eG Foodblog: Fat Guy (2010) - Goin' Mobile

[Chris Amirault]

The testing seems so rigorous, it makes me think that right now seafood from the Gulf is more likely to be safe than from anywhere else (most seafood is not all that carefully monitored).

I've had the same thought -- I traveled through Logan Airport en route to Saudi Arabia a few days after 9/11 embracing it, in the hope that I'd stop trembling. (More on that trip here.) Have you or will you learn more about the more rigorous testing and how it reflects on standard testing?

[Fat Guy]

I'm really interested to hear about what seafood they are currently harvesting and what the perceptions are of the people walking into local diners and cafe's when they read the words "fresh" and "local" seafood on menus. Are they scared to eat the seafood down there, regardless of what scientific studies are telling us?

What we're hearing is that they are currently harvesting all seafood in the region. The only restrictions still in place are very near the spill site, not in Mobile Bay or anywhere near in. There are some oyster beds not opening until November 1, but apparently those closures have to do with Katrina and predate the spill. I need to follow up to confirm all that.

When it comes to consumer perception, though, the story is grim. Wesley True, a chef I spoke to this morning, said over the summer he couldn't buy local seafood because nobody would order it in the restaurant -- even though it had been tested and cleared by FDA, NOAA, et al. He said that is starting to change.

There's also a local-seafood shortage, we are told, because so may people in the fishing business went to work on spill cleanup or are otherwise getting paid to do things other than fish.

[Fat Guy]

Have you or will you learn more about the more rigorous testing and how it reflects on standard testing?

As I understand it, the testing is all standard. They're just testing many more samples from this region than from anywhere else right now. But I'm trying to learn more. I should also note there are some who argue that the tests are not adequate, or at least not adequately disclosed.

[Chris Amirault]

Sounds like we should all be asking our fishmongers to bring back Gulf seafood...

[Florida]

It's been years since I've been to Wintzel's. Gumbo was always good, though I considered it "Mobile-style" as it doesn't resemble the gumbo one would find in NO or LA. Thicker and sweeter, but still tasty.

The rest of the food is typical for South Alabama - fried everything.

Not sure how long your junket is, but I imagine you'll probably end up at Felix's at some point. May not be high cuisine, but it's still good.

[MikeHartnett]

Sounds like we should all be asking our fishmongers to bring back Gulf seafood...

You should! In addition to being safe, it's also delicious.

[Fat Guy]

This afternoon I finally connected with a source who seemed to me to be quite reliable: Chris Nelson of Bon Secour Fisheries, a fourth-generation, century-old, family seafood business.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Chris is not only a lifelong participant in the local fishing industry but also has a degree in marine biology from SUNY Stony Brook not to mention a very even keel. He didn't strike me as an ideologue or a person who was in any sort of denial. He was eager to share maps, charts and other data. Here's what I learned.

First of all, this is the official map as of 6pm today showing which area of the Gulf is closed to fishing:

To be clear: the regulators aren't saying that any given species of fish can or can't be caught. The closures are by geographic area. Since almost all species are found in various places around the Gulf, closing a specific area doesn't translate into a ban on a particular species. Rather, it means boats have to go elsewhere to catch that species. (Although Chris thought it might not be possible right now, given the way the lines are drawn, to get at any of the rare, deep-water Royal Red shrimp.)

The most significant burden, at least for the Mobile fishing industry, is the top left hump of the red box on that map. Were that line to be pushed 5 miles south, it would make some very productive shrimping areas available. Chris showed us another, more finely grained map that showed the sequence of planned reopenings, and that area is pretty far off in the sequence -- not necessarily because it's considered less safe than others. (Chris pointed to some arguments that it's more safe). Louisiana boats are likely affected most by the corner of the box that touches their coast.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

As for oysters, Chris said that some oyster beds are still closed, although some of those closures predate the spill anyway. There are some openings planned for November 1, he said, though other beds will remain off limits.

Once we process today's photos I'll get caught up on what I ate.

[Fat Guy]

First stop of the day was the restaurant True for a visit with chef Wesley True and a small tasting of his food. I hadn't heard of True but I immediately liked the guy and he has a pretty strong resume: he's a Culinary Institute of America graduate and worked at several New York City restaurants (Aquavit, Bouley, Public, AZ, Mesa Grill) before moving back home and building True. We hung around the kitchen while he prepared a dish of shrimp and crab, then we ate it while we chatted about the local restaurant scene and, of course, the local seafood.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

I mentioned earlier that Wesley True painted a pretty bleak picture of public perception of Gulf seafood. He said that over the summer he couldn't put it on his menu because people wouldn't order it so it would wind up in the trash. He said that may be changing a little bit now, but that there's still a lot of ground to make up. Chris Nelson, for his part, cited statistics saying that 90% of people surveyed have concerns about the safety of Gulf seafood. Those kinds of numbers can't be good for business.

[Fat Guy]

We had lunch at a restaurant called Spot of Tea, a downtown Mobile institution. Even though all I really wanted was a salad, for research purposes I ordered two of the house specialties: "C. J.'s Cayenne Crab Bisque" and "Eggs Cathedral."

Needless to say, I can eat heavy food with the best of 'em, but these were some heavy, heavy dishes, so much so that even I found them daunting.

This is C. J.'s Cayenne Crab Bisque. The menu description is as follows, including the quotation marks:

"12 ounces of the best seafood bisque you'll ever eat". Topped with a delicious crab cake and sautéed crawfish tails. Tested and approved by Councilman "Clinton Johnson! "C. .J.'s" served with grilled pistolete.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

And here's the Egg Cathedral: an English muffin topped with crab cakes, scrambled eggs and "our seafood sauce, made with blackened Mexican grouper and crawfish," and potatoes.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

There was some redundancy between the two dishes, both stylistically and in terms of the inclusion of crab cakes. I preferred last night's crab cakes, not least because they were made of big fat juicy pieces of crab. Today's crab cakes were made from finely shredded crab and probably more fillers.

As for service, three people in our group independently said of our server, "She's no Miss Pinky."

[nakji]

What's "grilled pistolete"? Is that the bread pictured with the soup?

The food looks really, really rich. How far did you make it through the dishes?

[Pierogi]

As I was saying before the Internet ate my homework......

I find it fascinating that the locals are still so leery of the local Gulf seafood. I’d have thought that they’d have been bombarded with information (press releases, ads, news stories, etc.) about the testing program and the standards to which the harvest is being held. And I’d have thought, with some level of vested interest in seeing their local businesses/purveyors survive, they’d have been first in line to bang the drum that all was basically OK.

Even here on the Left Coast, I’d gotten the message that, if Gulf seafood was on the market commercially, it was safe. The danger was in the back-of-the-pickup-truck operations, which certainly aren’t going to be operating on a commercial level.

Or did you get the feel that these business are so tourist-driven, and the word hasn’t gotten out to the majority of the country that there’s little relative danger, that this is the reason for the reluctance to eat local product?

[Fat Guy]

What's "grilled pistolete"? Is that the bread pictured with the soup?

Oh good. It's not just me. As far as I can tell, it's a quirky local or regional term for griddled toast. I feel like it has got to derive from pistolet, which is a kind of French roll. But when I keyed it into Google I didn't get much back.

The food looks really, really rich. How far did you make it through the dishes?

A few bites of each dish -- enough to taste each element of the dish alone and in combination with the other elements. That's not unusual when I'm out working on a food story or on a trip like this. There are times when the schedule will have me at close to ten restaurants in a single day. There's no way to eat all that food, so you learn to taste. My level of self restraint is probably below average -- they don't call me Fat Guy for nothing -- though I've been getting better with age (It has been years since I could eat unlimited food like that without gastrointestinal consequences). I know some food writers, though, who never eat more than a few bites of anything. You go to a convention of food journalists and the people in the room don't look any fatter than the general population. Still, no matter how full you are, there can always be an exceptional food item that inspires you to eat a little more.

That happened last night when we went to a dessert place after dinner (at which we had already had dessert). It was called Cream & Sugar, in the Oakleigh Garden district. I walked in determined not to eat another dessert. Then I decided I owed it to you, my readers, to try a taste of something. I can't say whether this change of heart was prompted by the amazingly appetizing appearance of the confections in the case.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

A taste could have been the end of it. I tried a strawberry "cake ball," which is as it sounds: a ball of strawberry cake coated in icing. It was so good that, over the course of about 20 minutes, I tried one bite after another until it was all gone and I was picking up the little bits of icing that had chipped off. I also ordered what was described on the menu board as "chai" without realizing that it was actually a frozen, blended beverage made from chai and vanilla ice cream -- basically a chai milkshake. But again, it was so good I did more than taste. Much more.

[Fat Guy]

I find it fascinating that the locals are still so leery of the local Gulf seafood. I’d have thought that they’d have been bombarded with information (press releases, ads, news stories, etc.) about the testing program and the standards to which the harvest is being held. And I’d have thought, with some level of vested interest in seeing their local businesses/purveyors survive, they’d have been first in line to bang the drum that all was basically OK.

I think it's very difficult to untangle the web of motives and incentives down here. Although the fishing industry here is prominent, it actually represents a tiny percentage of employment. When you take Alabama and Mississippi together, there are only about 3,000 fishermen in business, and another 5,000 people in the processing business plus about half that number of seasonal workers (source). By comparison, the total population of Alabama is 4.7 million. So almost everybody down here gets information about the Gulf Coast fisheries the same way someone in New Jersey would: from television, radio, etc. Also, the people in the industry have been buffeted by conflicting incentives. Many were making money from the spill, through the Vessels of Opportunity program -- some here argue that they made substantially more than they would have made fishing. It remains to be seen how the litigation/claims process will influence the processing business. At least one industry person told me that, if you want to get a big settlement from BP in the claims process, your best bet is to stop operations entirely.

Then there's the understandable if unfortunate phenomenon that news media (as well as the softer media that carry stories like this) are much more inclined to convey bad news than good. That image of oil gushing from the well, which ran 'round the clock for three months, has turned out to be indelible. When it stopped, the coverage tapered off. There have been some exceptions, but for the most part you don't see so many good news stories now that the bad news and accompanying great video feed are gone.

And it's not like the Alabama fishing industry is populated by public-relations experts. NOAA and FDA are also pretty bad at PR. So while there have been press releases and limited attempts to push the legitimacy of Gulf seafood (the trip I'm on is partly a creation of that effort), there hasn't been the kind of coordinated PR push you'd expect from, say, McDonald's.

I don't know what the poll numbers would show today (the most alarming poll numbers come from closer to the time the leak was active), or how they would vary if you broke them down geographically. Surely public opinion, near and far, will change over time. But even if, for example, just a few percent of consumers won't eat the product, it will continue to cause outsize disruption to the supply chain.

[nakji]

A taste could have been the end of it. I tried a strawberry "cake ball," which is as it sounds: a ball of strawberry cake coated in icing. It was so good that, over the course of about 20 minutes, I tried one bite after another until it was all gone and I was picking up the little bits of icing that had chipped off.

Oh, heavens. Was there a creamy centre? It sounds like something like that should have a creamy centre.

Any sense of how the cake achieved ball form? Was it baked or carved that way?

I want a "cake ball".

[Fat Guy]

No creamy center. Just cake all the way through. I believe the standard method of making cake balls is to start with a normal cake. You crumble up the cake and then use frosting to bind together a ball of cake crumbs. You then dip that ball in icing. That's what I've heard, at least.

[Fat Guy]

Although no server will ever live up to Miss Pinky, who was so amazing as to become an instant icon and inside reference for our group of journalists, we did have a pretty swell service team at dinner last night. Meet Harrington (front-right) and Don (front-left):

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Harrington and Don took care of us at the Saltwater Grill, one of seven restaurants in the Grand Hotel Marriott Resort, Golf Club & Spa.

We started the evening with a tour of chef Deese Chatwood's garden and the surrounding grounds.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

At first I thought it suspicious that any human being could love his job so much, but when you see the grounds it becomes a little more believable. This amazing property sits right on Mobile Bay (which is essentially the Gulf of Mexico) and, on the day we were there, was right in the path of the Monarch butterfly migration from Canada to Mexico.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

The food was good too. I have to run to breakfast, so quickly here are the photos:

Fried green tomatoes, crab claws and little shrimp.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Assorted sushi.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Gumbo, well made in the local style.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Oysters from Galveston, TX. Quite good.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Redfish (farmed, from Alabama). The fish was superb, the crabcake between the fillets unnecessary.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Shrimp mac and cheese (from the restaurant's array of mac-and-cheese options), which could have been a full meal on a normal day.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Bread pudding made from croissants, with whiskey sauce.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

[christine007]

Thanks for doing this wonderful foodblog. I have to tell you, I'm reading every word, which is more of a testement to your writing than you know- I cannot eat any shellfish in any form, and I'm STILL enjoying this!

And I just wanted to quickly say, I remember your blog when your adorable son was a babe in arms. He's still adorable.

[Fat Guy]

Breakfast was a fancy hotel buffet at the Renaissance Riverview Plaza. I decided to eat yogurt and fruit. Then I saw the bacon. So I had some of that too.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

I then spent the morning at the Estuarium at Dauphin Island Sea Lab. The researchers there come at the whole oil-spill issue from a different perspective. They're not primarily concerned with food safety, which they didn't seem to think was a problem anyway given all the controls and testing in place. Rather, they're interested in the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. While they are cautiously optimistic about the impact of the BP spill, they think it will be a couple of years before it's possible to breathe a sigh of relief. At this point, it's not possible to be entirely sure what kind of damage if any has been done to larvae and specific ecosystems and such, and what the impact of that might be down the road.

I'm now going to have a massage at the hotel spa. Hey, they offered.

[Shelby]

I'm totally off my schedule today for a couple of reasons. First, because we had to go to Sarabeth's at the crack of dawn. Second, because I have a rotator cuff tear and haven't had a good night's sleep in about three months. So my breakfast wound up being catch as catch can at Sarabeth's (there are worse ways to dine, I suppose), then I had to power through the middle part of the day and lunch didn't happen until about 4pm at PJ's class picnic.

Anyway...this is the school lunch I packed for PJ this morning.

I know this looks pretty elaborate, and certainly by American standards it is (just today at the class picnic PJ's teacher was grilling me on how to make those checkerboard tea sandwiches) but I feel totally inadequate when held up against the standard set by the fanatics on the Bentos topic. This topic has been running for about a century, or at least seven years, and has almost 600 posts, many showing packed lunches that are well beyond my capabilities. Over there, as in many aspects of life, I am merely tolerated.

Oh stop! You do a wonderful job!!!

How do you make those checkerboard sandwiches???

Edited to add: PJ is SO cute!

Edited October 16, 2010 by Shelby (log)

[Fat Guy]

It's interesting, there are 10 journalists on this trip. At any given time, there might be three or more activity choices, so that a given writer can focus on relevant activities and not everybody will be doing the same research. Wouldn't you know, though, for this morning all 10 journalists chose the massage at the hotel spa.

The last massage I had was on Grand Street in Chinatown in Manhattan where I paid $41 for a 60-minute session of Qi Gong, which basically involves a sadistic little woman beating you up with her elbows on a table in a dark closet. I can't even imagine the retail price of the hour-long massage I got today from Rebecca at The Spa at The Battle House.

The spa is cleverly housed on the roof of the hotel's parking structure. The hotel's designers figured out that nobody likes to park on the top level of a parking deck, especially in the South where it's so damn hot, so instead they made the parking-deck roof into an oasis with spa, swimming pool and fitness center. When you enter the spa, you walk down a hall with water walls on each side of you. Ridiculously friendly people -- a lot of them -- greet you, call you Mr. or Ms. Whatever often, guide you to the locker room where you get a robe and slippers in your size and program a locker with your own electronic code, then take you to the "Men's Quiet Room." In the quiet room, I sat in my padded satin Hugh Hefner robe and had complementary cranberry juice and mixed nuts. There was also an array of fresh fruit, tea and granola to choose from, not to mention a hot tub and sauna that I didn't use. After I quieted down in that room for a bit, someone came and led me to Rebecca's massage room -- though to call it a room understates things. It was more of a facility. She conducted a quick but thorough medical interview (she is a nurse too) and then worked on my wretched body for an hour with particular attention to my rotator cuff tendinitis.

Afterwards, I could have stayed at the spa all day. Many people seemed to be doing just that, swimming in the pool and hanging around in various states of undress. But I had to keep eating.

This afternoon I kept my schedule open in order to visit three local food establishments on my own. I started out with my finest culinary experience of the trip so far: a late lunch at Hopjacks. The original Hopjacks is in Pensacola and the Mobile branch -- the only other branch -- is newer, but it looks like it has been around for ages. It's basically a divey bar with a crazy-large selection of beers and an unexpectedly ambitious pizza, sandwich and salad menu. Pizza topping choices include things like roasted duck, crawfish and filet mignon. I sat at the bar so I could watch the cook at work at the pizza ovens. He looked like he had just ridden in on his Harley and was just making a few pies before going off to rob a bank. My waitress, who looked like she came on the back of the cook's Hog, turned out to be a real pro -- a Union Square Cafe server dressed like a biker chick. We talked through the menu and I settled on a Cajun Crawfish pizza: spicy crayfish and white sauce topped with green onions, corn and roasted garlic.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

In addition -- and this is what's going to make eGullet people want to get on a plane to Mobile right now -- I ordered the "Belgian fries" because the menu said they are fried in duck fat.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

I'm not going to argue that either item was flawless. The underlying crust on the pizza was too doughy and duck fat doesn't get fries as crisp as they should be. But textural quibbles aside, the flavors were amazing. I'd have to say, on flavor, the fries were the best I've ever had. I wonder if there's a way to use a combination of duck fat and oil to keep the flavor but get more crispiness -- I had success with that trick once when I entered a latke competition. And the pizza toppings were as good as could be. Plus, they had Abita root beer on tap -- with free refills. So, to summarize: crawfish pizza, duck-fat fries, Abita root beer on tap, served by biker chick, massage beforehand.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Next, I went over to Three Georges Candy Shop. (All three of my destinations were clustered together on lower Dauphin street, a neighborhood some here call LoDa). This is a candy shop founded in 1917 by three guys named George (George Coudopolos, George Sparr, and George Pappas if you must know) and it has been in its current location since 1922. The signature item is a marshmallow-chocolate-almond item called Three Georges Heavenly Hash, so I bought a pound of it for $17. I don't have any usable photos from Three Georges, because the Heavenly Hash is just in a nondescript white box.

Finally, A & M Peanut Shop. This place is so old-school it seems not to have a website. This is the 90-year-old peanut roasting machine in action:

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

I bought a pound of Virginia Redskin peanuts, out of shell, for -- get this -- five bucks. The pace of the transactions was so glacial, with a tremendous amount of small talk between each customer and all three employees -- and all three employees with one another -- I can't imagine the place generates any revenue. But the difference between these peanuts and what you get in the supermarket is night-and-day: the difference between just about any fresh product and its packaged equivalent.

On the way to and from the hotel, I walked past -- this sort of thing always happens to me; I'm a magnet for food coincidences -- a huge event going on in nearby Bienville Park: "YMCA Wing Bowl VI - Chicken Wing Cook Off!!!" I was sorely tempted to check it out, but I had other priorities.

Time to get ready for dinner.

[nickrey]

What was your technique before using the bowls? Cracking them right into the pot of water?

Right. I've experimented with bowls on occasion, and I do think they can be helpful for people who are having poaching difficulties. But if you develop good cracking technique the bowls don't really improve anything -- and they create an extra step and an extra set of things to wash.

I always crack one egg into one bowl, add the egg, crack the next egg into the same bowl, add, etc. I find this allows the egg a few seconds to coalesce before adding the next one. Also this only uses one bowl, which saves on washing up.

[Pierogi]

...I settled on a Cajun Crawfish pizza: spicy crayfish and white sauce topped with green onions, corn and roasted garlic.

...

That pizza looks absolutely fabulous ! I am *so* going to rip off that idea. When you say "white sauce" was it Alfredo-ish, or...?

[Fat Guy]

I think it was something akin to a thick bechamel, applied lightly -- but that's just my operating theory.

Tonight's dinner was at the Trellis Room, which is the fine-dining restaurant in the Battle House Hotel where we're staying. The chef's name is Marty Pollock, from Buffalo, New York. I thought his food was the most successful of the weekend, mostly because it wasn't covered in white sauce but also because he works within the Southern metaphor while incorporating a lighter, more contemporary approach. He put together a seven-course tasting menu that he felt highlighted a number of the best available regional ingredients.

We started out with braised pork belly topped with a quail egg and micro watercress. The printed menu we received after the meal also mentioned white truffle oil. I didn't taste that, and I'm glad I didn't. Otherwise, the dish was a success.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Next, crab salad with heirloom tomatoes and almond-basil pesto. The pesto was particularly good.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Beets with goat cheese, herb salad and lemon vinaigrette. I actually thought this was the best dish of the evening to the extent there were no flaws at all, and every ingredient really popped.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Royal Red shrimp "scampi" with fresh fettuccine. Royal Red shrimp? I thought above we discussed the impossibility of getting Royal Red shrimp right now. Tonight we heard a different story. So there do seem to be at least some Royal Red shrimp in the supply line.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Pan-roasted grouper with wild mushroom-andouills ragout. Here I thought the grouper was a little overcooked.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Lamb with pink-eyed peas, autumn squash and bing cherry demi-glace. The sauce was very concentrated and sweet, but nobody was forcing us to use it.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Dessert was pistachio cake with olive-oil ice cream and pistachio brittle. Everyone at the table loved this dessert, except me. Go figure.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

After dinner we went to Bonkerz Comedy Club. The less said about that the better.

Finally, I returned to Hopjack's with a group to take another look at those fries.

Photo: Ellen R. Shapiro

Still great flavor; still not crispy enough. There was some debate at the table as to why. I personally think the duck fat just doesn't get the fries crispy enough. Other theories ranged from "temperature too low" to "needs more time."

Again, great flavor, but limp texture.

[nakji]

I don't enjoy a crispy fry - I find them too dry. Limp duck-fat fries sound pretty much like heaven to me.

I bought a pound of Virginia Redskin peanuts, out of shell, for -- get this -- five bucks. The pace of the transactions was so glacial, with a tremendous amount of small talk between each customer and all three employees -- and all three employees with one another -- I can't imagine the place generates any revenue. But the difference between these peanuts and what you get in the supermarket is night-and-day: the difference between just about any fresh product and its packaged equivalent.

Fresh roasted nuts are incomparably better to the jarred kind. There's a nut roaster on my street that's doing land-office business now that the weather has cooled. People are queuing up for a half hour down the sidewalk for a chance at fresh roasted chestnuts, pecans, and chili peanuts. I don't think I could name a place in my hometown in Canada that offers fresh roasted nuts. Have they gone out of fashion in other places, too?

[Fat Guy]

Before dinner last night, we had a tour of the Battle House Hotel. I'm going to hold off on reporting about that, though, until I can collect a few of the archival photos the hotel has available. So more on that eventually.

It's now almost 3:30am here and I have to depart at 4:30am for the airport. So I'll be powering down for the morning and most of the middle part of the day. Talk to you on the other side.