New and Reinvented, Part Deux
St. Charles Avenue Magazine Food Column, July, 2004
By Michael Depp

While I didn't exactly leave you with a cliffhanger ending last month, the volume of new and refashioned restaurants in this city still necessitates a second volume of this column. And even then I'm not sure I can put my arms around all the changes that have been going on in a town for which change normally moves at a somewhat more glacial pace. Of course, some of the places I'm getting to here have been around for upwards of a few months now, so kindly forgive my own tardiness in discussing them.

Changes Afoot at Persityle, Indigo

First, a move that is likely to have the most reverberating effect is the changing of the guard at Peristyle, where chef Tom Wolfe took over the reigns from chef/owner Anne Kearney (who is herself stepping back from the grind of operating a restaurant for a while). Now, Tom is a friend of mine (and a promising enough racquetball player when he can get himself out on the court), so I'll have to admit to a little impartiality here. But that said, I knew him first as a chef, and I'll project that his stewardship of Peristyle will finally launch him into the echelon of respect that he deserves as he reaches diners who haven't yet made the trek to his namesake restaurant at the lakefront.

So far, it has been a very smooth transition at Peristyle. Wolfe and Kearney go back many years when she was new to town and they were both line cooks at Mr. B's Bistro. Years later they worked together again at Emeril's flagship restaurant, and there's a good sense of mutual respect and admiration between them. Changes to the Peristyle menu have been accordingly respectful and incremental - Tom's no bull in a sacrosanct china shop. Many of Kearney's most popular dishes remain - including tuna a la Anne, squab Louisiana and the crispy veal sweetbreads, while bold new offerings, including starters like carpaccio of south Texas antelope and champagne-vanilla poached Louisiana oysters, have been floated in.

"There's going to be no shifting of the earth," Tom told me recently in a conversation at the Peristyle bar, where we were interrupted nearly every other minute by diners showering him with praise. So Peristyle fans take heart - I don't think he's going to be painting his face over Kearney's in the picture of her that still hangs over the bar. It's merely the next phase of that restaurant's very interesting trajectory, and the national food press is already taking notice.

A stone's throw away at Restaurant Indigo, meanwhile, I recently enjoyed a fantastic meal at the hands of its extremely able (and relatively new) chef Jared Katz, a former sous chef there under Kevin Vizard who also cut his teeth at Commander's Palace. Indigo has had a rocky road in the past with some rather infamous chef departures, and it has, under Katz, tweaked its identity as a more casual, and less pricey, version of its former self.

Katz has divided the menu into regular offerings and tapas options, the latter of which is enjoying a sudden vogue in New Orleans (better a decade late than never, I suppose). It's probably the best way to enjoy Katz's rich style, which is deep on flavor without being over-assertive. Among the high points of my own meal there were the lamb lollipops with pepper jelly, turtle soup (which holds its own against Brennan's, still the benchmark here), the duck and foie gras turnovers and braised rabbit tortellini with truffled herb cream.

All of this was amplified by the setting, as much of the restaurant overlooks the House on Bayou Road, a picturesque B&B that puts out a very comfy Martha's Vineyard-gone-South vibe. Many of Indigo's fruits, vegetables and herbs come from the property's expansive gardens, which are a lovely thing to walk through after you've finished your meal there. So I wish the best of luck to owner Cynthia Reeves, who seems to finally have found some well-earned terra firma with Katz, a solid menu and three of the city's most beautiful and restive acres (Ron Forman could've taken some Audubon Park design cues from Reeves).

A Salvo of Barbecue, Mexican and Oysters

Having grown up with no indigenous barbecue tradition, I come to that particular cuisine with no baggage or sentimentality. That said, I've also never really found a local barbecue joint worth embracing until I had lunch at ZydeQue in the French Quarter, where chef and co-owner Tenney Flynn (of GW Fins) can be found daily manning much of the kitchen by himself and turning out some ferociously flavorful spare ribs, cochon de lait and BBQ shrimp. Flynn has wisely put together a simple menu that he can keep a quality-controlled lid on, the highlight of which I must say is the debris gumbo, a dark roux offering thick with andouille, smoked pork and chicken that rivals the two best gumbos I have yet tasted in New Orleans. These, I should mention, have been at the hands of Dick Benz at Dick and Jenny's and at the home of my friend Mike Tate, a Mamou native who, to my mind, is the unrivalled authority on the subject.

Meanwhile, the long-awaited Coyoacan/Taqueros has finally opened on St. Charles Avenue, and I was among a large number of people who literally stormed the gates as they were opening, tentatively, for their first few nights. As of this writing, I can only attest to Coyoacan, the upstairs (and upscale) half of the restaurant, where the staff has seemed to hit the ground running. Early standouts are the fish quesadillas and the grilled duck breast, which is marinated in chile ancho adobo, though I have it on good authority that the quail over mole sauce and the sea scallops (which chef Guillermo Peters had sent back twice to his supplier earlier that night for not meeting his standards) are also gems.

And speaking of Mexican, the old Cuco's on S. Carrollton Avenue (though, actually, let's not kid ourselves that it was actually Mexican) has morphed into Saltwater Grill Oyster Bar. The soft shell crab was my overwhelming favorite at a recent lunch there, though I was equally impressed with the oysters on the half shell, which tend to diminish in quality elsewhere now that we've passed the seasonal prime. Prices are also modest, and it's an airy space that seems particularly conducive to bringing larger groups or children.

Closing Notes

If there is an afterlife and it contains anything approximating heaven, it could not honestly call itself such without bearing a strong resemblance to Martin Wine Cellar's Once Upon a Vine. Having just experienced the annual event for the first time in June, I was overwhelmed by the quality of both the vintages and the food. Some of the more remarkable wines I tried (available for sale at Martin's) included the Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 1999, the Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon Special Select 2001 and the Emilio Moro Malleolus 2000, all of which will be hauntingly echoing across my palette for some time? Celebrating this year's Wimbledon tennis tournament, Le Salon at the Windsor Court Hotel will be offering a special menu of strawberry-infused treats during its afternoon tea service through July 4th (strawberries and cream being a classic Wimbledon tradition) ? Save the date on July 11 from 1-6 p.m. when the annual Chefs' Bastille Day celebration will be held in the 700 block of Tchoupitoulas Street. 16 restaurants are participating, there will be games for little beret-clad children and the annual waiters' race will be run, while across the pond Lance Armstrong will be going for his sixth, record-breaking Tour de France win. Attention French chefs: Perhaps a special victory dinner in August if Lance takes home the yellow jersey? Stay tuned?