Everybody who attends Tin Angel's New Orleans Dinner will get a Sazerac, but not in the face.
, the longtime West End neighborhood favorite, is celebrating its 18th birthday by kicking off a new "Dinners We Want To Cook" series with a big ol' five-course New Orleans-style party, cooked by much-loved Chef Laura Wilson.
Wilson has been popping up in guest spots in all sorts of places since she opted out of the full-time restaurant grind a few months ago to pursue various projects and spend time with her young son. Tin Angel owner Rick Bolsom (a restaurant scene mainstay in his own right and co-founder of the Nashville Originals group of independent dining establishments) describes Wilson as Tin Angel's chef-in-residence (sort of like artist-in-residence) in addition to the full-time kitchen team led by Chef Donald Main.
It turns out that Wilson (Wild Iris, Ombi, Turnip Truck Urban Fare) spent some time cooking in New Orleans restaurants: Red Fish Grill, Susan Spicer’s Cobalt and Muriel’s. So the dinner is a chance for Wilson to let her fleur de lis flag fly.
The meal starts at 6:30 p.m. this Tuesday, Sept. 20, and commences with a Sazerac cocktail — which itself has New Orleans restaurant-and-pop-culture symbolism. The drink is included partly as a nod to a classic episode of the HBO series Treme, in which real-life food critic Alan Richman (playing himself) got a retaliatory Sazarac in the face for a real-life piece he wrote for GQ, which slighted the restaurants of New Orleans after Katrina. (See the video at Eater.com.)
