I’ve been meaning to try to make the Caribbean Room’s Mile High Pie since I first had it, before the restaurant closed (and ultimately became Jack Rose…a little bit from that visit at the bottom of this post to see the change). Mile High is an ice cream pie with dark crust, layered chocolate / vanilla / strawberry / meringue, and capped with chocolate sauce poured over.
ohmygoshhhhh it is crazy and fabulous and so over the top. What kind of tall, tall pan can I make this in? Let me know, please, if you have a good idea. Judy Walker put a recipe for it in the Times-Pic in ’14 but it sounds like she’s saying make it in a regular pie shell and I don’t think all that layering is just going to happen that way (though I could be wrong). I can see it going
1/ Leaning Tower of Pisa,
2/ Leaning shack of Greenbrier, Alabama (which finally succumbed),
3/ Puddle of chaos on kitchen floor
(no pic, but in my first place right out of college, I made sweet and sour sauce in a blender, the top came off, and the kitchen was doused in red sticky evvvvvrawherrrre)
Also: there’s a really fine history of the pie here, along with pics of the restaurant in its first iteration.
Anyway. As I said, the Caribbean Room doesn’t exist anymore (that space now being Jack Rose) but just to set the scene, it was this:
The servers all in suits, Pontchartrain engraved on the silver, the cocktails perfect…
speckled trout pontchartrain with hollandaise, shrimp, wild mushrooms:
tournedos of beef with wild mushroom and potato puree:
and the fun continues, tableside
Jack Rose is there now, there’s a nice rooftop bar in the building, and the hotel — the Pontchartrain — is maybe my favorite non-FQ hotel in New Orleans. Posted about it earlier this year. The hotel’s interior designer, Andrew Alford, also did the Graduate Hotels, and while it’s a different look, it’s his signature fun. And it is fun. xoxo!