Brennan's
Virtual Gourmet
by John Mariani
For the last several years I have been privileged to give "Fireside Chats" at the renowned Tennessee Williams Festival, during which there is a dinner at Brennan's held for the speakers and actors who appear throughout the week. This year the stellar guests included actresses Caroll Baker, Shirley Jackson, and journalist Rex Reed, each regaling the rest of us with reminiscences of the great American playwright, a Mississippian who made New Orleans his adopted home and the setting for so many of his plays. It was a grand and long evening with much laughter and high spirits and the food was nothing short of Brennan's best.
Like Galatoire's, Brennan's, here since 1946, is one of the French Quarter's historic restaurants and year by year gets better and better. The greeting has all the warmth of the South to it, and family scion Ted Brennan seems to know everyone or soon gets to know the new faces as they come through the door, famously for "Breakfast at Brennan's," which for $36 gives you an extensive three-course Creole breakfast that ends of with bananas Foster, the flaming dessert of bananas, rum, caramel, and vanilla ice cream, created here. The wine cellar, built over decades by the late Jimmy Brennan, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina but has been built up again over the last five years to be again one of the finest in the city.
Everyone that night chose their own dinner, and while all the classic Brennan's dishes are here, added to each season by Chef Lazone Randolph (left), who began at Brennan's in 1965 and became Exec Chef in 2005. The crawfish, like spring flowers, were just starting to come in that week, not yet as fat as they would be by now, but still meaty and succulent.
It is one of the hallmarks of Brennan's, carried on proudly by Randolph and his crew, to guarantee that the dishes you loved five years ago will be every bit as memorable today, altered only by the use of the best ingredients available. I find it very difficult not to order my old favorites but there are so many other dishes that pull me in, so let me just speak of some of those I've had in recent visits over the past year.
The turtle soup, exceptionally rich and full of tender turtle meat, is perfectly seasoned in the Creole style, served piping hot with a shot of Sherry if you like. The trout almandine is smothered in buttery almond and lemon sauce, the trout pecan the same with pecans--two sensationally good dishes. Filet of redfish topped with lump crabmeat in a fresh mushroom and red wine sauce is another winner, and, since it was buster crab season when I was there, I was bound to gobble up the terrific soft shells in butter with a lavish Béarnaise sauce. If you're in the mood for meat, Brennan's tournedos Taylor, with Béarnaise and marchand de vins sauces, is a stand-out of flavorful filets. I am also a lover of that good old New Orleans dish grillades and grits, a big platter of sautéed strips of veal with buttered grits, a very downhome dish here ennobled just a little bit without getting too fancy.
It would be hard for a first-timer, or an old-timer, not to have the famous bananas Foster (right), which were served at the Tennessee Williams dinner with the usual flame and flair, but I cannot say enough about the crêpe desserts here, the decadent bread pudding Joan d'Arc, or the Creole chocolate suicide cake. The cheesecake is pretty dreamy, too. And all of it served up with a Louisiana bonhomie by a dining room staff for whom no request is to large.
Brennan's guests like to linger. You don't go here for a quick bite, especially at breakfast, which always involves some Champagne, and at night there seems little reason to want to go anywhere else after a meal so splendid, so joyous, and so celebratory--especially when great actors aand raconteurs regale guests with stories of their friend Tennessee.
Brennan's is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. A four-course dinner is set at $48, with à la carte available.
John Mariani is a columnist for Esquire and Bloomberg News, an author and journalist of 30 years standing, having begun his writing for New York Magazine in 1973. Since then, he has become known as one of America’s premiere food writers (a three-time nominee for the James Beard Journalism Award) and author of several of the most highly regarded books on food in America today. He has been called by the Philadelphia Inquirer, “the most influential food-wine critic in the popular press.” His first book, The Dictionary of American Food & Drink (Ticknor & Fields, 1983) was hailed as the "American Larousse Gastronomique" and was chosen "best reference book on food for 1983" by Library Journal. After a decade when the book was declared a "classic" of American food studies, Hearst Books issued a completely revised edition in 1994. In 1999 Lebhar-Friedman published a revised, expanded version entitled The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink. Mariani' s second book. Eating Out: Fearless Dining in Ethnic Restaurants (Quill, 1985) was called by Food & Wine Magazine “a diner's manual to guerilla tactics for restaurant survival." His third book, Mariani's Coast-to-Coast Dining Guide (Times Books, 1986), which he edited, was widely acclaimed as the American counterpart to France's Guide Michelin. His next book, America Eats Out (William Morrow, 1991) won the International Association of Cooking Professionals Award for Best Food Reference Book. From 1989 through 1999 Mariani co-authored annual editions of Passport to New York Restaurants (Passport Press) and was editor of Italian Cuisine: Basic Cooking Techniques (Italian Wine & Food Institute), which became the textbook for Italian cooking studies at the Culinary Institute of America, and he has written the food and restaurant sections of the Encyclopedia of New York City (The New-York Historical Society and Yale University Press, 1995) and contributed entries to Chronicle of America (Chronicle Publications).