Restaurant August, New Orleans

For our Thanksgiving dinner I picked one of the most highly reviewed restaurants in New Orleans that was open that evening. Restaurant August is a John Besh establishment located on Tchoupitoulas Street in the warehouse district.

The building is a historic, 19th century French-Creole landmark. The inside is laid out at three distinct rooms. The main dining room shown below, an upstairs wine room for private parties and an intimate little room off the kitchen called the Gravier room. This is where we sat with only five tables, exposed brick walls and darker decor, it was romantic and cozy. All of the tables in our room were booked this evening with folks celebrating the holiday.

In addition to their seasonal menu, August was also offering a price fixed Thanksgiving tasting menu. We opted to order ala carte off the regular menu. Having had a pretty good amount of food at Manning's during the afternoon we decided to go toned down this time and just order a single appetizer and our entrees.

 

Our dinner started off with an amuse bouche of egg custard with creme freche, truffle, caviar and brioche. We've had similar looking eggs at places like Jean-Georges that made me think I'd gone to heaven. This one was unique in that it was chilled. The flavor profile was nice - you just can't go wrong with truffle and caviar and the custard proved a nice, smooth balance.

The bread they served us was wonderful - really. I don't usually take pictures of bread because, let's face it, it's bread. But these warm little baquettes with whipped cream butter were so, so good.

Our appetizers were the trio of foie gras and the handmade potato gnocchi with blue crab and black truffle.

The foie gras was disappointing. We both expected that "three ways" would be a torchon, a pate and most likely a pan seared or other hot preparation. That wasn't the case. The first one on the left was a classic torchon and very tasty with it's apple marmalade and toasted hazelnuts. The middle was a pate wrapped in an odd choice of layer cake with gelee. It didn't work for me. And the final preparation was a mousse of sorts layered with a custard and crunchy, toasted hazelnuts. This was was an out and out miss. The nuts were way to hard and the custard didn't add anything. The foie gras itself was so far on the bottom that it was difficult to manage to get any bite that incorporated all the flavors.

In contrast, the gnocchi was heavenly. Plenty of crab and lots of cheese and truffle over perfectly made gnocchi and a wonderful cream. Alan didn't love it - he's not a fan of gnocchi usually and calls out obvious flaw - - it's super rich. It's hard to eat a plate even of this modest size. I didn't see that as a problem and powered through. Yummy!!

I should note that with dinner Alan ordered us a bottle of J. Dumangin non-vintage Brut champagne that I really, really liked. It's not one we have often but it's really nice with a classic acid profile that goes nicely with things like bread, truffles, caviar and foie gras.

For our entrees we had the grilled Chappapeela Farms duck breast with gratin of covey rice yams and mustard greens along with a Two Run Farms bone in rib-eye with progress whipped mozzarella potatoes, gremolatta and marrow crust. The potatoes were really interesting if a little hard to deal with since they had that stringy quality of melted mozzarella. My rib-eye was grilled to a nice medium-rare with good flavor. Not exceptional, but what restaurant steak ever is? Alan's duck was just okay though he did like the accompanying side dishes.

Upon reflection, we both thought this was going to be The meal for us on this trip and it didn't turn out that way. Service was okay, not great. We waited far too long with empty champagne glasses - something that doesn't often occur. The food was good (gnocchi, outstanding) but not great across the board. I'm wondering if it had anything to do with being a major holiday? Anyway, we wouldn't put this one high on the list of places to go back to.

Jenn's Rating: 85
Zagat's Rating: 28-28-27

GW Fins, New Orleans

Our first dinner in New Orleans was at a little place on Beinville Street right in the middle of the French Quarter called GW Fins. With a new menu every night to take advantage of the freshest available catch, this is a fish lovers dream come true.

We started off there early to have a drink at the bar. Alan had a Tanqueray martini and I a glass of Belle Glos pinot. My wine as a little too warm but nice flavor. The bartender was a fun, upbeat lady with enthusiastic recommendations about the menu. I knew it was going to be a special evening when she said that whatever I ordered I could ask them to put a sauteed soft shell crab on top!

As you can see from this picture, not a large place. There are less than twenty tables in the dining room (you can also eat at the bar which has about eight seats) in a semi-circular layout. Calm colors, upbeat staff and a comfortable feel, this seems to be both a tourist and a locals hangout.

To start off, I ordered the soft shelled crab done with a simple butter and lemon. The batter was light but with distinctive tastes. The crab was phenomenal - tender and perfect...not too crunchy. I loved, loved, LOVED this dish.

Alan ordered the blue crab pot stickers with country ham and creamy pea shoot butter. YUMMY!! Nicely prepared, lots of crab...awesome sauce of butter and pea. Really, really good!!

Next round, I went with the house specialty, the smoked sizzling oysters served simply with butter and lemon. These enormous shells are heated up to over 500 degrees and the raw oyster put back on the shell right as they are served. This means there is an interesting conflict of raw and partially cooked. Super fresh, excellent texture and clean. Other than leaning too far over the plate and getting a nose full of sizzling smoke (oops) this was a great course.

Alan tried the Louisiana yellow fin tuna tartare appetizer with watermelon relish, avocado, mango, pine nuts and Wasabi cream. Very fresh with a nice combination of melon to offset the fish but also not a knockout dish. A little expected; bland.

For our entrees we both ordered fish. I went with one I'd never heard of before - Drum fish. It was lightly battered and served over creamy, whipped potatoes in a simple butter, lemon style sauce. Drum is a delicate, white fish much like flounder and local to the shallow Gulf waters. It was a nice dish - not earth shattering but good.

Alan tried the sauteed red snapper with shrimp etouffee, Louisiana jasmine rice, lobster butter. This was superb. Great flavor and the combination of etouffee gave it that Creole spin that is different from anything we get at home. I really like his dish a lot.

This was a wonderful dinner - great dishes, fun bar and the service was great (something we'd remember not to take for granted over the next few days). Alan had a cocktail with dinner called a Cancun cooler that he enjoyed quite a bit while I paired up with a Plowbuster Pinot. If we were going back this one would be on my must list. Truly enjoyable evening all the way around and not to be missed.

Zagat rating: 28-26-27
Jenn's rating: 90

Emeril's Restaurant, New Orleans

Alan and I just got back from a four day, Thanksgiving holiday trip to New Orleans. The focus was food & exploration of a new city. The weather was gorgeous and we were able to fit in a lot of dining experiences all around The Big Easy.

The first one, lunch at Emeril's original namesake on Tchoupitoulas Street, was right in the middle of the Warehouse district; just a few blocks up from our hotel. The space used to be a pharmacy and has an odd, interesting decor of exposed metal beams, brick walls, bowed wood ceiling and lots of glass & mosaic work around the open air kitchen.

This was the meal I was the most wary of. We've only eaten at one other Emeril restaurant (Emeril's Fish Restaurant in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas) and it was SO bad that we'd almost written off his places all together. But a strong recommendation by Paul and a desire to see how different (and hopefully better) the original might be, we took a chance.

The menu is a nice size - not so small you feel cornered and not so large that it's like being in a Cheesecake Factory. We were mostly interested in appetizers and small plates and wanted to try a few different things. Along with my sangria and Alan's Creole Collins, we ordered the crawfish pasta and gumbo of the day. The fresh angel hair pasta with Louisana crawfish tails in a Creole cream sauce was fantastic! Rich, full of flavor, unique with the distinctive taste of crawfish generously strewn about - this turned out to be one of the best dishes we'd have on this trip.

Alan's gumbo of the day was chicken and andouille sausage; thick with plenty of rice and smokey flavors. Alan thought this one was the best of the gumbos he tried while we were in New Orleans.

The next course was a salad for each of us. I tried the truffled Gulf shrimp "Louis" with  iceberg lettuce, asparagus, smoked bacon, chopped egg and Louisiana citrus. This was a pretty nice dish...I really liked the creamy, citrus dressing and the mixture of the bacon for salt and vegetables. Where I did myself an injustice was thinking I was going to magically start loving shrimp just because it was in lovely salad. I had a few bites of the shrimp and it was fine, but I'm the first to admit that it's my least favorite food that comes out of the ocean. If you are a shrimp lover, you'd probably really dig this dish.

On the other hand, score a big win for Alan's yellow fin tuna and bacon in butter lettuce wraps with plenty of jalapenos, grapefruit, citrus hoisin and crunchy Asian noodles. This dish offered a fresh bite with a clean flavor and lots of kick thanks to the peppers.

To end the meal we split a sandwich...the BLFGT. Benton's bacon, butter lettuce, fried green tomatoes on brioche with boiled shrimp and a mustard aioli served with sweet potato chips.

This dish didn't do it for me. There was an interesting blend of flavors and textures - the fried green tomatoes are a little crunchy with a significant bitterness; the mustard aioli was up in your face; the bacon was barely there and the lettuce was (not being iceburg) on the wilted/soft side. I'm not saying it was bad...it was just a combination of flavors and textures that I didn't appreciate. It didn't fit my palate well. I'm also not a fan of sweet potato anything and there was a awful lot of the boiled shrimp which as we've already covered, not my favorite thing. So this was just ok.

Our conclusion - Emeril's New Orleans, pretty good! Loved the pasta and the yellow fin tuna wraps and the gumbo was good. The other dishes we'd pass on next time in favor of trying something else.

Zagat's Rating: 26-25-25
Jenn's Rating: 84