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Review: Johnny Sanchez, New Orleans

24/11/2015

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“Wait, what?”

“No, I’m serious. It really is.”

“This is a Mexican restaurant…by…John Besh? How is that even possible and why would we want to go there?”

I’m trying to cut some slack given my friend’s cynicism here. I don’t think many people in the city realise that the first half of this year-old restaurant’s name comes from its most revered gastronomic son. Chef Besh has so marinated his own reputation in the local flavours of Louisiana that there’s an understandable leap of faith involved here.

“It’s not just him. The Sanchez part is Aaron Sanchez. He’s kind of an expert.”

“Oh.”

“He’s on TV.”

“OH. OK. Well, I’m intrigued.”

Headway made, not that I default to describing chefs by their televisual credits, but Sanchez’s appearances on Chopped and more don’t hurt. I guess we’re going to give these two hugely acclaimed, panoramically-skilled chefs a chance, then.

New Orleans isn’t a town built on great Mexican food. Sure, there are a couple of cheerful burrito-mongers for quick fixes but nobody has really donned a glittery mask and wrestled with some of the more technical regional intricacies before this Besh-Sanchez tag team hopped into the ring.

The dining room is cavernous and colourful, all Day of the Dead iconography and modernist chandeliers. It strikes an immediate balance between formal and fiesta, and is big enough to provide some much-needed breathing space between the post-convention business drones and the cocktail-slurping bachelorette parties.

Not that we’re averse to cocktails, the mezcals and tamarinds of the drinks menu luring us in from the get-go. I’ve always been fond of the assured friendliness of the servers and staff at Besh joints, and even though the formality here is a notch lower, their sincerity and knowledge are equally reassuring.

It goes without saying that guacamole and chips are ordered as we look at the menu. The weird silence as this happens turns out to be a serious allergy to avocado on the part of my dining companion so that turns into a side order of EpiPens and an instruction to keep the bowl well onto my side of the table.

Even a quick look at the menu sees the culinary sparring and trading of ideas that has taken place between Johnny and Sanchez. Blue crab and shrimp come out punching from Louisiana, landing perfectly on the tostadas and tomatillos respectively.

We take on a haul of tacos, also representing both sides well, with crispy P&J oysters as well as barbecued beef and a carne asada with some delightful pickled jalapenos.

There are some nice home touches – a signature Besh move but taken up by Sanchez in his Mama’s epazote rice and we order the street corn as it was a dish that my date’s father would make when she was young. No restaurant food ever occupies the same emotional space as family-made versions, but it passes muster for her and I’m totally sold.

A notably quirky quesadilla with wild mushrooms and chicken enchiladas that remain memorable for the right reasons due to the meat being slow-cooked round off our food choices, as much as we could eat losing out very slightly to as much as we wanted to eat. 
More news on a rematch in the near future, I’m hoping.

A couple of glasses of sparkling rose give us a fighting chance of sharing dessert, the only real contender for both of us being the dulce de leche and coconut flan, dispatched with aplomb as we made more server friends and talked about plans to visit another of Besh’s collaborators, Chef Alon Shaya (in his new restaurant, Shaya), as soon as was logistically possible.

We left a dining room that exuded acceptably raucous bonhomie, a feat for its size. This guy Johnny Sanchez knows his Mexican onions alright, and he definitely sounds more of an expert than Aaron Besh.
 
 Johnny Sanchez website 
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Review: Escape My Room, New Orleans

9/11/2015

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"PRESS THE BUTTON! DON’T GO THROUGH THAT DOOR! STOP RIGHT THERE!"

A disembodied voice is yelling at us.  We’re not even at the actual thing yet, but Escape My Room is located in a federal building (the Post Office) and if you miss certain signs on the way in, you really annoy the security guards, apparently.

This immediate lack of eagle-eyed-ness does not bode well for our group.

For those of you with even fewer powers of deduction, I’ll spell out for you what we’re doing. Escape My Room is (wait for it) an escape room attraction in downtown New Orleans. Although unique in its design, it is one of thousands of this type of facility, popping up as they are in an urban area near you with impressive regularity.

Escape rooms encompass myriad themes, but share some elements: they are live-action puzzles, whereby players are placed in a locked room and have to navigate a series of clues and tasks to win their escape, usually within a set amount of time.

The security guards thwarted (or pacified, at least), seven of us (you can play this room with 2-7 people) gather in a Victorian parlour replete with curiosities, somewhere between a museum and a rich, elderly hoarder’s house. Costumes are donned from a clothes hamper.

It’s a pleasingly random group formed from a cross-section of friends who don’t really know each other, but have (in my opinion) diverse enough skills to waltz through this, though some hangover levels are worrying. Perhaps the pain will free up a hitherto repressed level of lateral thought? We can only hope.

Our games mistress emerges and tells us more about the world we’re about to enter – the best escape rooms aren’t simply logic problems without context, they involve a narrative universe that gives you more of a sense of purpose. In this case, the meticulous back-story involves a local family, the DeLaportes and a reclusive matriarch.

A few practical rules apply so we don’t wreck the joint, and with that, we’re ushered into the room – even more cluttered and beguiling as the reception area – and given an hour to get out again.

The problem with describing Escape My Room is, of course, that you can’t really describe Escape My Room without revealing huge spoilers. So let’s skirt around the details but try and get a flavour.

First of all, I don’t know how two-person teams who aren’t made up of a civil engineer and a philosophy postgrad with a minor in logic win this game, but they do. As a seven, we’re scattered to the corners of the room, each finding our own threads and some of us flitting between pairs and shouting non-sequiturs like that was any help.

Perhaps pairs just focus more and can more calmly decipher things in order, but we’re scatter-gunning about half a dozen tasks at once. There are decoy trails, clues to be found under and in things, collections of objects to be organised and riddles to be solved.

Voices get raised in good-natured frustration, our mistress nudges us occasionally via an intercom and the rush of euphoria when clues come together and we open a new suitcase or complete a pattern is quite something, especially with the time bearing down on us. There’s a point half way through where we think we’ve actually won in record time, but it’s just moving up a level and there’s much work still to be done.

Throughout, more of the family’s story is revealed as clues are unearthed, and this will stand the company in good stead as they plan to expand into more rooms that add to the universe.

After a particularly frantic last few minutes which include shadows, dancing and a lot of shouting, we somehow sneak under the wire and make it out. You feel pretty good about yourselves, and we agree that the level of difficulty is pitched exactly perfectly between enticingly challenging and rewardingly accessible: nobody wants to waltz out after ten minutes nor do they want to just stare at the first clue, cursing their lack of imagination for an hour.

Delighted, we are snapped for posterity and make our way back down to again confuse ourselves with the post office security doors. I guess sometimes, every room is an escape room if you’re dumb enough. 

ESCAPE MY ROOM WEBSITE_
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