Showing posts with label
Central Business District (NOLA).
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Showing posts with label
Central Business District (NOLA).
Show all posts
Recently, my friend brought me out to Drago's Seafood Restaurant in the Riverwalk Marketplace to relax, converse, and enjoy a leisurely evening of Drago's often-imitated, but never duplicated chargrilled oysters at their oyster bar. Unfortunately, our evening was interrupted by the looming fact that we had to return back to work that evening, to finish up various projects before their rapidly approaching deadlines. However, but we had an enjoyable dinner nonetheless, in large part because of Drago's oysters.
Why are these oysters so special and so sought after? It is all in their signature preparation.
Drago's world-famous chargrilled oysters are first slathered with a heavenly marinade of butter, chopped garlic, and vibrant herbs. Then, Drago's chefs proceed to cook the oysters on the grill, and generously shake handfuls of fine cheese powder over the oysters during the grilling process.
Flames lick and dance mercilessly upon the oysters until the entire exposed oyster surface is encrusted with a gooey, yet rough and seemingly calcified parmesan and pecorino romano cheese barrier.
The supple and incredibly juicy oysters are served with significant wedges of yeasty french bread, which may be used to sop up the liquified butter and oyster liqueur that collects within the oyster shells.
In addition to Drago's "killer delicious" oysters, that evening, I ordered another winner: the "shuckee duckee," which my friend noted was charmingly named after the oyster (thus the "shuckee") and the duck (thus the "duckee") components. The dish came with two tender and smoky duck breasts, which were scored with a knife and blackened on the surface, but crimson and trembling within. The al dente linguini pasta accompanying the duck breasts was carefully tossed in a decadent cream sauce interspersed with chewy nubs of chopped oysters.
My friend ordered the mesquite-grilled gulf shrimp which had been seasoned with fiery New Orleans spices, and tossed with fresh garden ingredients, including cucumbers, tomatoes, and mixed greens.
Though we had to take our uneaten entrees back to the office in doggie bag containers, we enjoyed our evening, and our oysters. I hope this post did the convincing, in that Drago's oysters are definitely something worth writing home about!
I may be the only one to ever order takeout from Herbsaint.
Ever.
A few days ago, I was presented with a problem. I was very busy at work, I was hungry for lunch, and I was in the mood for an upscale lunch--at my desk. So I called the celebrated New Orleans restaurant, Herbsaint, and our conversation went as follows:
"Hi, you don't serve takeout do you? Well, I am in the mood for your grilled flatbread. You know, the one topped with shrimp, spinach, provolone cheese, and garlic butter?"
"Err. Well, we are not that kind of a restaurant. First, we don't have takeout containers. Second, we pride ourselves on 'presentation,' and with takeout, that is not really possible. However, we'll see what we can do. Conceivably, we 'could' wrap the flatbread up in foil for you."
"Oh, hells yeah! I'm over there in 15 minutes! Outs!"
And just like that, I became the first person to ever order takeout from Herbsaint.
With their immaculately delicious flatbread, its not hard to understand why one would vehemently crave Herbsaint's food at anytime of the day.
Allow me to describe why I love Herbsaint's flatbread (so much so that I would subject myself to the scorn of society, by ordering takeout from an upscale, non-takeout kind-of-place). Herbsaint's flatbread is made of a blistered, crackery, paper-thin bread base. Browned grill marks evenly underscore the bottom of the crispy unleavened bread, and the surface of the bread is generously slathered with melted garlic butter. The crunchy flatbread is also topped with flavorful proportions of (1) chopped shrimp nuggets, bursting with juices and perfectly-cooked shrimp texture, (2) a generous blanket of grated provolone cheese, and (3) soft tufts of spinach, which are carefully nestled into crevices of the flatbread. All of these elements combine to make one of the most amazing parties for your tastebuds, ever.
And the unrivaled fragrance of the bread will make your mouth water uncontrollably. The overpowering garlicky + cheesy aroma wafting from the surface of the bread will make your heart stop dead in its tracks and cause tears to instantaneously fall freely from your flowing tear ducts. The pungent cheese odor is so powerful, it will make you feel that you just opened the sealed doors to a den storing five tons of aging parmesan cheese. It is that good.
After reading this post, you might ask me now, "Was it worth the mortification, of being known as the one and only person to ever order takeout from Herbsaint?" Reflecting upon my meal, I have just one thing to say:
Absolutely.
I've posted about Mother's Restaurant before... On several occasions. But I'm sure that by now, you've noticed that I love repeating myself, especially when it gives me the opportunity to post more pictures. For instance, I love talking about Acme Oyster House, again and again. Furthermore, if you are a regular reader, you may have wondered why I can't stop talking about Zea.
Well, this last Saturday, my rumbling stomach just happened to have a yearning for some classic N'awlins food, so I swung by my regular lunch standby and perpetual favorite, Mother's Restaurant. Here are my recommendations of what you should order when visit Mother's.
On Saturdays, be sure to order their special: an enriching bowl of Mae's filé gumbo, which is served with generous spoonfuls of fluffy long grain white rice and thick-cut rounds of smoky andouille sausage. Just a quick FYI: "filé powder" is a common gumbo ingredient and is a Native-American spice made from dried sassafras leaves, which has been ground to a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. Filé powder has thickening qualities similar to cornstarch, and may be used in gumbos, but only if okra is not an ingredient. (The gel in okra also acts as a thickening agent, so filé + okra tends to be overkill.)
You'll be prohibited from setting foot into Mother's (by me) if you don't order one of their famous po' boys, which are lightly buttered and dressed with pickles, shredded cabbage, and mayonnaise. Mother's po' boy bread is airy, and almost ethereal, and therefore acts as the perfect base for any po' boy filling. One delectable option is Mother's monstrous fried oyster po' boy, which is crammed with crunchy and golden-brown oysters that are perfectly creamy and slippery on the inside.
Another po' boy possibility is their signature invention: a roast beef "debris" po' boy which is drenched in a savory au jus and littered with stringy tendrils of slow cooked beef. The meat in a debris po' boy is not your typical sliced roast beef, but rather, the meat filling consists of the remnants in the roasting pan after a Sunday supper--thus, the "debris" name.
Finally, don't hesitate to reward yourself with a spongy slice of bread pudding. Mother's bread pudding is saturated with sweet liqueur and cream, spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, and cooked with peaches and cherries. This pudd'n will most likely leave you loosening your pants for more.
If you are in the New Orleans area, I hope that these pictures inspire you to make your next lunch visit to Mother's in the near future. If you've never been to New Orleans, I hope this post has encouraged you to visit us!
I am sure that you've noticed that I've been eating a lot of takeout lately--at my desk.
But that doesn't mean that I've been eating poorly. In fact, allow me to now segue to a quick shout-out to one of my favorite neighborhood lunchtime eateries in the Central Business District in New Orleans: Welty's Deli.
Because Welty's is right next to the courthouse, Welty's will almost assuredly be chockful of Louisiana bar members in starched and pressed button-up shirts, at any given time. (Insert inappropriate lawyer joke here.) Irregardless of Welty's sometimes offputting clientele, don't be intimidated or frightened from entering. The food should speak for itself. Holla!
Welty's serves bountiful salads and overflowing sandwiches. Their lavish portion sizes that will leave your mouth agape by their Southern largess. They also offer a mean sweet tea and allow you to "customize" your sandwich with standard items from their sandwich toppings bar--you may load your 'wich with all the crisp iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles that you so desire. Be sure to check out Welty's website for their gourmet daily specials, such as the picture featured in this post: their flour tortilla enchiladas, served with black beans and Spanish rice.
Okay, back to work for me! I apologize for the weak substance of these posts. However, to forewarn you: expect many more takeout pictures in the coming weeks! (It's crunch time.)
Lil' Dizzy's Cafe in the Central Business District of New Orleans is known for its unique ambiance--it is built in part of a historic bank (whose traffic has died down significantly since its early heyday). Therefore, you can actually admire the elaborate marble columns and banking-centric murals, visit the non-functional vault near the restrooms, and listen to the banking bustle as financial transactions are really taking place on the other side of the room divider.
During their Sunday jazz brunch, in addition to the live music, Lil' Dizzy's serves free-flowing mimosas and champagne and offers a comforting selection of all-you-can eat Southern dishes. Therefore, one day after church, I decided to visit Lil' Dizzy's for their jazz champagne brunch, to enjoy a leisurely late morning meal with a live jazz band playing in the background.
We've all heard the time-honored adage, that if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all. Therefore, I am not going to going to say much about these pictures from my most recent visit to Lil' Dizzy's Cafe.
My experience at the restaurant was great, and I have been to Lil' Dizzy's at least on five previous occasions with no problem. However, about an hour and a half after this meal, I became violently ill. I usually will not post at places where I fall seriously ill, but I am giving Lil' Dizzy's the benefit of the doubt, since my friend accompanied me during the brunch, loved it, and exhibited no gastrointestinal problems whatsoever. Plus, it takes a lot for me to dislike a New Orleans restaurant, though there are many San Francisco restaurants that are on my eternal blacklist.
At Lil' Dizzy's, my companion and I had the crispy and golden-brown fried chicken,
Macaroni and cheese, seasoned and cubed potatoes fried with their skins on, green beans, stewed chicken, and trout baquet,
Omelets-made-your-way (I ordered an egg white jambalaya omelet and my friend order the triple crab meat omelet, and we split them),
Brothy gumbo and a shrimp salad in a mayonnaisey dressing,
Mimosas,
Sticky pecan pie,
And a moist, egg nogg flavored bread pudding.
Ultimately, I hope these pictures speak for themselves, and redeem any perceived shortcomings by Lil' Dizzy's. Plus, I should qualify my illness, by saying that I ultimately meandered into Lil' Dizzy's towards the end of the brunch hour (when the jazz band had already departed), so if you visit earlier, you might not have any of my complications.
Of the large "melting pot" cities of America, it is commonly known that New Orleans is one of the most diverse and unique when it comes to cuisine. One of the restaurants that I would like to highlight as being demonstrative of this diversity, is Liborio's, a Cuban restaurant located right in the middle of the City's Central Business District.
Perhaps their most famous dish, is "old clothes," or ropa vieja. The taste of the meat in the dish is reminiscent of the slow-cooked pot roast that Grandma started cooking before church and would serve for Sunday supper. Every tangled string of beef is richly saturated with flavors of fine red wine, hearty tomato sauce, minced garlic, and red bell peppers. Think of a delectable and amazingly tender beef brisket, in pulled pork form.
Although I have never tried the dish myself, I have heard only positive things about their moist baked chicken breast, which is stuffed with peaches and cooked in a peach and rosemary seasoned broth.
All of Liborio's dishes are rounded out with a serving of (1) steamed long-grain white rice, (2) a cup full of spice-infused black beans, and (3) sticky plantains, sugared and fried until pillowy soft, slightly gummy, and yet cloyingly delicious.
Finally, my personal favorite, is the ubiquitous Cuban sandwich, which consists of two crusty halves of French bread which are coated with a slick spread of mayonnaise and interlayered with tart pickle slices, and thin cuts of alternating ham and roasted pork. The sandwich is adhered together with melted Swiss cheese and warmed in a heated sandwich press.
I hope this brief post inspired you to out there and enjoy some Cuban food, or at least to take advantage of your local (and diverse) lunch time offerings!
From the obscene amount of basketball references in this blog, it's obvious that I am a basketball girl. I grew up near Phoenix (12+ years) and lived in Los Angeles (7+ years), and those cities are some of the biggest and loudest basketball towns around. That's why when I moved to New Orleans, I could not fathom (or even attempt to wrap my mind around) the fact that only this year, New Orleans began turning their attention to the wonderful sport of basketball.
But I saw first hand this week how much of a "basketball town" that New Orleans is becoming. Earlier this week, my friends (visiting me from out-of-town) and I decided to take advantage of the $0.25 (yes, 0.25¢) martini lunchtime special at Café Adelaide, in celebration of one of my friend's birthdays. We each thirstily downed the alcohol-laden drinks like water, and, after finishing our meals, we stumbled outside in a drunken stupor. (Folks, this is common in New Orleans. New Orleans people know how to have a good time, even during the afternoon!)
You'll never guess who we ran into: the fabulous Frenchman, Tony Parker! He was quiet and shy, but obliged in allowing us to take a few pictures of his handsome visage. Feast your eyes on his deliciousness! (Yes, I hate the dirty Spurs with a vengeance and Tony Parker is happily married to Eva Longoria, but that doesn't mean I can't look!)
I was sputtering like a nut, propelling spittle onto his face, and acting quite obnoxiously towards him (because I had downed the limit of three martinis just a few minutes ago), but he didn't curse me out or slap me in my face. Therefore, I would say our interaction was a success!
Okay, enough of the basketball, onto the food!
As for our pre-Tony Parker lunch, my friends and I (four ladies, total), started our meal with a martini each. Being the girly-girls that they are, they eschewed the traditional martini, and opted for the fruity, more feminine flavors, such as the appletini and the cosmopolitan. I daringly ordered the famous Commander's martini, which is made with vodka, white vermouth, blue curacao liqueur (which gives the martini its beautiful sapphire-blue color), and lime juice. Be careful to sip on a Commander's martini slowly, that drink feels like straight-up 90% proof liquor, yo.
At Cafe Adelaide (Commander's Palace, or Bacco's)--all restaurants owned by the Brennan family and all places where you can get these 0.25¢ martinis--you will be limited to three martinis, total. They keep track of the number of martinis that you have already had by a little charm, such as the plastic mermaid figurine that you see here. Yes, that is my second martini below.
Two of my friends started with the Ponchatoula strawberry salad, which was made with freshly harvested spring greens, crunchy pine nut kernels, silvers of sweet onion, and milky crumbles of Point Reyes blue cheese. The leaves of the salad were carefully tossed and coated with a white balsamic and Bocage honey vinaigrette. I sampled a bit of the salad, and loved the playful combination of the sweet and subtly tart flavors of the strawberries and vinaigrette.
Another friend and I started with the black bay shrimp and sweet corn soup. The soup was thick and savory, and tasted both beefy and tomatoey. There were tight curls of shrimp and cubes of root vegetables swimming towards the bottom of the bowl, including dice-sized pieces of softened carrot. The soup was almost comparable a wintertime stew, because it was both hearty and substantial.
For my main course, I ordered the Grand Isle Shrimp fried po-boy, stuffed with shrimp boil mozzarella, grilled local shrimp, roma tomato jam, and LeBlanc's pepper jelly. The po' boy sandwich was breaded and deep-fried, so when bitten into, the sandwich had a resonating "crunch." I actually thought the dish was only decent. I was (and still am) a bit perplexed as to what the curly orange crispies were on top of my dish. It tasted like squash chips, I think. The sweet pepper jelly was a bit too cloying and overpowering for my taste, and I got a little frustrated because the bread was crunchy to the point that it scraped up the skin on the roof of my mouth. I also found there to be a paltry amount of dressing for my side greens. I think they just drizzled (and I mean, barely "drizzled") a bit of sticky honey over the greens.
Another friend ordered crispy des allemands catfish, which had been breaded, deep-fried, and served with a salad of fire-roasted sweet peppers, ribbons of spring squash, creole mustard, and pickled okra aioli. I was able to sneak a bite, and the moistened catfish and crispy skin surface was quite delicious.
Finally, we all shared two desserts, including a strawberry shortcake filled with wickedly supple and decadent whipped cream. The shortcake part (or biscuit part) convinced me that people in the South bake the best biscuits in the entire world. The biscuit was airy, fluffy, buttery, and literally melted in my mouth. And what can I say, I love powdered sugar, strawberry syrup, and sweet Southern strawberries!
We also concluded our meal with a Bourbon chocolate pecan pie served with a frosty orb of vanilla bean ice cream. The chocolate infused into every molecule of the sticky pecan pie, therefore making the pie a sweet ending to an enjoyable meal.
Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention our tastiest dessert of the afternoon, Mr. Eva Longoria! Geaux Hornets, and laissez le bon temps rouler!
* If this is a legal (or non-legal) representative of Mr. Parker, and you wish to have his image removed, kindly leave a comment and I will happily entertain your request.
I've been a dispirited, passionless eater lately. I haven't been cooking. I haven't been eating out much. You know what I've been doing?
Working days, nights, and weekends. My office deals with all-bureaucracy-resulting-from-Hurricane-Katrina, so I think you can guess the amount of work that we dealing with on a daily basis. Yes. That much.
Never in a thousand years would I have thought I could forsake the food (food blogs and the internet in general) to the extent that I have since I moved to New Orleans.
But I hope to post and comment once in a while (it is looking like once every other month right now), and show some signs of blogging life.
But, I should let you see what you want to see. . . Food pictures!
Although I said that I haven't been eating out much, one place that I've enjoyed on several occasions (because it is within walking distance to my workplace) is Mother's. The restaurant is always bustling and boisterous, and during breakfast and lunch, you will have to wait in a significant line before ordering from a crinkled and oil-stained paper menu.
Mother's offers many classic New Orleans items, including po' boys, gumbo, jambalaya, and breakfast grits. And the atmosphere is also classic New Orleans. The servers wear a clean, red and white ensemble complete with an old-fashioned soda shop paper hat and an apron. Also, you order from behind a glass display case-counter (similar to Katz's Deli in New York or Tommy's Joynt in San Francisco).
My recommendations at Mother's include (1) the roast beef po' boy with gravy and debris (the chipped beef and drippings left in the roasting pan), (2) the warm and immaculately fluffy biscuits (literally, the best I have ever had), and (3) the thick, creamy, and buttery grits. The additional picture here is of the shrimp etouffee omelet, but it is a little sloppy and soupy, and the seafood is tough, so I wouldn't eagerly recommend it.
And I was told (and have confirmed) that the best way to eat grits is with eggs that are cooked sunny-side-up or over-easy. You just make a crater with the back of your spoon into the surface of the grits and use a fork to mash the egg yolk into grits.
