Jocking for Jacques-Imo's

While I lived in New Orleans, one of my favorite go-to restaurants was Jacques-Imo's Cafe, a restaurant heavily frequented by Tulane students and alumni, among other eager New Orleans residents. If you want to dine at Jacques-Imo's, you have to arrive early and free your schedule of all evening plans, as you are guaranteed to wait in line to be seated at this popular eatery, even with reservations.

Each meal at Jacques-Imo's begins with a moist cornbread muffin garnished with feathery chopped parsley and a light plate of complimentary spinach salad. The salad is drizzled with biting balsamic vinegar and topped with a flavorful "crouton of the sea," a battered, breaded, and deep-fried oyster with luscious green entrails.


Next, after the salad, comes Jacques-Imo's appetizers. I've enjoyed the crab cakes at Jacques-Imo's. Their crab cakes are served on a delicate bed of greens and dressed with a silken, coral-colored remoulade sauce. The crab cakes are made with blue crab (which is prevalent on the East Coast) and seasoned with fiery Bayou spices. The crab meat in the cakes does not come in large chunks, but wispy, stringy threads, and the meat is bound together with heavy seasoned breading that has classic Southern undertones of Thanksgiving stuffing.


I highly recommend the oysters brochette appetizer, which is made of oysters wrapped in a thick-cut pieces of fat-laden bacon. The bacon-wrapped oyster is coated in cornmeal, deep-fried until golden-brown and served either on oyster shells or a hot serving plate doused with a luxuriously thick and flavorful oyster gravy and simply garnished with chopped scallions and parsley. The fresh herbs bring out the meaty and welcoming flavors of the bacon and the velvety texture of the oysters. As a warning, this is not an appetizer for the cholesterol-adverse.



As for entrées, I can unequivocally say that the best entrée in all of Jacques-Imo's, is the signature carpetbagger steak, which comes topped with a hamburger-sized slice of grilled red onion. The menu claims that the onion is caramelized, but in my several visits to Jacques-Imo's, I noticed a bit of a crunch to the sweet red onion slice. The tender, melt-in-your-mouth steak is really the masterful centerpiece of the entrée. The steak is a supple filet cut, and is enriched with the decadent blue cheese and oyster tasso dressing. Each buttery bite of the steak finishes on a high note with the tangy blue cheese gravy, and you might catch a surprising chunk of briny oyster in each forkful.


Jacques-Imo's also serves a variety of fish entrées, including mirliton with oyster tasso hollandaise, but I suggest you order the carpetbagger steak over any fish selection.


Also, included with your meal at Jacques-Imo's, is your choice of classic Southern side dishes, including slow-cooked collard greens, long-grain white rice, soupy butter beans, buttered and spiced corn, and cubed beets.



You won't have room for dessert if your order the oysters brochette and carpetbagger steak. Your pants will be unzipped before you have finished half of the entrée. But I promise, at the end of your meal at Jacques-Imo's, your bursting stomach will already be thanking you profusely.

Master and Commander

In the early 90s, I remember watching Paul Prudhomme on his cooking show and an unknown Emeril Lagasse on Great Chefs. Both shows aired on my local P.B.S. station. It was through those shows that I first learned of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, Louisiana--the very restaurant that launched the careers of Prudhomme and Lagasse, putting them on the national culinary map. I would never have imagined that I would one day have the privilege of dining at Commander's Palace, or that I would eventually live in New Orleans.

If you are unfamiliar with Commander's Palace, I think I could say that it is arguably the "best" and most iconic restaurant of New Orleans. It has a rich culinary legacy that has been defined by time (the restaurant itself dates from the 1800s), its owners, and its classic location. Currently, the Brennan family dynasty owns Commander's Palace and a bevy of other upscale (and pricey) establishments in the New Orleans area, including Ralph Brennan's Bacco and Café Adelaide. You will arrive the illustrious Commander's Palace by following the tree-lined boulevards in New Orleans' wealthy Garden District, but the whimsical "bird" decorations and colors inside the restaurant will amuse you more than the gorgeous neighborhood surroundings.

The evening that we dined at Commander's Palace, the beau started with the turtle soup au sherry. The turtle soup filled the air with a buttery and rich aroma, and was dense with soft pieces of the holy trinity (bell peppers, onions, and celery), tiny cubes of hard-boiled eggs, and chewy morsels of diced turtle meat. When our server brought out the shallow bowl of steaming soup, she drizzled cool sherry over the top of the soup. The beau eagerly swirled the sherry throughout his bowl, permitting the sherry to lend its tartness to warm brothy goodness.


I also selected soup as my starter. However, I instead opted for the gumbo du jour, which was made with a rich shrimp stock, chocolately dark roux, and other fresh regional ingredients. I found the gumbo to be thinner than the gumbo at Acme Oyster House and less substantial at Emeril's Nola, but it was slightly sweet and intensely flavorful, packed a bit of spicy heat, and contained large chunks of duck meat.


We eagerly used the glistening and buttery pieces of golden garlic dill bread to sop up all of the remaining soup left in the bowls.


For his main course, the beau ordered the deep-fried soft shell crab, which was injected with an acidic French-inspired ravigote sauce. The menu indicated the the crab was injected so that the crab would be "marinate[d] from the inside out." The crab was served with an amusing salad of scallions, petite herbs, grape tomatoes, and red onions in a spicy horseradish and grainy dijon mustard sauce, and a drizzling of liquified basil. The crab also came with mashed crab boiled vegetables, upon which the crab was served. The crab's deep-fried breaded coating was crunchy and perfectly contained the soft crabmeat flakes and shell.


I ordered "Commander's mixed grill," which came with a selection of meats finished with a housemade Worcestershire sauce. The meats included a hickory grilled tournedo of beef, rabbit tenderloin, and spicy lamb and rabbit sausages. The protein-heavy dish was served with mustard greens braised in New Orleans Abita beer, Creole smashed new potatoes, and a sweet and chunky huckleberry and cherry compote. I loved the tenderness of all of the meats, the different selection of proteins highlighted the distinctive gamey flavors of the lamb and the rabbit. Also, the contrasting sweetness of the compote and the savory flavors of the meat and greens really made an impact on my palate. Everything was cleverly prepared.



We ended our evening with a classic New Orleans dessert with a lot of fanfare, bananas foster, which was flambéed at our tableside. The server halved the bananas; cooked them in butter, brown sugar, Caribbean rum, banana liqueur; set the bananas ablaze; and poured the mixture over a rotund scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.


Check out the video of our bananas foster in action here:

I hope this post inspired you to visit New Orleans soon, and stop by Commander's Palace for a divine meal!

Becoming a Real New Orleans Food Blog

Well, I am not there yet... Especially if I keep "shizzie-postings" crap this up.

You all know that I love the City and the people of New Orleans and I love eating here. And I have posted about the restaurants and unique cuisine of New Orleans quite a bit already. But I still have a ways to go. I honestly have some crazy-delicious work-in-progress posts coming up about famous New Orleans dining institutions (including Commander's Palace, NOLA Restaurant, Jacques-Imo's Cafe, and Domilise's). I also have a few classic New Orleans recipes in the posting pipeline. However, to keep you waiting with bated breath, I am going to delay a bit and continue to put up some more images from Zea--the chain restaurant I discussed earlier.

In my own defense, I haven't sufficiently perfected the posts on those above restaurants, and since I already expounded at length about Zea, I can cop-out and just post these images and say, "See? Enjoy! Bye-bye." No need to write a full-length post!

Here is a picture of Zea's chewy slices of rotisserie beef (emphasis on "chewy") with green peppercorn gravy.


Above is their "Philly" beef panini sandwich, which consists of oily chopped beef and onions, which are sandwiched between in two grilled rounds of flatbread. The flatbread is slathered in a thick mayonnaise and oozing with melted jack cheese.

Enjoy, and bye-bye!

... Okay, this post sucked, but there is a big work deadline that I am procrastinating from, so this is all you get for now--what I ate for dinner as take-out, two nights in a row. Sorry.

Zea Makes This Alice (Delight) in Chains

As a kid growing up in the parched and remote deserts of Arizona, I grew up on an all-American, completely processed, and preservative-laden diet. I survived on anything and everything in the (1) Lay's potato chip family and (2) Banquet frozen dinner family. I wholeheartedly count Shake-n-Bake pork chops and instant mashed potatoes as one of my all-time favorite dinners. Yes, you read that right: "instant." Finally, all of our fresh produce was transported in from trucks coming from California, so we eagerly took what we could get (mainly lettuce, potatoes, apples, and oranges). That should illustrate the kind of food I grew up with.

Therefore, when our family went out for dinner, we went "big time." Meaning, we hit up the chain restaurants that were the only restaurants available. My all-time favorite restaurant in the world was Sizzler, and Jerry's was a close second. I am sure those of you who are familiar with rural Arizona will immediately guess where I lived, because Sizzler and Jerry's were the only two "big time" restaurants in my town.

However, when I moved to Los Angeles, and then to San Francisco, I developed an air of haughtiness--a sense of unrequited entitlement--to what I thought were the finer things in life. I eschewed chain restaurants because they were for the common, unrefined, and uninformed proletariat. Rather, I visited the ethnic mom-and-pop restaurants and patronized fine dining establishments recognized by food critics around the world.

And then I moved to New Orleans. And then I woke up from my ignorance. And then I happily went back to my roots. Yes, I still love the mom-and-pop and upscale restaurants, but I can't say that chains are all that bad.

Yes, admittedly, I surreptitiously visited California Pizza Kitchen on several occasions when living in California. But now, in New Orleans, I am a repeat offender. I am utterly infatuated with the Zea restaurants on Saint Charles Avenue and in Clearview Mall, and don't care who catches me in the act!

Let me give you some recommendations on what you must order at Zea. First, if you don't get their signature rotisserie chicken, I will have to disown you from my family. You absolutely must try Zea's immaculately juicy 1/2 rotisserie chicken, which is seasoned with the perfect blend of peppery and crimson colored Creole spices. NASA needs to find out what rotisserie machine that Zea uses, because their tender, fall-off-the-bone chicken retains more moisture than humanly possible. They need a patent on that process so it can be used on the next trip to Mars!

Oh, and "what are those twin peaks of deliciousness mounded next to the chicken," you ask? Those are their (1) much-talked-about roasted corn grits and (2) mashed and buttered sweet potatoes, my friend. Butter pervades throughout (or should I say, is the predominant ingredient in) both of those sides.

Another delicious selection is their premium rack of St. Louis Style spare ribs, that are allegedly wood fire roasted and grilled (don't ask me how to "roast" and "grill" at the same time, but they say that in their menu). The ribs are appropriately in drenched in a sweetened Thai sauce, just as good ribs should be. And in addition to the sweet potatoes, those are their Thai snap beans, as a side treat. (That is what we call vegetables where I come from, a "side treat.")

And though they laud themselves as a rotisserie restaurant, their pastas, sandwiches, and salads are my favorite lunchtime splurge. My favorite pasta on their menu has to be the shrimp breaux bridge penne pasta, which is saute-tossed in a spicy and garlicky cream sauce made with herbs and cheese. Heart attack-inducing? Yes.

Finally, since I mentioned their "sandwiches," here is a gratuitous picture of their wood fire hickory grilled chicken breast sandwich with jack cheese, chipotle aioli, and a side of dirty rice. But I would actually not recommend you to order this sandwich. Instead, I would direct your attention to their Sedona chicken panini. That sandwich is maddeningly mouthwatering. It is a panini-grilled sandwich stuffed with their rotisserie chicken, grilled onions, roasted garlic, roasted corn, chopped cilantro, and topped with a slice of jack cheese and a smearing of chipotle aioli. Okay, I just regurgitated what was on their menu with regards to that sandwich, but it was way worth it if I gave you an idea that the sandwich is heaven.

Oh, and I know this post title makes no sense, but I just wanted to say "Alice in Chains," since my sister was a fan of theirs in the 80s. Go heavy metal and rock!