Eclectic Company: Food Music

Have you noticed that some music goes well with food, and some doesn’t? And that even when it’s the right music, it can be the wrong moment? If you’ve ever had a relationship argument with your significant other, all eyes flashing daggers and both of you frowning, when the Mariachi band like a heat-seeking missile strolls purposefully up to your table, and winking broadly, leans in close and launches into a heavily-accented, five-part harmony rendition of “Besame Mucho,” you know exactly what I mean.

About a million years ago, I was a lunchtime strolling guitarist/waitress in a middle eastern cafe on Long Island, and my old college pal Christine Lavin (who can forget her knitting circle before her Banners concert?) was a dinnertime strolling guitarist in a West Side Manhattan Mexican restaurant where I occasionally strolled in at her invitation. I shudder to think what would have become of either of us if we’d continued strolling among foreign-language speaking diners for a living. But happily, each of us moved on to different musical careers and fancier eateries, where we were serenaded by tuxedoed mini-orchestras, whose flutists and cellists mostly stayed put in their chairs on the bandstand. Think cocktail hour at the famed Rainbow Room high up in Rockefeller Center’s GE Building, or sunset at the Caffé Florian on Piazza San Marco in Venice, and not your friend’s polka-themed wedding at the college rathskeller or her kid’s space-themed bar mitzvah in the Temple’s social hall.

Over the years since then, I’ve occasionally been driven from a restaurant when a loud band took the stage before dessert arrived, but I’ve more often been attracted to a restaurant on the basis of its meal-plus-music format. Gospel and bluegrass brunches are favorites of mine (House of Blues, New Orleans; Blue Dog Café, Lafayette), and at our local twist – the Zydeco brunch (listen to Diva D on KZWA for details) – you can always pass a good time. I’m also partial to the blues fish fry, the old-timey fried chicken picnic, folksingers in bars and coffeehouses, and even lone sitarists perched cross-legged in the front windows of the dozen or more Indian restaurants rubbing shoulders on East 6th Street between First and Second Avenues in Manhattan.

I will not even speak ill of canned music, which every restaurant in America offers through the consent-decreed auspices of the authors’ and publishers’ watchdogs, following payment of a questionably-calculated annual fee. Not even though the pairing of muzak-worthy Asian pop music with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese food dumbs down both the food and the music, doing a signal disservice to diner and musician alike.

Many years ago in another country 5,000 miles from here across an ocean, I heard incredible music in a jewel of a restaurant owned by English traditional singer June Tabor and her then-husband chef David Taylor. Taylor cooked magical dishes, and Tabor selected recorded music that viscerally enhanced the food and wine. Theirs was an amazing collaboration that I wish I’d savored more often over the handful of years Passepartout was open, because from the first bite, sip and sound, their perfection has been the standard against which I’ve judged all other pairings of food and music for nearly thirty years.

So I was in New Orleans on a recent Monday night, looking for some smoky jazz combo and a dinner of red beans and rice to accompany. Carolyn Woosley and I had just been to Playlab, a monthly workshop organized by Southern Rep’s Literary Manager Brian Sands, where playwrights get to hear actors reading a short section of their works in progress, and come away with constructive critiques from their peers and random playgoers. What with schmoozing with the writers and players afterwards, and the walk from Canal Place, stopping briefly outside a few of the Bourbon Street clubs with their French windows flung open to lure in listeners like us with live roots rock and jazz bands, we were running late for most restaurants’ kitchens when we sat down in the cool, dark interior of Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, and perused the bar menu. Appetizers only. Crowded not with locals, but with peppy touristas, which did not suit our mood. Although veteran drummer and vigorously opinionated WWOZ DJ Bob French led the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band so rightly, invoking spirits of the band’s near-100 years of tasty players, that night the music was not magic. After a song or two, before the wait staff noticed us, we were antsy and up on our feet, stepping smartly down Bourbon Street in search of a real meal.

We almost passed up Arnaud’s, which has an old New Orleans ambiance that in an earlier decade would have meant formal attire required, but their kitchen was open for another 20 minutes, they accepted our casual wear, and we were soon seated in an almost empty dining room buzzing with waiters, waiting for our drinks, appetizers and salads, and Cornish game hens glazed with something fruity and served over wild rice. Suddenly, and entirely unexpectedly, a trio of trad jazz musicians opened fire in the opposite corner of the room. They played “When You’re Smiling,” singing the chorus but not the verse, and totally charmed us with alternating banjo, clarinet and bass solos. Their vocals were pleasant and not much to write home about, but their instrumental passes, including some “stolen measures” (and what a nice term for musical quotes), elicited our applause over and over again. Our meals were served to a dining-tempo backdrop as The Gumbo Trio paced through a perfect set of well-worn and beloved New Orleans standards, including “St. James Infirmary,” “Basin Street Blues,” and “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans,” which often brings tears to my eyes, especially since Hurricane Katrina, and even more so when I hear it played outside of Louisiana. You can grab versions of the New Orleans musical canon performed by the famous and infamous from many different sources, but there’s nothing like listening to it while dining on turtle soup, succulent duckling, and bread pudding. Why would you settle for anything less?