Commentary: Michael's retains top spot among Slidell restaurants

New Orleans CityBusiness, Oct 22, 2007 by Tom Fitzmorris

Michael's

$$$$

Slidell: 4820 Pontchartrain Drive

Reservations: (985) 649-8055

Dinner only, Monday through Saturday

The eye of Katrina went right over Michael's, the best restaurant in the Slidell area.

Michael Frederic's place is on U.S. Highway 11, about a half- mile from the oldest bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, with open marsh on one side of the highway and a network of canals to the lake on the other. Not a good place to be in a 28-foot storm surge.

The restaurant is raised a bit above its surroundings but it still took some 4 feet of water. When Frederic came by to check the place out, he found the dining room full of fish -- not the amandine kind.

He amazed everyone by reopening the place within a few months. The restaurant looks like any another frame structure around, which is to say that even in normal weather it appears to have a certain temporary quality about it.

But it took the hit and stood, complete with the semi-primitive wall paintings and windows looking out to the canal in back. If anything, it looks even better now with a former porch having been converted into new indoor dining space.

Most places that look like this peak with a fried seafood platter. Michael's, however, is and always has been a gourmet Creole bistro with a traditional but ambitious menu, a good wine list, well- appointed tables and a deft service staff.

The service now is notably better than it was before the storm, quite an accomplishment given the long-running lack of good waiters on the North Shore.

The shortage of personnel actually worked to the benefit of the food. Frederic is the chef but before the storm he'd largely turned the kitchen over to his sous chefs. After Katrina, he was forced to return to the range. The cooking is better as a result.

His repertoire is about where we left it before the storm, which is to say somewhere around 1980 or 1985.

A good example of what I'm talking about is the baked oysters Rockefeller made in the old style (with a roux in the sauce) with a good flavor. When they run other oyster variations as specials, they are delicious, too.

Another neglected dish: mushrooms stuffed with seafood, made with white mushrooms and a crab-and-shrimp stuffing with hollandaise over the top. That was good stuff, and almost extinct now. They're good here.

They use the same stuffing to fill seafood crepes and make crab cakes, but the latter one uses too many. If a restaurant is going to serve crab cakes these days to informed patrons, it had better be mostly lump crabmeat, not a reshaped stuffed crab. The crabmeat and tomato on top saves it, but the dish would be better off with a new name.

Michael's menu is distinctly shorter than it was before the storm, but that has been a good thing in most restaurants where it's true. The specialties now are obvious: steak, veal, duck and broiled or pan-grilled fish.

While the location seems to scream for fish, Michael's best offerings have always been the beef. The basic filet mignon stands proudly on its own, crusty on the outside, meaty and juicy within. But they dilate upon the subject, in simple to almost absurdly over- amplified ways.

The most famous of the steak essays is the Black Forest filet, a reference to the port wine and dried-cherry sauce at its base. The sauce is quite good. But there's more: blue cheese in the center of the steak and crabmeat on top. It's overkill but certainly unique.

There's more veal than I've seen on a single menu in a long time. They're all variations on a theme: baby white veal scallopine served atop pasta with a buttery sauce containing things like artichokes and mushrooms (that's the best version, with an appealing pepperiness), crawfish and crabmeat with hollandaise, and a third that's kind of like veal Oscar. The veal is tender and actually has some flavor.

Of course they do have seafood. The great specialty, at this time of year but not much longer, is the stuffed soft-shell crab Creolaise (a blend of hollandaise and Creole mustard). Hard to pass that up, but a better dish is the Asian-tinged pepper-crusted steak of fresh tuna, seared rare, set in a pool of a reduced soy sauce, then sprinkled with sesame seeds. This may be the most original dish in the whole restaurant; it's certainly one of the best.

The fish specials tend to be straightforward. They get good enough fish here that a simple sauteed, amandine or grilled fish is worth ordering.

The roasted duck half has become a rare bird, pushed off menus in lieu of seared duck breasts and duck confit. Michael's duck is a crisp-skinned classic, its sauce made of black cherries and Grand Marnier, tender and good -- a filling entree.

The dessert list is unique. They have three kinds of bread pudding (white chocolate, praline and mango-almond) and three or four cheesecakes. All are made on the premises. Still, dessert is a weak spot.

The service staff is friendly, well informed, informal and efficient (especially the guys who take care of water, bread and dishes). On weekends, the peaceful guitar of Hank Mackie, the man who seems to have taught half the people on the North Shore how to play the instrument, serenades the dining room.