St. Charles Avenue Magazine Food Column, October, 2003
By Michael Depp

You wouldn't even know it was open to pass it from the street, a long but curvaceously flirty little building on St. Charles Avenue - Metro Mission style, I'm told - flanked by a convenience store and a bank. Two months after opening the awnings hadn't yet gone up on their skeletal braces, and there still wasn't any sign hanging, but people seemed to find it anyway. And once you've been there, there isn't any question you'll be going back.

Maybe it speaks to the city's need for an unassuming bar and half-bistro that Delachaise has done so well in its first months without having done anything to call attention to itself. From the street, it almost seems to want to be ignored. Inside, it's obviously a different story. On weekends, crowds go two and three deep at the long, slightly elliptical bar, people placing orders for single-malt Irish whiskeys and dishes from the kitchen with the chaos of a stock exchange floor. Others squeeze into the raised banquettes, balancing plates full of pate and beef Bourguignon on their knees while trying to manage their silverware and their drinks.

It's a little hard to pin down what Delachaise actually is at a glace: A bar with some surprisingly good food? A restaurant with a tiny menu and a really big bar? The ambiguity is, evidently, just how the owners want it. "We want the customer to define what it is to them," says Ed Diaz, one of the owners. Diaz, a former sommelier at Bayona and Emeril's Delmonico, has stocked his bar with enough offerings to nearly qualify as a wine bar alone - 70 by the bottle and nearly 30 by the glass (the list fluctuates constantly). Among the more unusual (but welcome) draught beers is John Courage Amber, and the aforementioned whiskeys are also joined by an impressive battery of ports and other drinks you're not apt to find stocked at most local bars.

While the bar might seem to be putting an Uptown spin (albeit scaled down) on downtown heavyweight d.b.a.'s territory, then there's the matter of the kitchen. Christy Samoy, a former sous chef at Vega Tapas Café in Metairie, handles most of the tasks back there, putting out a tapas-style menu of smaller plates. Many of them run toward French bistro fare by way of the Mediterranean, though she adds, "It's also a little on the Asian side and a little on the Caribbean."

I've been cautioned that the menu changes constantly, though certain dishes - or variations on them - have been mainstays since my initial visit. Possibly the best among them is the roasted beef marrow bones, which Samoy butchers herself (an impressive feat given her diminutive frame). They're buttery, gelatinous and perfect when spread over bread with caramelized onion marmalade, and Samoy says they've been surprisingly popular among diners so far.

Other hits included the grilled cheese of the day, which is deceptively simple-sounding but features a rotating selection of Delachaise's top shelf cheeses (it was port salut on foccacia during my last visit); the beef Bourguignon with roasted new potatoes; the rotating pate plate; and pancetta-wrapped mangoes that could make Mario Battali blush.

Delachaise stays open late - 2 a.m. or after - so it's also been popular with restaurant service people who get off work after most kitchens have already shut down. And the prices are also modest: On my first visit I went with six others and our check, with drinks, was barely over $100. And then there's the simple comfort of being able to have some good, ambitious food without all the to-do of a formal restaurant setting. "The point is that you can get a plate of food and a couple of glasses of wine without having the waiter look at you cross-eyed because that's all you want," says Evan Hayes, another owner. I'll buy that, and it looks like a lot of other will too, sign or no sign outside.

StarChefs Honors

A number of local chefs have been dubbed "Rising Stars" recently by StarChefs, a culinary web site that annually marks chefs to watch on its pages. This year's winners include Donald Link of Herbsaint; Scott Boswell of Stella!; Peter Vazquez of Marisol; Tom Wolfe of Wolfe's; Jonathan Wright of The Grill Room; and John Harris of Lilette. Pastry chefs Joy Jessup of Rene Bistrot and Megan Roen of Bayona have also been honored.

StarChefs will fete its winners on October 23 from 7-9 p.m. with the Rising Stars Revue, a tasting event, at the Hotel Monaco. Tickets are $60 and include wine pairings. They're available in advance at www.StarChefs.com.

Farewell

As a sad final note, I'm sorry to note the closing of Victor's at the Ritz-Carlton, at least in the form it had under the stewardship of chef Frank Brunacci. While the restaurant shut down for its annual August hiatus, the hotel announced that it would re-open in a different form without Brunacci at the helm. As of this writing, its new incarnation was yet unannounced, and it was unclear if Brunacci, traveling in Australia on his honeymoon, would return to the city.

Call me selfish, but I hope he does. Brucnacci's cuisine was some of the boldest and most original that diners could experience here, and he worked on a plane with very few others. It might be that Victor's demise was a casualty of a still-limping economy (many did not spend their tax cut savings there, it seems) or New Orleans' inability to have a flourishing (and non-Creole) haute cuisine scene. So far, Jonathan Wright at The Grill Room is making the case that the latter possibility isn't true, so it would be nice if Brucnacci were to turn up in another of the city's kitchens. Then again, given his gregarious nature, he might even open up a little bistro of his own. I'll certainly be one of the first in line if he does.