I've only been to Pascal's Manale once before,
with Janice Glab, a regular, and it was very
good. It's said to be the originator of BBQ
shrimp, which isn't such a great dish and not
BBQ at all, being shell-on crustaceans in
garlic butter sauce violated with lots of
Worcestershire, which makes it exceedingly
salty (very bad for me). I wasn't impressed
with it before and came back here for other
things, which are - or were in those days,
or maybe because it was with her - more
interesting.

It's a two-block walk from the trolley stop,
and some Internet alarmists warn against doing
it; we did it anyway, and it proved to be easy
and safe, the greatest danger being from the tree
roots that have wrought havoc on the sidewalks.
You can't miss the place, bright lights and neon
in a mostly residential neighborhood. [That being
said, next time I'm in the area Superior Seafood,
right by the trolley, gets my business.]

We checked in right on time and were made to wait,
as apparently is the custom, for our reservation,
maybe 10 minutes or just long enough to order a
glass at the bar out front, after which we were
led to a four in the middle of the front room.

For our extortion we ordered an Abita Amber and
a Dewar's on the rocks, $15 total.

Our waitress, Toy, was friendly and forthcoming
and let us linger over our drinks for a while
before we ordered.

The dinner wine was Macon-Villages 16 (Jadot),
which had good body and harmonized with our food,
though it did bring out the saltiness of my dishes.
I guess they'd done soaking us, because the bottle
was $26, barely double retail.

Gumbo had a medium roux binding a nice shrimp stock,
with lots of tiny shrimp, many with some shell still
on, a minor turnoff, and slices of fat okra with
hard strings, a bigger one. Flavor was the best of
all the versions we had this trip.

Bonnie had this yen for veal marsala, an odd thing,
because though there are tons of Italians in south
Louisiana, the ones in Boston cook just as well.
This was about a quarter pound of tender but not
tenderized veal in the standard sauce with a few
mushroom slices, served over lots of gummy
overcooked angel hair. Correction: the ones in
Boston cook better. And at $96 a pound, the meat
was twice as costly as the overpriced steaks.

I gave stuffed eggplant another try. Here, there
is no slice of eggplant; it's just a blob of
thickened eggplant puree with seafood in it -
shards of real crabmeat, more of those baby
shrimp, and again a substantial amount of shell of
both. The proportion of seafood was again
unsatisfactory, but the difference was made up
mostly by eggplant; the kitchen was very restrained
with the breadcrumbs. An acceptable version for
that reason.

After that I got the combination pan roast, a risk,
as the dish differs widely among restaurants. The
Oyster Bar at Grand Central serves by that name a
cream soup rather like an oyster stew or chowder,
only much more highly seasoned and with ketchup
in it. Other places offer a soup-stew with tomatoes.
Here, breadcrumbs came back with a vengeance - you
get a casserole with a mix of buttered crumbs, creamy
sauce, and chopped greens with some baby shrimp, shreds
of crabmeat, and maybe two oysters chopped fine stirred
in, also a ton of salt, all covered with more buttered
crumbs (salty but the best part of the dish) and
browned under the broiler. Also acceptable but another
not great deal with not much seafood. I finally tumbled
to the fact that there's a shortage of crab down here.

A caramel custard was halfway between the rubbery
Galatoire's and the silken creamy Commander's, pretty
decent, nothing special. Bread pudding was a sizable
cube of pressed crustless white bread with a lot of
raisins and a little cream, served in what was either
a broken sauce or (if intentional) a sugary syrup
beneath and a custard cream above - also actually
pretty decent, nothijng special.

The bill, though normally special-occasion, was much
lower than at any of the three high-ticket restaurants
we visited this trip.
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