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Tasteful Tom Tells All

by Stephen Faure and Webb Williams

The retro-pleasant strains of “Holiday for Strings” signal the opening of “The Food Show,” northshore-dwelling New Orleans culinary expert Tom Fitzmorris’ daily radio offering on 1350AM. What follows the music is a relaxing and informative alternative to the prevalent political programming on in the afternoons.

Tom invites his callers to “come on in.” He’ll take requests for the best recipe for (fill in your favorite food here, he’ll have one), give restaurant reviews, or you can call and give your own restaurant report. His encyclopedic knowledge of the local restaurant scene comes in handy for callers needing a restaurant recommendation. Sometimes last-minute callers want to know where to go for an anniversary or birthday that evening.

A tireless and prolific writer, Tom publishes restaurant guides and cookbooks; his latest, “New Orleans Food,” is in its third printing. He writes The New Orleans Menu Daily at www.nomenu.com, an online newsletter and repository for his restaurant reviews, recipes, food news and trivia. There’s a free version and a more detailed subscriber version.

It can be an eclectic website, to say the least. In his Groundhog Day entry, Tom revealed that groundhogs and woodchucks are the same creatures, gave a Latin translation of the tongue twister “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck....” and provided recipes for Heavenly Hash and Sushi Alaska (sushi in the style of baked Alaska).

Recently, Tom shared with Inside Northside his thoughts about living and eating on the northshore, the New Orleans area’s food prospects post-Katrina, his charitable work and some good old nostalgia.

Inside Northside: Your interest in good food seems to have begun with your mother’s cooking. Tell us about her best dishes, approaches, recipes, etc.

Tom Fitzmorris: My mother was born in the Louisiana cotton country, but moved to New Orleans in 1918. She was a classic Creole-French cook. I know everybody’s mother is a wonderful cook by definition, but mine really was. One of my uncles said she “could make a meal from nothing.” She cooked all the dishes that New Orleans is famous for. We really had red beans every Monday and gumbo every Friday, with a different gumbo another day. She fried beignets and ate Creole cream cheese. She could cook anything.

IN: As a student at LSUNO in the early ’70s, you wrote reviews that would lead you to your life’s career of food and restaurant critiques. How did then-history-professor Dr. Richard Collin, aka The Underground Gourmet, influence you?

TF: When Richard Collin’s “The Underground Gourmet” came out, it opened my eyes. I had already decided I liked eating in restaurants, but I had no idea of the world of dining out that was out there. We never ate out when I was a kid, and certainly not in the likes of Galatoire’s and Antoine’s. The book turned me on not only to restaurants but also to writing about them. I took several history courses with Collin, a terrific teacher and a great storyteller. None of the courses were about food, though! My first reviews were published in the LSUNO Driftwood newspaper, beginning September 1, 1972. I’ve published a review almost every week since then.

IN: Let’s get the questions everyone really wants answered out of the way. Tell us your top-three northshore restaurants.

TF: Dakota, Trey Yuen and La Provence.

IN: That was easy. Southshore?

TF: Delmonico, Galatoire’s and Restaurant August.

IN: Where’s the best place to get a roast beef poor boy on the northshore?

TF: Bear’s, Darryl’s Deli and Mandina’s in Mandeville.

IN: Cooking and eating out seems to be more important in the New Orleans area than elsewhere in America. Why’s that?

TF: We owe that to the European heritage we have here, as well as the African heritage. We eat in New Orleans with the same natural avidity that people in France, Italy and Spain do. It’s something we do unself-consciously. We consider as slightly mad anyone who doesn’t get worked up about food. Of course, it helps that we have an exciting local cuisine.

IN: What’s your favorite cuisine?

TF: New Orleans food, without a doubt.

IN: In your experience, which is the best foreign country for dining out?

TF: Italy. Day in, day out, Italians dine with natural pleasure, eating the freshest imaginable ingredients and with a lightness that would surprise most Americans who have only eaten Americanized Italian food. France, Belgium and Spain are also pretty exciting.

IN: What do you most enjoy cooking?

TF: Classic Creole dishes. I make gumbos and bisques all the time. Red beans every two or three weeks. Seafood constantly. I also like outdoor grilling and smoking a great deal.

IN: How can you eat out most every day and not explode?

TF: I only eat the good stuff. I don’t eat when it’s time to eat—just when I’m hungry. I don’t feel the need to devour everything that lands in front of me. Finally, I have not exactly succeeded brilliantly at keeping my weight down. I’m at 230 pounds.

IN: Well, you have been brilliantly successful at authoring cookbooks. Tell us about your latest project.

TF: I’ve written cookbooks for other people, notably two for Andrea Apuzzo. This is the first collection of my own recipes. My goal was to present the food that we’re eating [today]. The cuisine is always changing, and a comprehensive summary of recipes of current Creole and Cajun cuisines has not been done in many years. Most of the dishes are familiar. Some were inspired by restaurant dishes. Many are classics. All were done to suit my taste and were worked out in my kitchen. I’m not saying that my taste is better than anyone else’s, but it’s the only one I can speak with full authority about.

IN: Part of the proceeds from your new cookbook goes to Habitat for Humanity. Why did you choose Habitat? What other charitable organizations are you involved with?

TF: As I watched the city disintegrate on television while we were evacuated, I felt a powerful need to do something. I had worked on Habitat construction sites a few times, and I knew how efficiently they worked. I figured the money would get more done there for the most important job than anywhere else.

IN: Any new books in the works?

TF: Marcelle Bienvenu and I have discussed writing a book that would finally explain the difference between Creole and Cajun cooking by offering two recipes for each group of ingredients. I’m also working on something called “The Extinct Restaurants of New Orleans,” about all the great places that have left the scene but are still fondly remembered. And, like every writer, I have a novel. In fact, I have three of them in the works. But I think I’d have to find myself suddenly wealthy to have the time to finish those.

IN: What are your “go to” cookbooks?

TF: The first of two that I find myself consulting most often is “The Joy of Cooking.” The new edition is the best ever. It has information about everything. I also find Richard Collin’s first cookbook, the “New Orleans Cookbook,” to be very good, even though after 30 years our eating and cooking habits have moved quite a long way.

IN: How did you come to live on the northshore?

TF: I lived in Mid-City for over a decade and loved being there. Then we had three murders on our block and drug dealers on the corner in front of my house. Our son was a year and a half. My wife wanted to leave. And not only leave, but go far away. She found our place.

IN: What’s your favorite aspect of living here?

TF: I love the rural environment and the well water. I’m sad that the former seems to be compromised a little more every day.

IN: Why do you wait so long to visit a new restaurant? Isn’t a one- or two-month shakedown period long enough for new places to work out the kinks?

TF: In a word, no. Mr. B’s took almost three years to pull itself together when it first opened. A few restaurants open as brilliant as they will ever be, but most find out that this dish isn’t working and that one is much more popular than they expected. I think the best time to try a new restaurant is about a month after the first major menu revision. I usually don’t wait that long, because people want to know about the new places. But I’d say my average lag time is about six months. Sometimes I miss restaurants completely if they don’t last that long.

IN: You seem to disdain chain restaurants, but exclude Ruth’s Chris, Brennan’s, Zea, Semolina and some others. Why’s that?

TF: In general, I don’t like chain restaurants because they set their recipes and procedures in concrete, expect all the chefs and servers to strictly go by the book, and lose anything like creativity. Also, they are run much more as money machines and less as an expression of the culinary arts. Some chains are good. Ruth’s Chris and Zea are. So are Houston’s, Bravo, Morton’s Steakhouse and the Cheesecake Factory. But even the best chains are not as interesting to me as even an above-average independent. As for the Brennan restaurants, they don’t qualify as a chain. Each of them is different from the others and their chefs are expected to create and innovate out of the box. Chains forbid that.

IN: Give us your thoughts on the post-Katrina restaurant scene.

TF: It has been the most gratifying and surprising part of the recovery.

The restaurant business has performed its role in the community one hundred percent. Working with a dire lack of staff (even now), the restaurants got themselves open long before anyone thought they would, and made New Orleanians feel that at least some things we live here for are still very much alive. I think sometime this year we will actually exceed the number of restaurants we had before the storm—we’re at 92 percent now. And almost all of them are doing very well, other than those in the French Quarter. Even those, reliant as they are on tourist dollars that haven’t been here much in the last year, have found a new appreciation among the local customers, who keep coming back. We’ve had over 30 major openings of brand new restaurants since the storm. Only one of the restaurants that reopened after the storm has closed. Those would be great figures in a good year here, let alone in the aftermath of a catastrophe.

IN: Describe the perfect dining experience.

TF: That question assumes that there is a finite set of elements that go into a great dinner and that there’s a well-established criterion for each of them. In fact, the most memorable meals present pleasures you never even thought about before. That’s why the best restaurants now are expected to serve not only good food, but good original food. It’s why I say that my favorite wine is one I haven’t had yet. All that said, the familiar also offers its own pleasures. So, for me, an ideal meal would offer contrasting courses—some classic, some innovative. Contrast is, in fact, the key. Some hot dishes, some cold. Some spicy, some mild. Some crunchy, some soft. Meat and fish.

That’s why I’ve always loved tasting menus, even before that expression was invented. I love a dinner that would go something like this, in small courses:

Raw oysters, turtle soup, crabmeat ravioli, grilled fish with asparagus or something else green, lamb chops with rice or pasta and vegetables, quail stuffed with something smoky, salad with wedges of various cheeses, and bread pudding. On another day, I’d write a completely different menu, but it would retain that variety and contrast.

IN: Tell us a brief history of your popular radio show.

TF: In 1988, I was doing just fine with my freelance writing when Mary Ann Connell, who was running WSMB’s programming at the time, called me and asked whether I would be interested in doing a show. They were reworking that old station at the time, cleaning out beloved but old shows like Nut and Jeff and creating a new, younger sound. I’d done radio for many years already on other stations, but no long-form shows for about five years. They threw more money than I was expecting at me, and I thought I’d give a regular radio talk show another trial. After a few months, all those new shows were gone, except mine, which never did go off the air. It always sold well, occasionally bringing in as much as two-thirds of the income of the whole station. That’s why it’s survived. By the way, Mary Ann Connell was fired after a few weeks, too. By then, we were dating, and within six weeks we were married. The radio show and our marriage are intimately intertwined.

IN: What’s the most interesting or memorable call you’ve received on the air?

TF: Early in the show’s history, I had two octogenarians on the air at the same time, arguing about whether you stood in front of or in back of a cowan turtle when you pulled its head away from its shell so you could pound a sharpened broomstick into the back of it. These two codgers went on for five minutes, yelling at each other while we screamed with laughter.

IN: Could a show with this format and content work in another American city?

TF: I think so. But radio-programming people won’t do anything unless many other stations are also doing it. And what I do is so [rarely] done that most stations are afraid to try. I really think, even after eighteen years of success, that the guys who run our stations still look upon my show with some suspicion.

IN: How does your work as a writer compare to your work as a radio host?

TF: I really like to write, and spend more time doing so than I spend on anything else—at least five hours a day. It’s a different creative process. On radio, you just have to keep going, using instincts and formulas just to keep the time filled. Writing, you can stop and think. But I love radio, too.

IN: How has your website (www.nomenu.com) changed the way you work and communicate with your listeners?

TF: The website experienced an explosion since the hurricane, largely because I offered a simple service that everyone needed—a list of every restaurant in town that had reopened, with addresses, phone numbers and type of food. That brought a lot of people to the free site. I found that many of them were willing to pay for a greatly expanded daily report, enough to make the New Orleans Menu Daily the most successful publication I’ve ever published.

IN: What’s the story behind your radio signoff “Alright, then”?


TF: A sweet old lady named Lucy called us often, always with something on her mind. She never took more than a minute to ask or tell, and then she’d say, “Awright, den,” and hang up. She passed away, and we decided to honor her memory by adopting her signoff as the official good-bye. Just another silly radio thing, really.

IN: Alright, then!