Great Weekend in NOLA (Long)

We arrived very late on a Thursday night. Most of the restaurants close at 10 pm, so we headed to the HQ bar on Chartres & Iberville, the Jimani. This is a Chicago neighborhood tavern in the Quarter. The owner is from Chicago, and it's like being home.

They have great bar food so we split a 1/2 pound cheeseburger and drank a lot of Abita Ambers. By 1 am, the kamikaze shots started flowing and we crawled back to the hotel around 3 am.

Lunch on Friday was at Cochon, Donald Link's Cajun pork palace. They raise, slaughter and cure their own pork products.

We sat at the bar in front of the open kitchen and I had to constantly remind myself that I was on VACATION, not an easy thing for a personal chef to do in one of the great food cities of the world.

The amuse was fried rabbit livers with a sweet pepper jelly. Incredibly delicious...tender yet crispy.

We ordered the boucherie plate, which had thinly sliced tasso (think Cajun proscuitto), pork liver sausage, bologna, pork pate and head cheese, along with house-made stone-ground mustard, pickled green creole tomatoes, and an assortment of pickled veggies. Aside from the head cheese, it was great. Hubby and I figured, with everything else on the plate so delicious, we'd try the head cheese. Definitely not to our taste. The flavor was fine, but the texture was too weird for us.

We also ordered pork cheeks, which were sauteed and served on a lima bean/cornbread cake with mustard cream. The cheeks were great, and the cake would have been perfect if they used some other type of bean. The lima beans just didn't work for us.

Chef Steve Strajewski (Link's partner) came to our table and we talked for about 20 minutes. Great guy, good service....all-around wonderful lunch.

Around 5 pm, we were getting hungry and our dinner reservations weren't until 8:30 pm, so we stopped at Acme for a dozen raw oysters and an order of boo fries. The oysters were delicious...immaculately fresh, needing just a squeeze of lemon and a dash of Tabasco.

Boo fries are their version of Montreal's poutine....french fries smothered in beef gravy and cheese. Oh my! You need an angioplasty when you're done eating them.

That night was Restaurant August. The restaurant is decorated in men's club dark wood with multiple rooms on two floors, each room seating about 30.

The amuse was a seafood sabayon topped with caviar served in an eggshell. It was very delicious, but I would have run the sabayon thru a chinois to avoid the inevitable lumps. Fresh-baked sourdough baguettes were served with sweet butter.

For the cold appetizer, we ordered foie gras three ways: 1. a breaded and fried foie "fritter" about the size of a golf ball. When you cut into it, you get a small chunk of foie with the melted foie fat and all that outer crispy goodness.
2. A terrine of foie pate layered with ground calve's tongue. Sounds gross, but was delicious.
3. Foie "sponge cake" was a terrine with thin layers of foie pate alternating with layers of savory sponge cake. Imagine a savory dobosh torte.

We ordered two hot appetizers:
1. Potato gnocchi with blue crabmeat in a parmesan/truffle sauce, topped with shaved Perigord truffles and parmesano reggiano. The gnocchi were light as air and the bits of lump crab were perfectly matched with the sauce.
2. Shrimp bisque. Jay's not much of a shrimp fan, so I was surprised when he ordered this. Creamy, fresh, truly a perfect bisque.

I ordered the Chicken and dumplings....dumplings made of fresh ricotta cheese that melt in your mouth. The chicken breast was perfectly prepared and tasted like chicken.

Jay ordered the sweet and spicy duckling, a half-duck served with a slice of seared foie gras. Just wonderful.

Dessert was banana rum cake with white chocolate shavings. I managed to sneak in a few forkfuls as my dear hubby inhaled it.

As we left, I wondered how Commander's was gonna top this!

The next day, we opted for Johnny's instead of NOLA, as I was craving a crawfish po'boy. Jay ordered their muffaletta hot...imagine a muffaletta panino. The crawfish po-boy was huge and delicious and both sandwiches would carry us through the parade and our 9 pm reservations at Commander's.

Over the years, I've been to Commander's Palace four times under three chefs (Emeril Lagasse, Jamie Shannon and Tory McPhail) Each time, I enjoyed the best meal of my life. This time was no different.

Commander's had been gutted and renovated after Katrina, and I was curious to see the changes. There really weren't many! The renovation was beautiful. It was the same old Commander's...Creole elegance, and the best restaurant service I have ever experienced.

I had not had any shrimp (except for a taste of Jay's bisque) on this trip, so I started with the shrimp and tasso henican. Three plump, luscious pan-seared Louisiana shrimp wrapped in crispy tasso, served with a sweet Crystal Hot Sauce buerre blanc.

Jay ordered his usual turtle soup with sherry and I managed to steal a couple spoonfuls before it disappeared..

At this point, we both really needed a cigarette, so our server pointed us to the back stairs, thru the kitchen, and out to the courtyard. I was mesmerized by the calmness of the kitchen and efficiency of the cooks. Again, I had to remind myself that I was on vacation! I spied the chef's table in the kitchen (minimum 4 guests) and informed Jay that we're gonna drag friends with us next year so we can sit at that table.

Back upstairs, our entrees arrived. Sticking with the shrimp, I had ordered Chef Tory's take on BBQ Shrimp...served with piquillo, poblano and sweet red bell peppers and garlic, on a bed of garlic grits. I don't like grits...never have. But, these grits were magnificent.

Jay ordered quail with crawfish in a bourbon-chicory coffee reduction. The plump crawfish tails were a perfect counterpoint to the rich quail and the sauce brought the whole dish together.

Finally, it was bread pudding souffle with whiskey sauce, Commander's signature dessert. No sharing this time....we each ordered one. The perfect end to the perfect meal.

Commander's outdid Restaurant August. How? Service. August's service was fine...efficient, elegant, well-timed. But at Commander's, you're treated as well-respected friends. There's a friendliness to the entire staff, both front- and back-of-house, that I've never experienced anywhere. The wait staff is non-intrusive yet anticipates your every need.

We cabbed back to the Jimani, grinning like fools, and started recruiting buddies for the kitchen table next year. Many kamikaze shots later and it was back to the hotel to sleep it all off.

On Sunday, we stopped at the Sheraton Starbucks for our lattes and headed around the corner to the Jimani for the finale....a crawfish boil. Jimmy hires a caterer who has a pick-up and trailer, complete with cooler and boil set-up. They cook on the street and bring in the goodies. The buffet had pounds and pounds of crawfish, artichokes, corn, potatoes and andouille sausage. Four buffet trips and 5 Abita Ambers later and it was time to head to the airport.

What a trip!

If you've never been to New Orleans, go! If you have, go back!

Wow...Cochon, August and CP. That is the trifecta. Mix in a few treats for lunch and some memories of days gone by and you have a New Orleans food itinerary that is unmatched. Galatoires for friday afternoon lunch would have made your trip a superfecta.

The greatest food and drink day of my life was Galatoires for friday lunch from 11:30-4, a bottle of krug on my friends Cabildo Apartment balcony overlooking Jackson Square at sunset, then over to Absinthe House for bloody marys before dinner at August, purple drinks at Lafite's Blacksmith Shop (the second best bar in New Orleans) and finally cheese fries at F&M Patio Bar at 2am. Amazingly my wife (fiance at the time) kept up the whole time.

choppcs wrote:We arrived very late on a Thursday night. Most of the restaurants close at 10 pm

This might apply to fine dining but in my experience there is no shortage of chow-worthy food in New Orleans at anytime of the day or night (see F & M mention above, Igors, St. Charles Tavern, Chez Panisse on Frenchman and Fat Harry's at 4am 365 days a year.)