It's a town that clearly is in love with certain vices. Street vendors dispense potent cocktails dubbed tooters. Chunks of fat are a staple ingredient in many dishes, and virtually everything edible is eligible for deep-frying, including corn on the cob and pickles. Paul Prudhomme, the city's most famous chef, is so obese that he often hauls himself around on an electric scooter.
All this adds up to some pretty dismal health statistics. New Orleans is the home of the fattest people in America, the highest cancer rates, and an average life span comparable to those of North Korea and Uzbekistan.
This isn't to say that strenuous efforts to prolong life through diet and exercise necessarily work. Recent studies indicate that low-fat diets at most tack on a few months to the lives of those who don't suffer from serious heart ailments. (The abysmal stats for New Orleans are due to a combination of a lack of primary and preventive health care and a host of lifestyle choices beyond diet.) And when you consider the pleasure you must surrender in a lifetime of avoiding fat, the trade-off hardly seems worth it. Think of the people you know who go into shock at the sight of a Ruffles potato chip, and ask yourself if you would willingly walk a mile in their loafers.
The value of life span-extension is relative, anyway. As poet, radio commentator, and New Orleans resident Andrei Codrescu explained in the WSJ piece while sipping whiskey and puffing cigarettes at 3 a.m.: "You have to allow for one fact. We're awake 20 hours a day, so really we live much longer even if we drop dead at 64."
NorthSouth seems to have partly absorbed this message--that living well is arguably better than living healthy and marginally longer. When it opened in 1996, NorthSouth's menu featured low-fat "North" (as in Larry, the Dallas fitness maven) and traditional southern items. This structure has been scrapped in favor of "an entirely new arrangement of cutting-edge global cuisine" speckled with low-fat items marked by arrows, according to the press release.
Perhaps NorthSouth has awakened to the fact that most no- and low-fat cuisine tastes little better than Bondo. Not that this is universally true. Cuisines of scarcity, such as those in many Asian countries, are largely void of meats and their fat. Richness and flavor intensity are attained through a skillful use of herbs and spices. The difference is that these cuisines are driven by the unavailability of some ingredients--not trendy fat-gram consciousness--and they evolved with stunning depth because flavor and the pleasures of eating were always paramount.
Fat must be paid its due reverence and not simply be dismissed as a sin to be eradicated. When it is limited or removed because of health or other concerns, the food demands clever formulations to bring it up to gustatory snuff, because in addition to fat's role as a basic nutrient and crucial component of cell structure, it adds richness and texture to foods. These are some pretty serious culinary considerations for which to compensate.
Unfortunately, the incipient NorthSouth fat-as-vice mentality continues to suffuse the new menu--even in its "south" preparations--scattering attention in every direction but flavor and precision.
Examples abound. Appetizers such as the grilled Thai sausage tasted hollow. Made with ground chicken and seasoned with ginger, red curry paste, cilantro, shallots, red bell pepper, and garlic with a rice and mashed-potato binder, the sausage's meat crumbled and potent flavorings aggressively strutted without an offsetting richness.
Crisp shiitake mushroom polenta with pickled sashimi and wasabi soy buerre blanc was a contradiction in terms. Far from sashimi--sliced raw fish--the dish was more like ceviche. The trio of chopped and pickled shrimp, ahi tuna, and sea bass was soft and fishy, not cleanly silky and resilient as is the best sashimi. The wasabi soy buerre blanc--a butter-based shallot-wine reduction with a hint of balsamic--had an odd gelatinous texture.
The entrees weren't much of an improvement. Mushroom-dusted Chilean sea bass with diced yellow tomato queso was good, though not compelling. Dusted with dried shiitakes ground into a powder, the fish seemed to need some herbal breath to better marry the fish with the dust. Plus, sections of the flesh were a little fishy and texturally inconsistent. A side of cannelloni--mashed potatoes and spinach logs swaddled in spring-roll wrappers--was soggy with no compelling flavor to break out of its bland starch chokehold.
Sliced sugar- and chili-cured hanger steak, a hanging tenderloin similar to a flank steak, was a flavorful, juicy cut of meat with just a hint of sweetness from the curing. It was slathered in a wild mushroom guajillo sauce that was surprisingly tame given the ferocity of guajillo chilies. But the steak was served cold, and a side of delmonico potato gratin was bland and pasty.
Flavor focus was keenly evident in NorthSouth's black bean soup, a silky black bean puree with meaty white beans, thyme, oregano, bay leaves, and juniper berries. It elegantly transcended the blandness all too common in this preparation.
Another item that worked well was the Gorgonzola-roasted beefsteak tomato on field greens with pancetta vinaigrette. The tomato was robust--not a small feat this time of year--and perfectly roasted without any mushiness. But while the Gorgonzola added a welcome tang, the pancetta balsamic reduction was perplexing. The taste was fine, but it was speckled with tiny, tarry solids--presumably the pancetta--that were flavorless, tough and fibrous, like boiled card stock.
As is perhaps to be expected, the low-fat stuff barely out-finessed your average protein shake, and my advice would be to treat those little arrows as stern warnings. Oven-roasted four-herb chicken in apple-smoked tomato pan gravy was a dish only a dedicated iron-pumper could love. Allegedly seasoned with thyme, Italian parsley, basil, and oregano, the thin, dry chicken breast was coated with a mixture of egg beaters, flour, Japanese bread crumbs, granulated garlic, and white pepper. But the only flavor in evidence was a pepper spike. The gravy, enhanced with house-smoked Roma tomatoes, seemed to have coagulated, and little assertive flavor--smoke or otherwise--was evident. A side of corn mashed potatoes, however, was creamy, fluffy, and satisfying.
The low-fat coriander-grilled pork chop in a house-made barbecue sauce was another confusing creation. Treated with a rub of coriander, ground cumin, and kosher salt for 12-24 hours, the chop was dry, fibrous, and chewy instead of silken, dense, and moist, which would be expected from this curing process. The sauce was light and slightly sweet, but it didn't have much depth or dimension. A side of whipped sweet potatoes with grilled scallions, though, was light, clean, and smooth.
Interestingly, NorthSouth still offers north and south versions of its Key lime pie, and here the north side actually tasted better than the south side. The light, fluffy textures suffused flavors more effectively than the fat-fortified version.
NorthSouth offers a mildly eclectic wine list with mostly California selections loosely arranged by flavor profile: aromatic refreshing whites, robust concentrated reds, and medium-bodied reds. There are some interesting wines here: an R.H. Phillips Viognier and Syrah, an Amarone, an Oregon Pinot, even a Washington Cab.
NorthSouth's big news is the fashioning of the N Bar, a live music and dance club, out of its Quadrangle digs. The original NorthSouth entrance is now the N Bar entrance, with a new entrance for the restaurant at the other end of the building, a process that shrunk the dining room a bit.
And it's not bad. The N Bar space is energetic and inviting with a good cross-section of folks, while the staff in the bar is fiercely professional, attentive, efficient, and accommodating--as opposed to the "ain't we hip?" jocularity that seems to set the tone in the dining room--even when packed. The dance floor is spacious, while the bay window-like alcove of a stage is as attractive as it is functional. They could drop the sound system a few decibels during band breaks to facilitate forms of social interaction other than dancing.
Unfortunately, the separate N Bar menu has some of the same drawbacks as NorthSouth's offerings, even though it's been cleansed of those pesky arrows. Grilled andouille sausage links with sides of two cheeses and mustards were spicy, but hard and dry. Tempura shrimp and vegetables with wasabi ranch dressing, cleverly served in a large Chinese take-out carton, had a clunky, gooey tempura coating. The broccoli was so soggy, it was little more than a tempura gumball. Better to eat from the wine list.
NorthSouth is one of the more attractive restaurants in Dallas, accented with columns and archways, soft draperies and cone sconces, and louvered doors dividing the bar from the dining area. It's a space that's begging for a jaw-dropping menu.
But for now, its semi-interesting wine selection and crisply retrofitted N Bar make it more of a place to imbibe than nibble. Maybe it's taking more cues from New Orleans than we realize.
Contact Mark Stuertz by e-mail at [email protected] or call (214) 757-8422.
NorthSouth, 2800 Routh St., (214) 849-0000. Serving lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday. Open for dinner 6 p.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 6 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday, 5 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Saturday, and 5 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Sunday. N Bar (214) 374-NBAR opens nightly at 5:30 p.m. with live music Wednesday-Saturday until 2 a.m. $$$
