Lighten Up
St. Charles Avenue Magazine Food Column, July, 2005
By Michael Depp

It seems wrong to start a discussion of GW Fins, which has crafted its very identity around the serving of extremely fresh fish, by talking about the apple pie. And yet here is the purest distillation of its success.

Now, I was going to precede “success” with an adjective like “minimalist,” but I don’t think it does justice to the nuances of chef Tenney Flynn’s cuisine. Something more appropriate might be “softly prepared” or “quietly prepared.” For a frame of reference on what I mean by that, consider the following: Raymond Carver’s stories are quietly prepared. So are some of Steve Reich’s compositions (though both, come to think of it, are thought of as minimalists, so maybe I ought to reframe here). Aww hell, let me go out on a limb: Flynn’s cooking is kind of like looking at a Mark Rothko picture. At first, you might think – what’s the big deal? Then you stare at it for a little while. You step a further back and stare some more. And then you surround yourself with 10 of them (try the Rothko Chapel in Houston for this – it’s very effective), and suddenly you’ve got it: Rothko’s colors and forms are reverberating all around you like those long, powerfully-held notes from low-register Tibetan horns, and they seem to pulse with something vital and elemental.

Well, I guess you could say Tenney Flynn’s style of cooking is something like that.

Anyway, the apple pie. Normally I wouldn’t have given a second thought to such an anonymous, innocuous dessert, and so Flynn caught me off guard. First there was the depth of the dish itself (I later learned this is a dish for two – should’ve looked a little closer at the menu), but then, stunningly, the depth of flavor. Maybe it was the cheese straw top crust. Maybe it was the apples themselves – pure and American as a Currier and Ives picture. All I know is that I went from zero to hyperbole in one bite, and I never saw it coming.

The mastery of GW Fins is in the numerous, subtle surprises. Flynn does not communicate with exclamation points. Rather, his culinary sentences seem to end often in ellipses. They say a good short story ought to draw you inescapably in with its first sentence and that its last sentence should draw you right back in the other way. Flynn’s dishes work that way. Individual mouthfuls reward you with a certain degree of joy, but the more sustaining pleasure derives from the little lines of inquiry such bites yield. Flynn’s text is interesting, but his subtext is where the story really is.

Case in point: the blue fin tuna tartare, offered as a starter without explanation (Fins’ menu is unabashedly minimalist in terms of description, it should be noted). Served with a drizzle of potent wasabi, at first the tuna’s simple freshness and purity comes to the fore. But then – what’s that? Little slivers of apples, light and almost translucent as minced onions. The fruit serves as the quietest counterpoint – a low note riding under the light pizzicato of the fish and the spicy cymbal bursts of wasabi.

Flynn is known and feared among the city’s fish purveyors as extremely discerning over what he will and will not accept into his kitchen (he assured me that many fish are regularly sent back to wholesalers). He also watches the market for prices over the world, so he’s not apt to let himself be taken advantage of, and accordingly, menu prices are fairly set with entrees ranging from the mid $20s to low $30s.

While most of his fish comes from the Gulf, Flynn’s fish rack up frequent flyer miles daily from all over the world, hailing from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, Italy, Portugal and New England, among other locales. And standing out among them all is the Chilean sea bass, whose presence on the menu Flynn is quick to defend noting its general perception as endangered (Flynn’s are sourced from a supplier whose catches are documented, and he’s satisfied that he’s not drawing from an overfished chain.)

The sea bass has become one of Flynn’s signature dishes, and justifiably so, braised in hot and sour shrimp stock with sesame spinach, Enoki mushrooms and baby bok choi. The dish is also something of a calling card of his confidence: Several months ago when Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl swanned into town for a luncheon and book signing, Flynn catered the signing with the sea bass. It provoked a “discussion” between the chef and Reichl, who lightly sparred over the appropriateness of continuing to serve it amid its imperiled state (or perceptions thereof). The move seems to sum Flynn up perfectly – self-assured enough to make a provocative gesture against one of the food world’s heaviest power brokers, but delivered in a context understated enough that one would never even see the provocation coming.

With summer now waging its loud and humid war against us, GW Fins is a balm against the heavier, sometimes overstated cooking we tend to favor in New Orleans. Flynn’s nearly poetic sense of economy, his quiet but potent gestures – leaving the skin on a sautéed Mangrove snapper for a sharpened sense of flavor, for instance – reminds you of the power of subtlety. And one last approbation: the wine list offers a staggering selection of vintages by the glass, encouraging diners to pair by the course. Standouts for me were a 2000 Sanford Pinot Noir and a 2003 Sancerre.

Now if they’d only splurge on a Rothko for the dining room.

Artesia Closes, Long Branch Rises Again

After a long hiatus from the New Orleans restaurant scene, Vicky Bayley is rumored to be cooking up a couple of new downtown ventures that may see her again paired with a familiar collaborator (can those leggy ads of yore be long to follow?). More on that soon in this space. In the meantime, Bayley has closed and sold Artesia, her Abita Springs restaurant and mini B&B to Slade Rushing and Allison Vines-Rushing. The husband-and-wife team, who have most recently co-owned and operated Jack’s Luxury Oyster House in New York, closed on Artesia in early June and plan, according to the Web site superchefblog.com, to reopen the space as Long Branch, which was its original name as a hotel, sometime in September. The two hail from the area – she (a James Beard Rising Star chef) from Louisiana and he from Mississippi – so the acquisition marks a sort of homecoming. Look to hear a lot more about them – including news of their planned cookbook – soon.

Try this:

Chef Anne Churchill of the R.C. Bridge Lounge is a poet of haute bar food, and her take on the Cubano, here called “The Bridge” is sweetly sublime (literally – her pork is flavored with brown sugar). Sandwiched between lovely slices of panini, this $7 sandwich reminds you why it’s good to be alive while hitting you with a little quiver of le petit mort at the same time. “This pig was walking around yesterday,” a bartender told me last time I ordered one. It couldn’t have fallen for a nobler cause.