone said something about boudinlink.com. One of the attractions of the show is that you get a really good look at some compelling new restaurants and the people that drive them, and other than a couple shots of Commanders luxurious interior you didn't get any sense about what makes the restauarnt tick. They didn't even discuss the fact that they had to completely refit the whole restauarnt after the storm.

Also, the food was a little underwhelming. For Commanders part, all they brought to the table was a board of charcuterie and some, what else, boudin, whcih I am not even sure they serve. Boulud also brought his own boudin noir if I am not msitaken. They did do a riff on Boulud's $29 hamburger, with a duck poboy made with some foie and a poached egg, which wasn't much more than cute. Even Boulud's contribution, pot au feu, was a little flat. When it came out it just looked like grey meat with broth, which of course is what it is, nonetheless, not exciting. Although he did serve brain with it. Everyone was like eew, yucky, and they never did get a reaction shot of anyone eating it or whether anyone like it. It seemed like the whole show wasn't about Commanders or even New Orleans, but about Louisiana. Consequently, they managed to give the impression that all we eat or serve here is boudin and alligator. They could have at least extended the stereotype to include crawfish and boiled shrimp. Maybe I am overstating things, but I am so tired of seeing New Orleans cuisine being painted with such a broad one dimensional brush. Whats really ironic is that its practically impossible to get decent boudin in New Orleans. Hopefully, Bayonna will do us less disservice.

ch

[titicaca]

Yeah, it's too bad it came off a bit clunky. I have to think that it was in the editing. New Orleanians always come off as a bit full of themselves, due to the fact that they live in a self sustaining culinary paradise that is basically cut off from the rest of the world. I mean, really, to argue the necessity of corkage with Daniel is absurd enough, but the argument never really got interesting. Ti came off as a boor, Irvin Mayfield came off as a pretentious "artiste", you didn't really get much insight into the cuisine or legend of CP, let alone their Katrina disaster- although as a regular customer in the 80's, I have to admit that the dining room looked spectacular. There was zero interesting input from the dinner crowd.

And I think that the Pot au Feu Daniel prepared was the most boring meal I've seen him make on this show. At least those marrow bones could have carmelized!

I was glad Eman Loubier was on the show- I remember Chef Jamie, and think that his Dante's Kitchen is one of the best casual restaurants NO has going for it these days.