Manger à La Nouvelle-Orléans

Like many of my colleagues I recently attended a five day conference in New Orleans. The conference was fine - mildly informative at best, the city depressing - I'll get to that in a second, but the food, the food was spectacular - easily one of the best food cities in the U.S. But before I talk about the food I have to talk about New Orleans. It's sad really and we all should be embarrassed. The city is worse than I expected, nearly six years after "the hurricane" 140,000 people have not returned and probably never will. Sadly many of them worked in the restaurant business. I wish I had been to New Orleans pre-Katrina so I could talk about how the restaurants have changed, but I can't. What I can say is that the city appears incredibly poor for a U.S. city of that size (slightly smaller than Minneapolis). One of the more depressing examples of this was literally having to step over people while walking through the French Quarter at night - I got the strong sense that many people are still homeless or living in horrid conditions. I heard someone compare the French Quarter to Old San Juan but I think Old Havana is a better comparison. Scary when you consider the French Quarter was one of the least affected areas of New Orleans. I thought to myself more than once, "I can't believe I'm in the U.S."

But enough of that, I don't actually want to discourage people from going to New Orleans, everyone should go and you should know that the people are incredibly friendly, if not a little hard to understand - I struggled with the accent. And the food is great as long as you do a little research. If I had one complaint it would be the incredibly high cost of seafood. This of course isn't the city's fault, the fishing industry is still recovering from the BP oil spill.

Here are the highlights (and one low-light) of my New Orleans food experience.

Café Maspero (601 Decatur St.)

On my first day at the conference Tony and I decided to head into the French Quarter looking for good muffuletta for lunch. We ended up asking a local where he thought the best muffuletta could be found and much to my surprise he did not recommend Central Grocery (the restaurant that made the first muffuletta sandwich) but instead recommended Café Maspero. For those of you who don't know, muffuletta is both the name of a Sicilian bread and the name of a New Orleans sandwich made with the Sicilian bread. The sandwich includes many layers of various meats (ours included turkey, ham, salami and capicola), swiss and provolone cheese and a layer of chopped olive salad which includes pickled vegetables (i.e., giardiniera), garlic, oregano and olive oil. The sandwiches are huge, if we had known what was coming we would have split one - somehow Tony finished his anyway.

I should say that Café Maspero isn't one of those restaurants that the germ conscious among us would want to visit. The floors are sticky, the tables are sticky too, the silverware has that "has this been washed?" look to it and I didn't dare touch the large bottles of mayonnaise that sit on the tables all day long getting warmer by the minute. Café Maspero is an open-air restaurant with old wood furniture and big ceiling fans providing slight relief from the New Orleans heat and humidity. Expect the occasional pigeon flying into the restaurant and scooping dropped fries off the floor. The staff is a bit rough around the edges as well but they were kind and more than willing to answer our questions. Tony and I are tough eaters so we didn't let our initial reactions stop us and boy we were glad. At $8 a piece the muffuletta at Café Maspero may be the best deal in New Orleans. Have I mentioned how good they were? So good.

Drago's Seafood Restaurant (2 Poydras St.)

I was not impressed with the food at this restaurant and am only writing about it because it is listed as one of the best seafood restaurants in New Orleans on many food sites and such. Given its location in the Downtown Hilton I assumed the good reviews were reliable. I was wrong. Michael ordered onion rings and crab claws to start, both were dry and bland and the crab claws were served with weakest cocktail sauce I've ever tasted. The waiter brought us a complimentary charbroiled oyster (their signature dish), the oyster was big and plump but the charbroil over powered the taste of the oyster so that all you could taste was the grill. For dinner Tony ordered a bowl of the chicken and andouille sausage gumbo, it had good flavor but ridiculously small pieces of chicken and sausage. I ordered the fried oyster platter, the oysters were good, I ate most of them but the fries were horrible and I ate maybe two, which says a lot given my well-documented obsession with French fries.

The worst of all the dishes we had that night was Michael's dinner - shrimp and pasta florentine. The menu described it as "fresh jumbo shrimp, sautéed with sun-dried tomatoes, fresh spinach, and onions in a cognac sauce." What Michael got was a giant dish of butter soup (that's what we came to call it). I couldn't taste the cognac, there was too little spinach and too few tomatoes and the shrimp were not jumbo shrimp. I wish I had taken a picture so you could see how truly unappetizing it looked. The only good part of the night, other than the company of course, was our waiter, Angelo, he was nice and took care of us despite trying a little too hard to up-sell us at every course. His personality made up for it. Nothing could make up for the food.

Café Fleur de lis (307 Chartres St.)

So I have mixed feelings about Café Fleur de lis, you see Café Fleur de lis is one of those places that suffers from a major flaw (in this case the service) but serves food so tasty you deal with it. My first time at this restaurant I had the best breakfast biscuit sandwich of my life. I now realize I had never really had a good biscuit. The deliciously light and buttery biscuit was sandwiched around two fried eggs, cheddar cheese, and properly cooked thick-sliced bacon. I was in heaven, it was easily the most delicious breakfast sandwich I have ever tasted. The hash browns were pretty good too. Sadly my second visit wasn't as pleasant. The food was fine, the problem was the service. We literally waited 35 minutes for them to bring Tony his grilled chicken salad, which was great but took way too long to come.

See the problem with Café Fleur De Lis is the combination of its size and popularity. The restaurant is incredibly small and the kitchen even smaller. All orders are taken, cooked, and plated in what couldn't be bigger than 10 square feet. With six people back there I never figured out how they made it work at all. So the lines are long, the service is lacking, but the food makes up for it. If I lived nearby I would come back and wait again.

Bourbon House Seafood (144 Bourbon St.)

Before going to New Orleans I did some research and quickly learned about the Brennan family and their 60+ year involvement in New Orleans' restaurant business. Bourbon House Seafood is run by Dickie Brennan (one of the brothers) and specializes in local and seasonal seafood. Chef Darin Nesbit offers a beautiful menu of gulf coast seafood with a few meat options for the real carnivores. Eating anything but seafood would really be a shame at a restaurant like this though - or that's what I thought until I tried the pan-roasted pork brisket. 

I got to try three dishes at Bourbon House: a Caesar salad with white anchovies, a trio of baked oysters (Rockefeller, Bienville, and Fonseca) and as I noted above, the pan-roasted pork brisket. The Caesar salad was perfectly dressed, the croutons fresh and the white anchovies delicious! I am craving that salad now. One of my goals while in New Orleans was to eat oysters raw, fried, and baked (I ended up doing all that plus having them charbroiled) and Bourbon House was my chance to have great baked oysters. Baked oysters are served on the half-shell and always topped with something delicious. Oysters Rockefeller are topped with a mix of clarified butter, breadcrumbs and fresh herbs, Oyster Bienville are topped with breadcrumbs, shrimp, cayenne pepper, shallots and butter, and Oysters Fonseca are topped with parmesean cheese, Tasso ham and Italian breadcrumbs. If my research is correct both oysters Rockefeller and oysters Bienville originated at Antoine's (a New Orleans restaurant) and much to my delight oysters Fonseca originated at Bourbon House Seafood. 

Finally I got to try the pan-roasted pork brisket (marinated in sherry and brown sugar) served with sweet potato hash, grilled pineapple and chipotle sauce. The meat was perfectly cooked and tender and the chipotle sauce had the perfect balance of sweet and spicy. So good! Thanks for sharing Mary!

Mother's Restaurant (401 Poydras St.)

Mother's is a New Orleans landmark, open since 1938 Mother's lays claim to "the world's best baked ham." The minute you enter the restaurant you are struck by the litany of politicians and celebrities whose portraits decorate the walls. Despite the long lines things seem to move fast, these people have a system that probably took years to develop but has clearly been mastered. So don't let the lines discourage you, they are deceptive.

The minute you taste the food you understand why this restaurant has been in business for 75 years and why everyone goes back. I used this opportunity to try a po' boy, I went with the shrimp (which were huge) and wasn't disappointed. The bread really makes this sandwich and distinguishes it from other subs. Known as Louisiana-style French bread it is slightly chewer than a traditional french baguette but just as delicious. The sandwich is traditionally topped with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and pickles. Mother's however is known for using green cabbage instead of lettuce on their po' boys. I wish I lived in New Orleans just so I could eat my way through Mother's menu.

Brennan's (471 Royal St.)

On the final night of the conference when our plan to eat at Cochon fell through I was thrilled when Michael suggested Brennan's as an alternative. Brennan's is the original restaurant in the Brennan family chain and is still its flagship location. The minute you walk into Brennan's you feel like you have stepped back in time. I remember saying to Michael that I felt like we were in my grandparent's living room. Brennan's isn't for the wallet conscious but if you are willing to spend the money it is more than worth it. The menu is classically New Orleans with a strong and satisfying French influence. The wine list is mind boggling but sadly the selection of wines offered by the glass is limited.

To start the table shared the frog legs meuniere (which are frog legs lightly breaded and sauteed in a lemon-butter-garlic sauce). So good! Tender, delicate and way better than chicken! For dinner I had the Tournedos Chanteclair - three prime filet medallions each served with a different sauce: Bearnaise, Choron, and Marchand de Vin. The Choron sauce was my least favorite - the other two were amazing. Until writing this I didn't know what Choron sauce was, I've learned that it is actually a variant of Bearnaise (which itself is a variant of Hollandaise, one of the five French "mother" sauces) without the tarragon but with a tomato puree added, named after its creator French chef Alexandre Étienne Choron. The food at Brennan's is spectacular but I can't decide whether I liked this meal more or the one at Dickie Brennan's Bourbon House Seafood.

New Orleans Airport: Terminal C

I can't believe I'm about to write this but I had one of my favorite meals of the trip at the New Orleans airport while waiting for our flight home to Minneapolis. In Terminal C there is a little food stand with a few tables that sells the most delicious red beans and rice with Andouille sausage. And the cornbread you get on the side is so moist and flavorful. The sausage was spicy and perfectly cooked, the beans delicious! It really was good - if you find yourself in Terminal C check it out.

So what can I say, the food in New Orleans is some of the best in the United States, despite the city being devastated by "the hurricane" and the fishing industry struggling to recover from "the spill" it rivals our country's best cities in food. Perhaps I'm biased, it is no secret that I love French food. Someone asked me if the French Quarter reminded me of Paris, it didn't, but there were moments when the food did, and for that I am thankful.

La Nouvelle-Orléans, je t'aime! Merci beaucoup pour beaucoup de bons repas! Bon appétit!