October 2006 Archives

So, I'm sitting in our lovely newly-opened T. L. Starke's location in Kenner, and we're dead as a doornail. The reason is very simple. We have no liquor license.

The story goes like this: We started the application process for our alcoholic beverage permits over a month ago. In Louisiana, it's a two-stage process. We have to have a permit from the local jurisdiction (in this case the city of Kenner) to sell alcohol at retail. We also need a permit to purchase liquor at wholesale, and that comes from the state. All our paperwork is in order. All the public notices have been filed and the time has run on those notices. What we're waiting on now is one final step, a personal interview with the owners (us) and the Louisiana State Police.

There is a division of the state police that handles the wholesale liquor permits. When all the papers are filed, a Trooper comes out and meets with the owners. He's got a wireless laptop where he pulls up everyone's record and does a series of brief interviews. Thing is, we're going on a month now with no call from the State Police. We've been open a week, unable to sell beer, and payroll is doing us in.

I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason why it's taking this division of the State Police so long to set up a meeting with us. Perhaps they're understaffed. Maybe there are just that many new restaurants and bars in the metro New Orleans area that they're just swamped. Yeah, that's it, post-storm New Orleans is opening all those new places.

So, we're in the classic dilemma. If we complain too loudly about the procedures of a bureaucrat, we risk the wrath of the bureaucrat, which might delay us more. Still, we're having to pump extra capital into the business to cover losses that don't have to be there.

Frustration!

We discussed dinner this evening at breakfast this morning, my 12-year old said "steak!" I wasn't too enthusiastic about that, given that I ate at Outback on Thursday, but he's my kiddo, so steaks it was. But if I'm going to have steak twice in the same week, I'm going to do the one at home in true New Orleans style.

And that's just what we did. Ribeyes on the grill with Marchand de Vin sauce, baked potatoes, and a bottle of "Red Truck" Cabernet Sauvignon. Everything came out just nicely. I'll have to remember to skip on Outback since my kid likes my steaks that much...

Ordered Chinese on Sunday night, a delivery place suggested by the front desk. Had "Sichuan Pork in Garlic Sauce" and the house fried rice. Both were good, but I'm starting to think that my theory from last week about Chinese places is correct. The dish was listed as "spicy" on the menu, just like the shrimp I had last week in Alameda, CA, but nowhere near the spice level of Chinese places in New Orleans. Research on this to continue.

Last night was Cheesecake Factory at the mall across the street. Cheesecake Factory restaurants are very consistent, so I'm usually confident I'll have a good meal. They had a new appetizer on the menu, "Firecracker Salmon Rolls," which were sort of a cross between a taquito and a spring roll with a spicy salmon filling. They were served on a bed of shredded red cabbage, with a sort of pepper-honey-glaze dipping sauce drizzled over them. Tasty! Entree was Fettucine with sun-dried tomatoes and chicken in a cream sauce. Again, it's consistent--good, yes, but the earth doesn't move. Both of these were accompanied by a couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio. Dessert (the real reason to go to Cheesecake Factory) was the Oreo cheesecake. The restaurant validates valet parking, making a trip to the mall a bit more bearable.

Tonight is my TV night when on the road, so that means pizza! I like to order from local places, and tonight was Besta Pizza in Tyson's Corner. Had your basic pepperoni-sausage-mushroom pie. I can't say it's the best I've ever had, but I'll order from them again--they sure beat your basic Domino's.

I got out for a couple of good meals last week while teaching in Santa Clara. I was at a hotel in Sunnyvale that was around the corner from a brewpub, Faultline Brewery. Faultline styles itself as a bit more upscale than most brewpubs, and the prices on the menu reflect that. Still, the beers were only $4/pint, so what the heck. It was Hump Day, and I was thirsty. :-)

I started with a bowl of their Cream of Mushroom soup. It's always interesting to get a dish like this, where your first thought might be a can of Campbell's rather than a "good" soup. Let's face it, Cream of Mushroom is the filler item for many a casserole recipe. A restaurant that serves such an item usually does a good job with it just to prove that there's life after the can. Faultline came through; it was a good broth with lots of sliced portobello mushrooms swimming in it. I had their "Koelsch" lager with the soup, a nice light beer. It was listed as a lager, but it was more of a pilsner. My entree was the NY Steak, which was a 12oz strip. They cooked it right, but if I had to do it over again, I would have skipped the sauce, which was a stock/wine reduction with horseradish. It wasn't bad, but it was really more like just OK. The baked potato was done right, and the steamed veggies on the side were a good complement to the steak, mostly green beans and onions, a combination that I enjoy. I switched to the stout for the steak. It was billed as an "Irish Stout," but it really wasn't all that heavy. They poured it fast, which means it should have come back very un-settled. When the waiter set it down, however, it was already drinkable. Not that it was a bad beer, mind you, but it was on the light side for a stout. It was definitely more along the lines of a full-bodied porter. Since I was walking back to the hotel, I decided to "drink" dessert, which was a couple more pints of the sout. Obviously it wasn't all that bad, in spite of my criticism. :-)

After class was done on Friday, I invited greeklady to join me for a beer or three--she was having a rough week. She picked me up at the hotel when she was done for the day and we went back to Faultline. Rather than order dinner, we decided to pick on appetizers. We got three. We ordered their Dungeness Crab Cakes, and their Salmon-Stuffed Hush Puppies. Being a consummate Cali chick, greeklady didn't know what a hush puppy was, so this was interesting. The Crab cakes were a bit stringy--I don't know if Dungeness crab has a particular season or such, but they were just so-so. The mango salsa served over the cakes was very yummy, though, and balanced out the deficiencies in the crab itself. The hush puppies looked just like the classic ones you'd find served at a Southern catfish restaurant, but they were indeed stuffed with sushi-grade salmon and served with a spicy cream sauce as well as a medley of sliced mango and tangerine. The sauce and the fruit were almost better than the hush puppies, which were pretty good on their own!

For beers, I had their medium-bodied lager as well as their brown ale. The lager was good, but the brown ale was the best of all the beers I tasted on either evening I was there.

We were still hungry after those appetizers, so we got the Seared Ahi Tuna Roll. It was very good. They take a classic sushi tuna roll, then dip it in tempura batter and deep fry it just long enough to crisp up the batter. The fish is still essentially raw, since the heat doesn't get that far into the roll. They then cut the roll in quarters, serving it with tempura sauce for dipping, along with wasabi and pickled ginger a la a classic sushi presentation. I'll definitely be ordering this next trip.

On the in-between night, I drove up to Alameda to have dinner with khanadasc. She picked the Ocean East restaurant on Webster St., one of her favorites. I was running late, so she already started in on the pot-stickers. Being the sweetie that she is, she left me a couple. :-) For an entree, I went with the Sichuan Shrimp. They were good-sized, 15-count shrimp, butterflied, then stir-fried and served with a moderatly-spicy sauce. It's interesting to order Sichuan stuff outside the New Orleans area, because the level of spiciness tends to vary a lot more. I think Chinese restaurants in New Orleans know they're catering to a market that likes hot food (just look at how much Popeye's chicken we consume), so they rachet up the heat a notch or two. Maybe what they serve at Ocean East was more authentic, it's hard to tell. Either way, the shrimp was yummy. They were served with stir-fried celery. I'm not a huge fan of really-crunchy celery, but it went well with the spicy sauce. We picked pork-fried rice for the side dish, since Jenn's not a big seafood person. The traditional fortune cookie was dessert (before we headed over to Starbucks, that is).

Happy hour with greeklady on Friday was the warm-up for going up to Castro Valley to meet some more LJ-friends at the Palomares Cafe. I didn't eat, but the burgers that my friends were finishing up when I arrived looked pretty good. I'll have to come up a bit earlier next trip and try them out. They also have this scary-hot blonde chick who DJs karaoke on Friday nights. I totally recommend the place for a fun way to kick off the weekend!