		Discourse
Editorial Panel		A newsletter of food, wine, restaurants and travel
Sue Dyson, Roger McShane		Volume 2, Number 2, July 2001


		Contents
Correspondents		About this newsletter
Australia: Sue Dyson, Roger McShane		New Orleans Dining
Hong Kong: Audra Sbarra		A Seattle benchmark
New York: Lorraine Martindale		Commanders Kitchen cookbook
Los Angeles: Jeff Shore & Danielle Pillet-Shore		An Italian treasure in London
San Francisco: Lawrence Banka & Judith Gordon		Great dishes series - Bayona
Singapore: Emma Lewis		Good Value Wine
Tokyo: David Meredith		News and Reviews
London: Annie Mills

All correspondence to
mail@foodtourist.com

		The July 2001 Newsletter
TOP		Welcome again to the world’s most erratic food newsletter! We have been in New Orleans earning a living and doing lots of eating. Hence we have neglected Discourse. Anyway we are back! We have a lot to report over the next few months, especially some places to watch in San Francisco, some exciting wines we have tried and interesting places discovered by our eager correspondents in far flung places. So, this month there is a New Orleans ‘flavour’ to the newsletter. We investigate the great, the bad and the completely awful in this complex city. This month we welcome another new correspondent. Annie Mills has kindly consented to submit stories from London. You can read her first report in this edition of the newsletter. Some subscribers have asked if it is OK to send Discourse to their friends. We don’t mind at all. In fact we would encourage people to do that. Point out that anyone can subscribe by simply registering their e-mail address at http://www.foodtourist.com/. We have been heartened by the offers of stories from around the world that are made despite the fact that it is a free newsletter and hence correspondents are not currently paid for their stories. If you would also like to contribute, please send us an e-mail. We would particularly welcome correspondents from Africa, China, India and South America.
		All articles in this newsletter are copyright and must not be reproduced in part or in whole without the written permission of the publishers. To seek such permission simply send an e-mail to mail@foodtourist.com. All information in this newsletter was checked before inclusion, but some details might have changed subsequent to publishing.

		New Orleans Dining
		Sue Dyson and Roger McShane report
TOP		If you’ve been to New Orleans, there is every chance that you came away with fond memories of the ‘party’ city. Apart from a cruise up the river, a tram ride through the Garden District and a cemetery tour, you probably didn’t stray far from the French Quarter. And we bet that you walked along rowdy Bourbon Street drinking one of those indescribable cocktails called Hurricanes. But there is much more to New Orleans than this superficial view. To take but one example, understanding the Mardi Gras helps to unlock some of the secrets of this conservative southern outpost. To many, the Mardi Gras is the party of all parties. They remember the parades and the beads and the goodwill and the Hurricanes. But they rarely see that this is just the tip of a very deep social iceberg that crouches below the froth and bubble of the parade. The parade is just the public manifestation of a yearning to belong and a desire to contribute to the local society. People from all walks of life join one or other of the Krewes that spend the whole year planning and organising the various events that go to make up the Mardi Gras. To locals, the Krewe is their extended family. The Krewe is their secret society. The Krewe is the vehicle for public service. The Krewe is community. New Orleans is also a city of contrasts. The outward impression is of a city of ‘party animals’. But it is the tourists who party, not the deeply conservative and religious locals. And it is this conservatism that runs as a deep vein through the restaurant scene. Some of the more famous restaurants have been in operation for a century or, in one case, over 150 years. But fame doesn’t necessarily equate to good food. If you are going to eat well on a two or three day visit you have to be careful to separate the incredibly effective publicity from the actuality. You will see ‘world famous’ everywhere you turn in the French Quarter. There are world famous breakfasts and world famous beignets (small squares of deep-fried dough) and there are world famous markets and there is world famous ham and there are world famous pralines and the list goes on. And this publicity has been remarkably effective. Say that something is world famous often enough and people begin to believe it – no matter how diabolically dreadful it is! In New Orleans, the dominate type of food is Creole – the food of the eclectic mix of French, Spanish and African settlers in this delta town. Further inland you find Cajun food – the food of the descendents of the French Acadians who were brutally removed from coastal Canada by the British. In reality, however, these two cuisines have been merging over the last hundred years and the distinction is becoming very blurred. In fact, one of the dishes that is often held up as being a classic Cajun dish is the blackened redfish made famous by Paul Prudhomme. This dish was actually invented in the kitchens of a Creole restaurant about thirty years ago! So where to eat? And where not to eat? There are three great food restaurants in New Orleans that should be on your must-visit list. Commanders Palace is a huge place in the Garden District that serves very good modern interpretations of classic Creole dishes (see the book review in this issue). You go here for turtle soup and the justifiably famous bread soufflé. Bayona is the second establishment that should be on your list. Susan Spicer has broken away from Creole cooking (although there are still strong links to it) and introduces Moroccan, Indian and Middle Eastern flavours to some dishes. Her dish of scallops with a bajji served on a carrot cardamom cream is a classic melding of Indian flavours. Similarly, her Moroccan chicken is a perfect interpretation of northern African cooking. Her shrimp with black bean cakes is more closely tied to her Creole cooking roots. The unsung hero of the city is Gerard’s Downtown. Set in a hotel on the corner of Poydras and St Charles, this is a place that serves ‘real’ food with clean, sharp flavours. The petite rack of veal here is a classic. Cooked pink, the meat sits in a light sauce made from its own juices that is just about as perfect as a dish can get. Around the city they refer to these latter two restaurants as ‘new’, even though Bayona has been operating for a decade! If you want to go to one of the classic restaurants then be prepared for food that will remind you of French food of fifty years ago. It is as though these restaurants have been frozen in time. The restaurants we refer to are Arnaud’s, Antoine’s (founded 1840) and Galatoire’s, for example. Expect to find tiled floors, lots of mirrors and lots of ceiling fans. Expect to find waiters in dinner jackets. Expect male diners to have to wear a jacket and tie! The food will be oysters Rockefeller, shrimp remoulade, grilled pompano (a local white fish), meat with béarnaise sauce, crème brulee and bananas Foster (a local invention). Probably, if you have to pick one, then it should be Galatoire’s. The food is reasonable and the atmosphere charming. It is packed with locals even though it lies right in the middle of Bourbon Street. You have to order the shrimp remoulade which comes to the table almost immediately and with absolutely no style in the presentation. Some shredded iceberg lettuce is thrown onto a small white plate and then the shrimp in a tangy pale orange sauce is slopped on top of the lettuce. Looks horrible, tastes OK. Grilled pompano or drum comes with a lemon butter sauce and little is done to make it look attractive on the plate. But you get to share the atmosphere and to see the locals doing deals and the waiters plying their trade, so there are compensations. The other compulsory stop is breakfast at Brennan’s. Once again you won’t be blown away by the quality of the food, but the experience is satisfying. Once you have tried the restaurants mentioned above, then there are some other local experiences that are worthwhile. There is a lovely Japanese restaurant in Poydras Street called Horinoya that serves a great bento box lunch and has very good sushi and sashimi. We are also addicted to the nabeyaki udon – a dish of great udon noodles served in a large heavy metal bowl filled with steaming soup. Out along Magazine Street there is a restaurant called Lilette that styles itself as French but has a lot of Italian influence on the menu. This is a very pleasant spot to eat. Just near Gerard’s in St Charles Street there is Susan Spicer’s second restaurant called HerbSaint. This is named after the locally produced pastis lookalike. It is a very busy, casual bistro serving very good food. Another place that is grabbing a lot of attention is Indigo. The food is certainly interesting, if somewhat too complex and the setting is lovely. If you are seeking seafood, then by far the best place is not among the ‘crab shacks’ on Lake Pontchartrain, but in the French Quarter at a relatively new restaurant called GW Fins. Alternatively, down in the warehouse district Rio Mas serves great ceviche and whole fish with a Central American/Spanish twist. If you are addicted to Vietnamese food, then take a drive across the bridge to suburban Gretna where you will find great pho dishes at Pho Tau Bay. Finally, make sure you go to Martins Wine Cellars (take the streetcar out through the Garden District). This has the best wine, spirits and beer collection in the city. An amazing range of tequila, whisky, whiskey, beer (especially from Belgium), wines from California, Australia, Chile, South Africa, Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhone, Languedoc, Spain and Italy make this place a fairyland for the food and wine lover. There is also a very good selection of meats and cheeses from around the world. You will notice that we have not mentioned any of Emeril Lagasse’s restaurants. We have to admit that we just don’t understand what he is trying to do. Whether we were at Nola or Emeril’s, we found the service to be way below the standard we would expect in first class establishments. On two occasions we couldn’t even eat the food because it was so badly cooked! We hope others have better experiences than we have had. And finally to the tourist icons. The French Market is a sad reflection of former glories. If you get your kicks seeing lots of canned and bottled products sitting in among second rate vegetables and fruit then this place should be high on your agenda! The Central Grocery is recommended by every guide book we have seen. Why?? It serves muffulettas that are reasonable without being memorable, but the range of other food products available is no better than hundreds of other grocery stores in small towns across the country. Then there is Café du Monde. This is another place where we just have to beg to be different. We feel like the child who said that the emperor had no clothes! Because everyone says how famous it is, it appears that everyone wills it to be good. The coffee we were served was dreadful. This is not good as they only serve coffee, hot chocolate and beignets! Also, don’t expect an espresso or a doppio here. You get chicory-laced black or white coffee and three reasonable beignets, served in surroundings that are untidy in the extreme. (If you haven’t experienced a beignet before they are a square of deep-fried dough somewhat reminiscent of a doughnut. In New Orleans they are swathed in a cloak of ‘powdered’ sugar.) The waiting staff are taciturn to the point of being rude. And you probably have to queue! Two visits were two too many. But let’s not leave this story on a negative note. We still have the fondest memories of our daily lunch at Horinoya. We can still taste the whole fish served on the bone at Gerard’s. We can still remember the excitement of trying the scallop dish at Bayona for the first time – and the second – and the third. We loved the regular excursions to Martins and to the Whole Foods Store in Esplanade Street. We looked forward to dropping in for a drink at dba in the trendy Fauborg-Marigny district or Loa in the equally trendy International House. And every Saturday morning we would visit the tiny, but pleasant, Crescent City Farmers’ Market. And the local brew isn’t too bad either! We became addicted to the dark, brooding Abita Turbodog. This is one of the best beers we have tried in the United States. It has real character, real depth and loads of flavour. So the moral of the story is that there is good food in abundance here, just don’t necessarily believe all the publicity. Lilette, 3637 Magazine Street, New Orleans, T +1 504 895 1636 Bayona, 430 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, T +1 504 525 4455 Horinoya, 920 Poydras St, New Orleans, T +1 504 561 8914 Pho Tau Bay, 113C WestBank Expressway, Gretna, New Orleans, T 504 368 9846 Rio Mas, 800 S Peters St, New Orleans, T +1 504 525 3474 Martins Wine Cellar, 3827 Baronne Street, New Orleans, T +1 504 896 7380 Commanders Palace, 1403 Washington Street, New Orleans, T +1 504 899 8221 Gerard's Downtown, 500 St Charles St (cnr Poydras), New Orleans, T +1 540 592 0200 Galatoire's, 209 Bourbon Street, New Orleans, T +1 504 525 2021 dba, 618 Frenchmen St, New Orleans, T +1 504 942 3731 Indigo, 2285 Bayou Rd, New Orleans, T +1 504 947 0123 Brennan's, 417 Royal Street, New Orleans, T +1 504 525 9711 Herbsaint, 701 St Charles Avenue, New Orleans, T +1 504 524 4114

		A Seattle benchmark
		Sue Dyson and Roger McShane
TOP		After three very ordinary meals in this normally special city we were starting to get depressed. (One of the most depressing meals was at a place highly recommended by the American Gourmet magazine!) The only way we could think to overcome this depression was to head for a restaurant where we implicitly trust the chef. We had eaten at Campagne on two or three occasions when Tamara Murphy was the chef and had enjoyed her food immensely. Her background has included a stint at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Having heard good things about her new Belltown establishment, Brasa, we looked forward to the meal with anticipation, particularly as we had also been very impressed with the service and the wine list at Campagne, and the person responsible, Bryan Hill, had joined her as co-owner of Brasa. It is a very large establishment but the professionalism is evident from the minute you walk through the wrought-iron door of the 1920s building. There is a large bar down one side, a mezzanine area for dining and then the large dining area downstairs looking into the open kitchen. We were seated quickly and our drink orders dealt with swiftly. The waiting staff at our table impressed us greatly by having exactly the right combination of professionalism and enthusiasm for what the restaurant is trying to achieve. They seemed pleased to be able to serve you. A wonderful trait! The food is a careful blending of North West produce and Mediterranean cooking techniques. Spain, Italy and France feature on the ever-changing menu (as did Portugal on the night we dined there). As the name of the restaurant suggests, you would expect the cooking to be done over coals. Foie Gras is now almost a compulsory inclusion on the menus of top United States restaurants. Here it was done cleverly, picking up the French idea of teaming a sweet wine with the delicacy. A Gewürztraminer had been reduced to provide the foil to the rich liver. A vanilla scented pear also provided relief from the richness. A clever and exciting dish. We worried about the choice of main course. We had heard that a dish of suckling pig cooked in the wood-fired oven was very good, but the accompaniment of chorizo and clams concerned us. All worries departed with the arrival of the dish. It looked stunning. It tasted wonderful and the pork, chorizo, clams, paprika and bay-scented potato all worked harmoniously. A dessert of three little crème brulees was a lovely way to finish a very special meal. We will be back! And by the way. The wine list is also very special, ranging widely from California to Spain with some obscure labels available. Brasa is a great addition to the Seattle dining scene. Brasa, 2107 Third Ave., Seattle, Washington, T +1 206 728 4220

		Commanders Kitchen cookbook
		by Sue Dyson and Roger McShane
TOP		It is de rigeur these days for restaurants and/or chefs to publish a cookbook. Some are brilliant. Some are good. Some are absolutely dreadful. We have previously reviewed the book from the French Laundry. It is in the first category. So was the book from Alain Ducasse. However, during recent trips to New Orleans we came across lots of second rate restaurants publishing third rate cook books for gullible tourists who desperately wanted a memento of a meal they probably couldn’t remember very clearly due to overindulging in too many of the sickly-sweet tourist cocktails called Hurricanes. And then we went to Commanders Palace. This is a restaurant run by a branch of the ubiquitous Brennan family that dominates the New Orleans dining scene. We expected it to be good but nothing exciting. What we experienced was precisely the opposite. There is a real energy in this gargantuan establishment. There needs to be if they are going to turn out such high quality food for the number of people they serve day in and day out. And it isn’t just a rehash of the standard Creole fare. This is thoughtful food with deep roots in Creole cooking mythology, yet modernised and refined for modern tastes. So, on one of our frequent trips to this southern city we bought the cookbook. We didn’t buy it to go home and try the recipes. Rather, we wanted to understand why this restaurant is just so much better than all the other Creole restaurants in New Orleans. We also wanted to know how they had managed to modernise without destroying the links to the past in contrast to, say, Emeril Lagasse, who seems to have totally lost his way in terms of the coherence of the food. This is a book that should be read by all restaurateurs to find out why they get it right here most of the time. Statements in the book such as ‘strive for the absence of negatives’ and ‘doing the boring bits right every day’ show that they know that running a first class restaurant is as much about perspiration as inspiration. A quote from Dick Brennan also rings true when he describes running a restaurant as being partly – “a fanatical commitment to the consistent execution of the fundamentals.” By this he means dicing the vegetables, preparing the stocks from scratch, making sure that the frying oil is clean and all the other myriad things that help get things right. So the book has it all. From the early days when gentlemen took ‘ladies’ to the restaurant through a side door and ate in curtained booths to the time when the family decided to paint the building a bright aqua despite the wisdom to the contrary to the present day when chef Jamie Shannon provides inspiration in the kitchen, the full story is told. Supporting the story are the recipes which probably don’t translate too well outside Louisiana, but may provide some inspiration for adaptations. We tried the turtle soup at the restaurant and loved it. We think that the recipe would be adaptable to beef or veal or even game such as pheasant. Don’t be put off by the old-fashioned use of a roux as a base. Everyone uses a roux in New Orleans. Provided it is cooked through and provided there is plenty of flavour in the ingredients it isn’t necessarily a problem. Another recipe that can easily be adapted is the lovely crab and corn Johnny Cakes with caviar. These are delightful small morsels along the lines of smoked salmon and blinis with caviar. Two other parts to the structure of the book add interest. Every few pages there is a page entitled Lagniappe. This is one of those delightful local terms meaning something like ‘a little extra’. Restaurants do it by sending out little extras during the meal. The newspaper has a column with that title. The Lagniappes in this book give some deeper background or some humorous asides that add human interest to the book. The other very useful addition is the Chef Jamie’s Tips. Here, Jamie Shannon gives very practical and very detailed hints for cooking. Overall we found this to be a beautifully produced book with something of interest on every page.

		An Italian treasure in London
		by our London correspondent Annie Mills
TOP		Spiga's comfy booths and spot-lighting create a laid-back atmosphere in this busy Italian Soho eatery, but the attention to detail in the food is anything but. As the restaurant's super-chef creator, Giorgio Locatelli (of Belgravia's Zafferano fame), will tell you - good food is all about hard work. Benefiting from a wood-fired oven, Spiga serves up the best thin-crust, freshly dressed pizzas in London (the rocket and parmesan one comes highly recommended). ‘Fresh’ is the operative word for Spiga. All the pastas (delicious tortelloni and ravioli included) are made on the premises and only vegetables in season will be found on the menu. The service is professional to a fault - but casual enough to eat here without a jacket or tie, to catch a quick bite before the theatre or when peckish to just stroll in for a delectable linguine with crab, garlic and chilli. It won't break the bank either. One word of warning: it gets extremely busy most evenings and can be noisy. Book early or late to avoid having to shout at your dinner mate. One course with wine for 2 people ~ £40 Spiga, 84-86 Wardour Street Tel 020 7734 3444

		Great dishes series - Bayona
TOP		Seared scallops and bajji on carrot and cardamom cream In the article on Dining in New Orleans in this issue we raved about Bayona as providing some of the best restaurant food in that city. One dish stands out in terms of its flavours and presentation. It is a memorable dish. Seared sea scallops sat on an ethereal carrot and cardamom cream and were accompanied by a very crisp onion and carrot bajji (bhaji) and a sesame chutney made from basil and coriander bound with sesame oil. It looked great on the plate and it tasted wonderful. The softness of the scallops was offset by the crunch of the bajji. The delicacy of the scallops was counterpointed by the hit of the depth of flavour of the sesame chutney. A bajji (bhaji) is traditionally made from a batter derived from besan (chickpea) flour and rice flour usually in the ratio 5:2. This is then used to coat vegetables of various types. They are then deep-fried. They are yet another example of the wonderful variety of dishes available on the Indian sub-continent.

		Good value wine
		A semi-regular Discourse feature
TOP		Marques de Riscal Rioja Riserva 1994 About an hour’s drive southeast of the Basque city of Bilbao you will find one of the oldest wineries in the Rioja region – Marques de Riscal. And there is a reason why we mention Bilbao as the winery has engaged the architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum in that city to redesign their buildings. This winery produces a large range of wines, but we have selected the straight Riserva as a compromise between cost and quality. The 1994 Riserva is a good, clean wine that is soft and approachable but with a background of good tannin and subtle wood. With its characteristic wire mesh covering, this is a very keenly priced wine that is drinking very well now.

		News and Reviews
		Comment by Sue Dyson and Roger McShane
TOP		If you want to have a bit of a laugh, have a look at the results of the CitySearch polls that have just been conducted for most cities in the United States. The technique was curious. There were ‘editorial’ suggestions for each city, which guided the public in how to vote ‘correctly’. However some of the results that come up are just hilarious. Take Seattle for example. The Herb Farm restaurant (which we haven’t got to yet) was voted by the public as one of the winners in the Cheap Eats section. Just goes to show that the public has a sense of humour! Dinner here costs $US150 per head! Hate to see the restaurants they think are expensive. In the New York fine dining category the public didn’t see fit to place Alain Ducasse in the first 10! Maybe they couldn’t afford to eat there therefore didn’t feel they could vote. (Hang on we didn’t check the cheap eats – maybe it crept in there!). We do however agree with there first two choices here, namely Daniel and Grammercy Tavern. Both are truly deserving of awards. So we turned to New Orleans. After trying so many restaurants here we thought we would have a look at the seafood section. Based on the many meals we have had, GW Fins is so far out in front in this category that you would need very powerful binoculars even to glimpse any other contestant. Doesn’t rate a mention either in the public’s top ten or the editorial nominees. Oh well!

		Age Good Food Guide 2002
		The Age Good Food Guide has been released and has awarded the best restaurant in Melbourne to the Flower Drum. Deservedly so! We were pleased with some of the star ratings. Bamboo House, Grossi Florentino and Mask of China deserve their three chefs hats. We thought that the venerable Sud was unfortunate to miss out on a hat. They serve serious home-style southern Italian food in convivial surroundings. And we have resolved to spend more time trying to understand ezard at Adelphi and radii this year. We note that they have three hats and we are puzzled. We promise to try harder!

		Gourmet Tours of India
		The knowledgeable owners of the Howqua Dale Gourmet Retreat in Victoria are again running special tours to India in January 2002. This is a great way to see this fascinating country and to try the food. More details can be found at: http://www.gtoa.com.au

		Past issues
		If you have missed out on receiving any past issue, they are now available on-line at foodtourist.com. Simply click on the Archive link on the Home page.
		In the next issue
		Look for an in-depth review of what is new in San Francisco. We will also review a great restaurant in New York and a quiet achiever that has set Sydney-siders talking. And watch out for more reports from our correspondents around the world.
TOP