We’ll be over there for our annual Christmas trip. Haven’t been to the museum in 3 or 4 years, my wife wants us to go this time if possible. If we go i’ll report back.
Well, it turned out my choice was the Louis Armstrong concert at the Canteen or dinner, so opted for dinner at Gabrielle’s instead.
My restaurant line-up, booked late (so no Brightsten’s)
Galatoire’s
Gabrielle’s (first time)
Herbsaint
GW Fins
Commander’s Palace
Peche for lunch on last day.
For music
Preservation Hall early show twice
Snug Harbor shows at 10pm twice
Nothing formal Satuday after dinner, will go to Frenchman street unless there are clubs in the French Quarter that folks recommend. (I loved the Funky Pirate with Big Al, but that’s closed permanently I htink).
I’d recommend Frenchman street Saturday after dinner. Much better music and vibe then the qtr.
Hope you like Gabrielle as much as we did. Are you locked in on GW ? It’s a good place but there are more interesting options. Maypop and Bywater Cafe would be great spots to consider.
Frenchman street is where we might wind up Saturday night, but as we are there Friday and Sunday night, want to see what’s up. Always loved Frenchman street , but also loved the Funky Pirate on Bourbon street, so will see if anything comparrable.
Funny about GW, no not locked in but it was your comments on Peche and GW that had me drop Peche from Sunday night and switch to GW (also the fact that Peche was open for lunch). Looking at the menus, GW Fins is more appealing than Maypop, and Bywater, as I am pretty much a pescatarian (except for gumbo, fois gras and bacon for flavor) - so both those seemed to have many more choices that appeal. If the execution is not as good there, then maybe I’ll switch. But given it’s a long day, with Preservation Hall early and Snug Harbor late, probably want to stay close to Canal/French Quarter.
Hi Barry- so GW will be very appealing then as they have many solid fish dishes. A good music option depending on your dinner time would be catching Jeremy Davenport and his band in the Ritz Lounge. They put on a good show and he’s a solid entertainer and plays with some great musicians.
Any po-boy spots for lunch ? Our favorite is the Shrimp at Domilise’s.
Yes, we have a fondess for Tracey’s (who used to own Parasol’s). I saw your comments on Domilise’s and checked them out, looks great, just the location isn’t convenient. We do a walk around the Garden District, and Tracey’s is close by. However all lunches may get 86ed as we have breakfast included and only do two real meals a day. If breakfast sucks, I’ll hunt down extra po’boys (and extra gumbo).
Thanks for the tip on Jeremy Davenport - looks perfect! An evening without an Uber would be nice. I assume the reservations they offer are for dinner and not the lounge. Is it hard to get in on Friday at 9:30?
I’m not much of a cocktail guy but figure I have to have a Sazerac once in my life. Don’t care for sweet drinks - and I have heard Sazerac’s can range in sweetness? Any recommendations? Otherwise, I’ll get one in the Sazerac bar - staying there and can use my food/beverage credit on it.
Hi Barry- a table in the lounge will be hit or miss depending on how crowded the city is. I’ve walked in and got lucky with a front row table and have had to wait 30 or so minutes other times. You’ll be catching the back half of the set though so you should be able to get a spot.
My favorite Sazerac is at Brennan’s. Their bar is a great spot for afternoon cocktails. They make the perfect Sazerac. I had the bartender walk me through their process. If you like it then pick up a bottle or 2 of Sazerac rye to bring home. Keife’s wine shop downtown is a great spot if you want to pick up a bottle or 2 for byob. Solid Burgundy and Barolo selections.
I would not describe the Sazerac at the Sazerac as sweet. It is heavy on the absinthe flavor which in and of itself is a sweet flavor. Sample several until you find your “style.”
Well, didn’t like the first one even though not sweet.
Spotted Cat is open again!
Yes, The Spotted Cat was still cranking at about 1am last night when were leaving the Jon Papa Gros show at dba across the street. Funny thing was the music sounded very r&b vs their usual trad jazz. They don’t seem to have put their schedule up on Livewire yet so I don’t know who was playing.
Meals from Week 1
Lilette - had an excellent meal at this busy place on Magazine in Uptown. This place has been discussed on this board for more than a decade, but not recently. Jason T called it a high end Brasserie a few years ago and that seems apt. Mostly french influenced, they also feature italian dishes, and we did have an excellent brown butter gnocchi. Excellent duck, chops, fish… Wine list is a little expensive as is typical for this type of better restaurant on Magazine.
Paladar 511 - stopped in for a light, late meal after the low key Dia de los Muertos parade up in St Roch. We had not been since 2019, but it was good to see the place bustling at 9pm on a Tuesday. We managed seats at the counter near the pasta and pizza stations. Good salad, interesting burrata with roasted peppers and tapanade. Corn and Crab Agnolotti was excellent. Wine list is overall decently priced and pretty large for a neighborhood restaurant.
Miss River - Alon Shaya’s new restaurant at the Four Seasons. His tribute to southern and Louisiana food, nothing is remotely Israeli or mediterranean here. The old World Trade Center was always ugly on the outside, and remains so, but like $500 million was spent renovating the overall building and interior to a new Four Seasons hotel and residences. We were only on the main floor, but the Chandelier Bar indeed has a gorgeous chandelier. Miss River next door is capacious and sparkles. Think the usual Four Seasons marble and glass. Tile floor. The pace was leisurely, the service very solid. The waiter knew the food exceptionally well. We (my wife and I) started with the seafood platter for one ($60), which would have been an entree for one, but was probably a seafood appetizer for three. Everything very fresh - 6 oysters, 2 preps of 3 large shrimp each, 2 crab meat preps of a generous handful each, and about 25 small lime marinated stone crab claws. Oyster stew was excellent, Gumbo was good but a bit thin. Clay pot dirty rice with duck, pate, and duck egg yolk was very rich with crispy paella like rice on the bottom from the clay pot. Very good - you can see pictures of this prior to being stirred up on yelp photos, or elsewhere. You would need more people to split other items like the whole fried chicken, or fish baked in salt. Wine list was small and recent vintage, but sufficient appropriate choices $60-$100. Corkage is $50 for the 1st two bottles and $75 after that. Seems more cocktail than wine focused overall, but large by the glass list that includes Dom and Krug. We ubered, but were told they validate the parking ($21/hr). Meal lasted nearly 3 hours, so…
Gabrielle - After missing it so many times, we finally got here, and so we went with the classics. BBQ Shrimp and Sweet Potato Pie was excellent. Duck and smoked sausage gumbo was probably the best i’ve ever had and I regretted not ordering my own bowl. Slow roasted duck was essentially a braised dish with peppers and mushrooms, but with intact roasted skin service on top, on dirty rice. Excellent, but don’t come expecting to saw your way through a duck breast. My wife had gulf fish which I did not try but she loved and looked excellent. The chef worked at K-Paul’s and Brigtsen’s (there is a large photo of Prudhomme by the bar. In the late 70s, through the 80s this would have been the ‘new’ New Orleans cuisine, interesting that it has become classic today. Looking forward to visiting Brigtsen’s in week 3.
Saint-Germain - Five course tasting menu also served with an amuse and complementary apertif. At $110 it’s $40 more than Coquette but with the extensive prep and fussiness (not in a negative sense) it is worth it I think. Gnocchetti (gnocchi shaped pasta) with sweetbreads, eggplant and truffle was special. We declined the extra $30 for shaved truffles on top. Fish course was Scallop with sunchoke chowder. Meat, a generous piece of Wagyu strip with a special potato side prep. Dessert was a persimmon ‘tiramisu’ which was quite good - they do a special prep and dry the persimmons for a year. Think very small portions of all the above, if you are looking for american portions do not bother. Wine pairings ($65) were fine, though for me, Broadbent 5yr Madeira was a miss with the dessert. I will go back for the food, but would probably order off the bottle or glass list. This is a tiny dining room on St. Claude ave, midway through the meal the background music was drowned out by a Cajun dance band playing outdoors at Galaxie Tacos next door.
Lunch
Domilise’s - Open for indoor service again, unfortunately they had no oysters, my number one choice there. They were hoping to get them in later in the week. We split a large shrimp which was excellent, washed it down with Bargs. We tried the french fries which were good, I would have been just as happy with a bag of Zapps.
Turkey and the Wolf - outdoor service only, limited chalk board menu. Collard Green Melt, their version of a vegetarian reuben, was terrific. Smoked ham with cheddar, cranberry and herb mayo was served on a pale french roll that looked like something you’d buy prewrapped at the airport, but it was packed with flavor. We probably should have tried the fried bologna sandwich, it’s made with ‘Leighann’s’ bologna which I believe comes from Leighann Smith from Piece of Meat in Midcity. They make incredible bologna and other cured meats. Maybe another visit if there is time, or we will try to stop in at Piece of Meat.
Alma - Breakfast/Brunch/Lunch place in Bywater of Honduran chef Melissa Araujo. We ate from the breakfast side of the menu, very good, but nothing particularly Honduran. We’re staying down the street from there in week 3, so hope to get back to try some lunch specialty items. I’ve heard good things.
Some quick comments;
Gabrielle’s is for duck lovers. It was a good restaurant but wasn’t quite at the level of others for fish.
Herbsaint remains my favorite, went twice!
SCOTT, Louisiana
Driving from northern Texas to New Orleans, takes you through Lafayette. So we stopped off for a brief visit to Scott Louisiana, the ‘Boudin Capital of the World’.
At the same exit from I-10 are Billy’s Boudin and Crackling, and The Best Stop Supermarket. We stopped first at Billy’s and picked up Boudin balls, and 1/4 lb of pork cracklings. My retired chef friend loves the pepper jack balls, but we found it a bit unnecessary and actual preferred the plain. There are also Crawfish BBs, but we did not go there. The cracklings were excellent and the salt content led to the consumption of several bottles of water during the ensuing 2.5 hour drive on to New Orleans. My friend says he always buys the smallest possible amount of cracklings because each one you eat takes about 20 minutes off of your life.
About a half mile in the other direction off the freeway exit lies The Best Stop Supermarket. You can ignore the religious imagery on the front door and scripture quotations inside, no one will prosthelytize you unless, I suppose you ask them to. They also sell boudin balls and cracklings, but at that point we were more than sated. But Best Stop sells a much wider assortment of ‘cajun’ food products than Billy’s and we were in search of a few items that could be easily cooked during the week. Chicken deboned and stuffed with Boudin certainly fit the bill. Roast at 350 for a little over an hour and serve with a little creole mustard and you have quite a meal. A package of 2 Pork sausage stuffed pork chops were mismatched - one rib chop and the other t-bone, but grilled, cut off the bone and divided they were very satisfying. They sell regular and smoked Boudin in casings of course, and these showed well. They also sell large format Andouille so we had to have some of that to compare with Jacobs in La Place. It did not come close unfortunately. The meat quality while much better than the smaller format products in the stores here (in NOLA) and from the Cajun Grocer did not quite reach Jacob’s heights. And the biggest miss was the lack of smoking. If you disliked heavily pecan wood smoked Andouille, this product could work for you.
Agree. If I were a pescaterian looking for the top notch fish in New Orleans, Gabrielle would not be on my list.
Their innovations ended in the 1980’s, it is now ‘traditional’ food but more to my liking than the truly traditional, 80+ year old restaurants.
We also love Herbsaint, and are booked there next week.
Alas, Upperline is no more at least in it’s original form.
I was surprised that the gumbo was sometimes the weakest dish (Galatoire, Peche). But otherwise a great week of food.
Besides Herbsaint for everything, and Galatoire’s for being Galatoire’s, I really loved the tuna sliders with swordfish bacon at GW Fins. Worth stopping there for.
There’s a place called killer po’boys, in the quarter (mentioned upthread I believe). The thing to get is the broiled shrimp poor boy. It’s really a broiled shrimp bahn mi. My favorite po-boy of the trip. (Avoid the sweet potato with collard green sandwhich though).
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Great reports guys !
Meals from Week 2
Coquette - We owed a tasting menu dinner to my retired chef friend and his wife who host us with a wonderful meal every time we come to town. Coquette recently did a major menu change and had not created their normal 5 course blind tasting menu at the time of our visit. So we rolled our own out of their menu, ordering 2 of each course and the kitchen did a great job splitting them for 2 each. Highs - Shrimp Broth, Braised Short Rib, and the Green Cabbage dish with turnip ravigote was maybe the best dish I have ever had there. Lows - Fried Oysters were heavily breaded, obviously on purpose, but it wasn’t to my particular liking, and finally the Flounder Grenobloise was sauced well, but definitely over cooked. Some portions still had texture, but mine - the thinest - was pretty much just mush. Desserts were good.
Lengua Madre - The Coquette owners opened a restaurant called Thalia in the LGD shortly before the pandemic hit, and it did not survive. Ana Castro cooked previously at Coquette and was one of the opening chefs at Thalia. She and Coquette owner Michael Stoltzfus recently opened this unique Mexican influenced restaurant currently tasting menu only, though I believe they plan to add an ala carte menu in the near future. So 5 unique courses with an amuse, and granita palate cleanser before dessert. I’m not sure how to describe this food - creative, modern mexican. Plenty fussy, but also very earthy and homey. Courses, a thin, crispy masa ‘tart’ with charred avocado, a small flavorful rice dish with seafood, a baked sweet potato dish (Encacahuatada) with nuts and tumeric, Cobia al Pastor - fish tacos I guess but quite elevated with small hand made tortillas, pureed pineapple, pineapple peel, salsa verde. Dessert was a unique baked butternut squash dish. Wine parings were fully unknown to me, included two Canary Island wines, and a dessert wine from Uruguay. The restaurant was full and people seemed to enjoy it. I don’t know if it will survive, but I think it deserves to. I will return if given the opportunity.
Maypop - This was on the mark as usual, glad to have it back. Shrimp ravioli, Satsuma glazed cornish hen, crispy pork shoulder with curry and ‘hibiscus apples’.
Costera - My first time here, tapas is the theme, we did not have a weak course. Bustling neighborhood place in uptown it caters to large parties of locals and there were several on Saturday night after the Tulane and LSU games. We were afraid our party of 2 might get lost, but the kitchen seems to crank out any of some 20 dishes in a highly organized manner. Disclaimer - we did not try the Paella as the minimum order was for 2 and the portions looked massive. Four people needed?
Lunch
Casamento’s - A New Orleans classic, get there early. We had Seafood Gumbo, solid but not up to what we had at the Frisco Deli in Laplace last year, Chargrilled Oysters, good but a bit too cheesy for my taste, and Fried Oyster Loaf. I would go back for the Oyster Loaf, and maybe give the chargrilled another chance. Didn’t try the spaghetti.
Bywater Bakery - terrific bakery, they also serve good sandwiches - muffuletta, croque madame, etc.
Union Ramen - Also in the LGD this is chicken broth ramen which was tasty, but has several creative appetizers as well. They were out of spam musubi, and confit oyster mushrooms so I felt like we missed out on some of their specialties, but enjoyed the belly brisket, and calamari frisee salad.
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Just for closure, Meals from Week 3.
N7 - A return visit for us. Romaine Salad is a decomposed Caesar. Tarte Flambee is really a flatbread with a touch of sweetness. Fried Cauliflower w/ vacherin sauce, an appetizer was slightly odd - the size of an entree and very rich, for me it could have used a squeeze of lemon or something for acidity. For entrees, Steak au Poivre, Sheepshead Fish special were very solid. Soy Sauce Creme Brûlée was interesting and a reminder of the asian roots of the restaurant, did not see much on the menu in that role any longer.
Brigtsen’s - Finally got there and it was very good. I hate to say this is another version of Gabrielle, but it kind of is. Chef backgrounds and menus are very similar. We ordered similar stuff - chicken/andouille gumbo, bbq shrimp (this time with johnnycakes), gulf fish, slow cooked duck. Also had sweetbreads which were quite good. The gumbo was excellent. Did not quite hit the peaks of Gabrielle, but excellent. The duck is not in quite the braised state of Gabrielle, but you might prefer it if you like a more solid consistency.
Bywater American Bistro - This was really good. Really good BBQ Octopus and Burrata apps. Over the top beef cheek bolognese spaghetti special with shaved truffles ($42). Price was more than offset by a great Jerk half chicken- only $18. We were staying just a few blocks away, but this is well worth a reasonable uber/lyft from the quarter or anywhere really.
Herbsaint - Pretty much right up there with our last visit. We could only get outside on a Saturday, but it was a nice evening. Cornmeal fried oysters and a croquette special nicely set off a bottle of champagne. Very good gumbo, like right there with Brigtsen’s. Muscovy Duck Leg Confit with dirty rice is always a must order.
Lunch
Turkey and the Wolf - got back there for the Bologna sandwich which was very good. But honesty nothing touches that Collard Green Melt - killer.
Alma - Back for a weekday lunch this time, much calmer service. Excellent Pastelitos de Carne, and Chicharrons. And Pollo Chucho plate. Innovative Honduran food in NOLA.
Frady’s - A hole in the wall in Bywater, I wouldn’t make a trip, but we were staying around the corner and they had solid PoBoys for 1/3 less than Domilise’s, Parkway, etc.
Bratz Y’All - ditto Frady’s except its a beer garden not a hole in the wall. Good creative sausages, schnitzels, pretzels, and well… beer.
When I was there, 2/3 of the people got the Duck Leg. It was like a duck leg parade!