After the culinary disasters of recent days, all is forgotten, if not forgiven, after two days of splendid eating in New Orleans. Our first stop on Sunday night was Domenica, recommended by a nephew who lives in the city and a great way to ease into the The Big Easy's restaurant scene. The invention of Alon Shaya, who has been celebrated for his flavorful Israeli dishes at his eponymous Shaya Restaurant, Domenica is a pizza and pasta palace located just off the lobby of one of the city's famous hotels, The Roosevelt, whose bar serves the city's original sazerac drink. My white clam pizza was properly briny, with Calabrese peppers adding a complimentary but not overwhelming amount of spice. While the edge of the crust was crispy and properly chewy, the bottom was doughy, partly because of slight undercooking but also because of the liquid from the clam sauce. Still, the tastes were nicely balanced. Oohs and ahhs came from my dinner partners and their pasta dishes -- one a dark twirl of squid ink spaghetti, the other a rabbit ragu over linguini. An extra highlight was an unusual beer I ordered, a black lager from a brewery in Gulfport, MS. It was toasty and smooth.
In praise of the pig
We are staying at the Terrell House on Magazine Street, in the heart of the city's Garden District. It is a large and comfortable old house with balconies, a brick floored garden with a fountain (from whence I write this) and located a short Uber ride from many of the city's top attractions (and restaurants). Last night we ate at one of the hottest in town, Cochon, in the Warehouse District. The eatery's logo is a pig, and our table fell in line, ordering braised pork cheeks with onions (fork tender, porky in taste, an intense but properly sparing sauce), pork and kale soup (intense broth, both the meat bits and kale stars of the dish), and smoked spare ribs in a sweet honey-like glaze, cooked to the proper point, which is to say just before the meat falls off the bone, leaving your teeth to do the slightest of pulling. My wife's rabbit with dumplings, a kind of mellow stew, was served so hot she had to wait a few minutes to dig in, but once she did it was hard to distract her. Our friend's oyster and bacon sandwich, stuffed with fried oysters and a sauce he had trouble describing, except to say it was "delicious," was a bit too unwieldy to eat as a sandwich. Knife and fork to the rescue, the dish losing no punch because of it. But as terrific as all those dishes were, the star for me were the oysters, a half dozen meaty beauties served raw on a bed of rock salt, sprinkled with a chili sauce that knew who the boss of the dish was. It was one of those dishes you don't quickly forget.
Hard to get a bad meal
New Orleans, like San Francisco and Charleston, is a city in which you almost have to work harder to get a bad meal than to find a good one. We were in a rush to catch an Uber ride to meet a walking tour hostess in the French Quarter and only had 15 minutes for a sandwich. We chose Boulangerie on Magazine Street and all of us ordered the Didon sandwich, a mix of arugula, avocado, smoked turkey and an aioli on the freshest of thick cut six grain bread, perfectly toasted. It was the best fuel we could have asked for to make it through a two-hour walk around one of the most interesting neighborhoods in the U.S.
