Frolic: jazz, books, food

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

27 May 2005

I first ate Ethiopian in St. Louis. The restaurant was notorious for terrorizing its waitstaff. The food was mediocre. I tried it again in Washington, which many claim has better Ethiopian restaurants than Addis Ababa. I wish I had discovered the food early in my one year stay in D.C., so that I could have eaten it more often. New Orleans has one Ethiopian restaurant, a small corner grocery run by Hirut Yibsa:

A few Goya products sit on a shelf, fading holdovers from Addis Grocery and Deli’s former life as a Latin American grocery store. Boxes of M&M’s and candy bars fill half the glass case under the cash register. The other side holds stacks of Ethiopian CDs and videos aimed at African expatriates. Posted on the wall, the menu looks unsurprising at first. A short list of po-boys made with cold cuts here, a few breakfast items there. I see something unexpected, however, written in a careful hand on the white board labeled ‘SPECIALS’ behind the register — kitfo, tibs and an Ethiopian vegetarian plate. Addis is in limbo between its old role as corner grocery store and its new life as an Ethiopian restaurant, and sometimes it can feel like wandering onto a theater set in the middle of a scene change.

The food is excellent. I’ve heard rumors that Yibsa has already added a few more items to the small menu.

As always, the full review can be found at the Gambit Weekly.

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24 May 2005

I won’t be the first person to take pot shots at Los Angeles, but the city really is a conglomeration of strip malls. Some are upscale with outlets of Tiffany and Prada. Others are gritty with stores selling “SEXY SHOES” and outfits for strippers.

Saturday I ate at a placed everyone called Thai Elvis. The long tables at the restaurant sat in front of a stage where a Thai native in a gold jacket sang Elvis hits all night long. After twisting and sweating for an hour, he surrender the stage to his back-up performer, another talent Thai in sparkling attire who impersonated nearly every male singer to ever hit the pop charts. Willie Nelson. Louis Armstrong. Even Kermit the Frog.

Half our group went home and half headed out for a drink. I was with the drinking crew. Tim, who lives in L.A., offered to drive us to a good bar he knew. His car was a 1962 Ford Falcon that he bought on eBay. The paint has long since worn off. The door didn’t quite close. The speedometer and odometer had given up years before. There were no seat belts, but the car was built from solid steel. It would probably even stand its ground in a collision with an S.U.V.

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22 May 2005

Los Angeles is the only city I’ve visited where I spent $45 to take a cab across town.

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21 May 2005

The honorable Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas) wants more handguns on the streets of Washington. Mr. Why I Hate D.C. has something to say about that:

Yeah, look, Texas, we’re all very impressed that you’re batshit crazy and ready for a gunfight anytime, anywhere. Could you maybe keep that confined to your state? There is, after all, plenty of room there for that. Thanks, that’d be great.

You have to live in D.C. to really appreciate what it’s like to be stripped of your democratic rights.

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20 May 2005

I landed in a L.A. four hours ago for my first visit ever. I already understand why people shoot each from their cars. The traffic stopped moving as soon as we hit the expressway. Luckily, I had the most crazed taxi driver I’ve ever encountered in the developed world.

The expressway wasn’t living up to its name, so my driver exited and tried his luck with the regular roads. These streets had the advantage of a parking lane that was largely vacant. He could maneuver his mini-van into the parking lane, make some good time, and then slip back into traffic before rear-ending the odd parked car.

This worked pretty well, but my driver was not satisfied. We turned into a residential neighborhood, flying past bungalows at 50 miles per hour. He swung onto a major road, warned me to hang on, and then took a hard left into another neighborhood just before we met a line of approaching traffic. The neighborhood streets led to a series of back alleys that somehow took us directly to my hotel.

That man earned his tip.

The only time we slowed down was when he spotted a burka wearing woman on the sidewalk. The Arab driver took a good look, fanned himself with his hand to let me know how hot she was, and then barreled forward into traffic. I can’t confirm his opinion, because I didn’t get a good look.

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Did anyone see the Simpsons last week? Lisa won tickets to a foreign film starring a talking yak. She took the whole family. Afterwards, Bart danced around and said, “Look at me! I’m a grad student with a pony tail.” Marge scolded him, “Bart, don’t make fun of graduate students. They just made a terrible life decision.”

As they say, it’s funny because it’s true.

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The decor at Café East is stunning, but the Chinese food is often too sweet:

Stepping into Cafe East’s high-fashion decor from the drab strip of car dealerships and commercial buildings behind Veterans Memorial Boulevard reminded me of the manufactured glamour of Las Vegas, where crossing a threshold can lead to ancient Venice, a replica of Paris or an ersatz Commander’s Palace. A blue chandelier of glass drops hangs like a frozen downpour above the bar. In alcoves on both sides of the dining room, hidden lights fade in unison from one shade to another. Like the famous above-ground wine cellar at Charlie Palmer’s Vegas restaurant, where ‘wine angels’ glide along the tower to retrieve bottles, Cafe East boasts two glass-encased wine racks that run from the restaurant’s floor to the second-story ceiling. I asked a waiter how they reached the upper-most bottles. He admitted that, at Cafe East, the tower of wine was just for show.

The entire dessert menu is excellent. I recommend the pyramid of chocolate mousse shown in Cheryl Gerber’s photo.

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19 May 2005

My family spent many vacations in Destin, FL, when I was a kid. We would drag a boat from Oklahoma to Florida. One summer I got so burned that blistered covered my skin. Another summer our friends’ boat broke loose on the highway and flew into a ditch. I’m not sure why we stopped going, but the runaway boat might have been part of it.

Last weekend I went back to Destin with a group of eight. It’s now only five hours away from home. Four hours when Jason drives. When I was young, the beach houses were just starting to be torn down and replaced with high-rise condos. Last weekend, we stayed in one of those high-rise condos on the far edge of development. To the right we could see more condos and bars with neon lights. To the left stretched largely pristine white dunes.

The white sand clumps like salt. It brushes away easier than regular sand. I probably spent less than 30 minutes in the ocean, but just hearing the waves crash all day and sitting a few feet from the water completely relaxed me. If you live at the beach, do you stop noticing the ocean. Is it just background noise that you long ago tuned out?

Posted by Todd at 10:40 am | No Comments

17 May 2005

Two lovers, John and Caroline, take a hazy journey across America on Aimee Mann’s new concept album The Forgotten Arm (SuperEgo). It’s a landscape populated with junkies, faith healers and fortunetellers. The album feels oddly second-hand, as if this is a story overheard from across a bar. The music, as well, is emotionally distant. The Forgotten Arm smolders but never catches fire.

On the opening song, “Dear John,” Caroline meets John at a state fair. Mann sings that “cotton candy was king / on the midway that spring,” and there is an innocence to the encounter even if the two lovers are less than pure. By the second song, “King of the Jailhouse,” Caroline and John have traveled through the country and crossed into Mexico. When Mann sings, presumably in the voice of Caroline, “there is something wrong with me,” the song could be heartbreaking if it weren’t so static.

“Goodbye Caroline” breaks through the fog of the opening tracks. It also highlights why the rest of the album feels stillborn. The song is soulful. An unadorned acoustic guitar strums the opening chords, providing breathing room in an album full of muddy arrangement that cling to the middle range. The band builds up steam and the energy level rises. “Going through the Motions” is also strong. A raspy drawl sings behind Mann on the chorus of this tension filled song. The lyrics tell of an addict fighting his disease in a straightforward manner rather than hiding in impressionist language.

Too many tracks that follow return to the plodding tempos and distant lyrics of the first two songs. There are highlights. “She Really Wants You” starts with a direct narrative that has strong forward motion. Mann begins “That’s How I Knew this Story Would Break Your Heart” with unadorned, majestic grace. When John promises to quit drugs in “I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas,” the melody has a singsong quality that betrays the fact that he has made and broken this pledge before.

The best moments of The Forgotten Arm reveal that a better album is hidden underneath the surface. With more urgency, less emotional detachment, and a greater variety of tempos and arrangements this album could have been an epic. As it stands now, Mann’s concept album has some strong songs but doesn’t fully convince when played from the opening notes to end of the story.

Also posted at Blogcritics.org.

Posted by Todd at 1:15 pm | No Comments

11 May 2005

Willie Mae Seaton has been in the news recently, what with winning a James Beard and all. If you came here via Google looking for more information, here is a link to my post on Willie Mae Seaton’s Scotch House.

I think it’s safe to assume that she doesn’t have a homepage.

Posted by Todd at 1:44 pm | No Comments

Legendary Creole chef Austin Leslie is once again running the show. He tended the deepfryer at Jacques-Imo’s for years, but now he’s first in command at Pamy’s Creole Kitchen:

In the 30-year-old photo from Time-Life’s volume on Creole and Acadian cooking, the staff of Chez Helene crowds together behind a kitchen worktable. It’s a group portrait, but my eyes were immediately drawn to owner Helen DeJean Pollock’s nephew — Austin Leslie. The handsome young man stands a little taller than everyone else. A brighter light shines on his face. Even before he became famous, a spotlight seemed to seek him out. Four years after the Time-Life photo appeared, Leslie bought the Creole restaurant on North Robertson Street from Pollock. New branches of Chez Helene soon opened — one in the French Quarter and one in Chicago. There was talk of a restaurant chain serving his signature fried chicken. CBS briefly ran a sitcom, Frank’s Place, based loosely on Chez Helene. By 1989, however, Leslie was forced to declare bankruptcy and, in 1994, he closed Chez Helene for good.
I recently saw another photograph of Austin Leslie in the ads for Pampy’s, the Seventh Ward establishment where Leslie has taken over the kitchen after tending the deep fryer at Jacques-Imo’s Cafe for five years. In this photo, Leslie is a commanding presence with a black iron skillet in his hand. He looks like a Creole Iron Chef. After several meals at Pampy’s, I’d place my money on Leslie in a culinary grudge match against any young celebrity chef.

As always, the full review can be found at the Gambit Weekly’s Web site.

The paper version of the paper underwent a radical redesign last week. The Web site will soon be updated as well.

Posted by Todd at 12:53 pm | No Comments

I’ve turned down several invitations to a poker night recently. You see, I don’t actually know the rules of the game. At the grocery store yesterday, I picked up a copy of Poker for Dummies. Now I’m ready to win big.

I recognize that needing a Poker for Dummies guide doesn’t bode well for my odds at the game. It’s kind of like Skydiving for Dummies or Improvised Explosives for Dummies. Dumb people should probably avoid certain activities.

Posted by Todd at 12:47 pm | No Comments

10 May 2005

I just took my new Trek 7100 on a trial ride down to the bank. It got me to the ATM and back in good speed with no major malfunctions. It’s a keeper.

The 7100 is actually the model below my bike that was stolen two weeks ago. Bike technology, though, has improved rapidly since I bought my first Trek five years ago. The shock absorbers on the front fork almost made me forget that New Orleans streets are full of bumps and potholes.

When we trade in the Honda Civic, I can’t wait to find out how much cars have improved in the last decade.

Posted by Todd at 9:39 am | No Comments

9 May 2005

Right Hand Thief nails New Orleans in two sentences: “Yes, I think a country with a city like New Orleans in it can’t be all bad. ‘Course, necessarily, a country with a city like New Orleans can’t be all good, either.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Posted by Todd at 6:09 am | Comments (2)

6 May 2005

The Polish Poster Gallery hosts an extraordinary collection of Polish circus posters. Did the performances live up to the publicity?

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5 May 2005

This week I reviewed the Big Apple Deli, where half the items are imported straight from New York City:

The Reuben sat on a dainty plastic plate decorated with a blue floral pattern, but there was nothing refined about this massive sandwich. The layers of corned beef, piled so high that a hump had risen in the center of the rye bread, were as thick as a filet with the qualities of a good steak — well-marbled with a taste of red meat. In an act of multi-state culinary cooperation, the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue in New York City selects the brisket and brines it, and then the Big Apple Deli on Maple Street boils the meat for four hours, slices it and uses it to make classic deli sandwiches.

After reading the review, Andrea decided that she had to get back over to Big Apple and have another Reuben. You can read the full review at the Gambit Weekly.

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