Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 November 2012 12:33

Restaurants - Seafood Restaurants

New Orleans Food & Spirits

Bucktown: 210 Hammond Hwy. 504-828-2220. Map.
Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website

WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The generic name disguises the fact this is is primarily a seafood restaurant, with the traditional overloaded platters of fried oysters, shrimp, catfish, soft-shell crabs, and stuffed crabs. One of the three locations (it's a local chain) is in Bucktown, where the demand for seafood is high. Also here: one of the best rabbit dishes in the city, a special on Thursdays that always sells out.

WHY IT'S GOOD
The corny menu makes one suspicious of the intent of the kitchen, but it's a false alarm. They really know how to cook here. They follow the two most important rules of frying seafood: using fresh product and doing it all to order. The grilled and stuffed fish is also good. Some of the specialties are overwhelming with thick, blanketing sauces, but even those are edible. Good daily specials.

BACKSTORY
The restaurant is the successor to a little neighborhood place in Houma. The Bergeron family, which has enough members to run three restaurants, opened its first New Orleans Food and Spirits on the West Bank in the early 1990s. Practically since the first day it's been a packed house. The Bucktown location came next, occupying the building where R&O used to be. The Covington restaurant is the former Mescaleros.

DINING ROOM
The Harvey restaurant is a pleasant but busy dining room in a suburban style. The Bucktown location of this three-unit seafood specialist is a big, somewhat crowded room whose windows gaze onto the levee. The lake is on the other side of that for postprandial walks. The Covington place is a long building that extended from the Lee Lane shopping district and out into the bed of the Bogue Falaya River. It has a small outdoor deck, too.

ESSENTIAL MENU
Hush puppies
»Shrimp remoulade salad
Crawfish and corn soup
Seafood gumbo
»Pecan catfish
»Seafood platters
»Blackened chicken with pasta
Daily specials, especially
»Stewed rabbit special, Thursdays
»Bread pudding

FOR BEST RESULTS
To get the stewed rabbit, show up early for lunch on Thursday. They always run out.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The coatings on the seafood taste and look exactly the same, giving a lack of contrast to the platter. Except for the soup, there's nothing with crawfish that I've liked.

FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics. Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.

• Dining Environment
• Consistency +1
• Service +1
• Value +1
• Attitude +1
• Wine and Bar -1
• Hipness -1
• Local Color +1

SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES

• Open all afternoon
• Unusually large servings
• Quick, good meal
• Good for children
• Easy, nearby parking

ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
This restaurant has become famous for one dish--and it's not even something they have very often. The Cajun stewed rabbit with white beans sells out so fast at lunch that they can't offer it at dinner. It's so hard to get that many regular customers aren't aware of the dish's existence. Few other restaurants sell rabbit at all, let alone made a name specialty of it.

Otherwise, New Orleans Food And Spirits is known for the massive platters of everything else it serves. Usually, piles like these are a bad sign, tipping us off to pre-cooking and other shortcuts that remove the life from fried seafood. But not here. It all comes out hot and crisp. Don't get too excited about complex, saucy dishes: they sound better than they really are.