At this season, NOMenu takes an appreciative look at the matchless seafood of New Orleans. We take a different angle each year. This year's perspective is a countdown of the thirty-three (one for each weekday in Lent) best restaurants for lovers of oysters, pompano, crawfish, speckled trout, and all the other delicacies that make living here anything but a penance.
Number Thirteen
Tommy's Cuisine
Creole Italian.
Warehouse District: 746 Tchoupitoulas. 504-581-1103. Map.
Dinner seven nights
Casual
AE DC MC V
Website
Owner Tommy Andrade, after decades of running classy local dining rooms, is much more interested in making people happy than in showing off how his kitchen can invent new dishes. So the menu is unapologetically on the traditional side. You've seen this food before, but you're very glad to see it again. The combination of classic Creole and Creole-Italian dishes is immensely enjoyable. It's lusty eating, with fresh fish, jumbo lump crabmeat, beautiful shrimp, first-class steak and veal and duck all over the place. The dining is made more fun by the convivial local crowd and the unerring hospitality of the staff.
It feels like an old French Quarter cafe, with a lively buzz emanating from the largely local clientele. They keep the restaurant full most of the time. Tommy's bar, in an adjacent building, is one of the classiest watering holes around, with live music most nights.
BEST SEAFOOD DISHES
»Appetizer assortment.
»Oysters Rockefeller.
»Oysters Bienville.
»Oysters Tommy (baked on the shell with Romano, pancetta, and roasted peppers).
Panneed oysters.
Grilled shrimp.
»Crabmeat canapes.
»Crabmeat maison.
Soft-shell crab with tomatoes and crawfish.
Fish Capri (crabmeat, artichokes, beurre blanc).
»Crabmeat au gratin.
»Crabmeat Sardou.
A more detailed review can be found here.
