Esplanade Ridge

Grab some chips and dig into the superb and offbeat salsa (it has a slightly smoky flavor). It's good enough that you will go for a second ration, for which you will have to pay extra--but probably without complaint. Margaritas and guacamole are excellent in their turns. After that, pretend you're in a gourmet bistro. Time for mussels, calamari, steaks, racks of lamb, big flanks of fish, and no small number of other specialties that might not remind you of anything Mexican. But so what? We let Italian and French restaurants get away with that. So why not Creole-Mexican?

Harvey

The generic, forgettable name and the corny menu language ("gumbeaux") disguise some very good neighborhood seafood restaurant. Overloaded platters of fried oysters, shrimp, catfish, and soft-shell crabs are all prepared to order, crisp and hot. And they grill as well as they fry. The three locations have aspects of a neighborhood cafe, with poor boys, beans, gumbo, and specials.

Metairie 2: Orleans Line To Houma Blvd

Some restaurants are time machines. They show us what it was like to eat dine out in the days before everything was artisan this or that. When if you didn't live in the neighborhood, you wouldn't even know about the existence of that restaurant's neighborhood cafe, and they wouldn't know you. Where nearly all the customers are regulars. And--best of all--how the kitchen cooks the way it did before restaurants could buy everything pre-cut, pre-seasoned, and maybe even pre-cooked. Not to mention probably frozen. Fury's is a restaurant like that. Its customers remember all those time-machine qualities, because they themselves were around back in those days.