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 Eighteen
Bourbon House
Contemporary Creole. Seafood. Oyster Bar.
French Quarter: 144 Bourbon. 504-522-0111. Map.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days
Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
Website
Despite the fact that seafood houses are among the most popular restaurants in New Orleans, there aren't many of them in the French Quarter. Dickie Brennan's Bourbon House answers that call, with fried platters, gumbo, and an oyster bar. It goes one step further by cooking some classic Brennan family dishes, including a number of items from days gone by at Commander's Palace. They've adopted bourbon (the spirit) as a specialty, and not only make great cocktails, but also mount major dinners around the great small-batch bourbons.
Everything's fresh, everything's distinctly Creole in flavor. Although fried seafood is here in all the usual forms, the kitchen is at least as adept at grilling, sauteeing, and broiling. Here are one of the best version of barbecue shrimp in town, and a great example of that recent hit dish, redfish on the half shell (grilled on the skin and scales with garlic butter). The oyster bar is very good, as are the three varieties of baked oysters.
Following the runaway success of Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse, they opened the Bourbon House as the same idea, but with seafood. An expansive room with large windows and interior balconies, the Bourbon House stands just close enough to the Bourbon Street strip to have a strong sense of place, but enough separated from its louder aspects to make dining here pleasant. The lighting fixtures look like gigantic peeled satsumas.
BEST SEAFOOD DISHES
Assortment of oysters and chilled seafood
Raw oysters, especially with granita and caviar
Baked oysters Rockefeller, Bienville, Fonseca, or all three
Crab spring roll with crab and shrimp dumpling
Crab fingers bordelaise
Fried calamari, chipotle aïoli
Shrimp cocktail, pickled vegetables
Crystal fried alligator, blue cheese dressing
Steamed mussels
Shrimp remoulade, fried green tomatoes, fresh mozzarella
Seafood gumbo
Corn and crab soup
Gulf fish Iberville (with shrimp and oysters)
Fried seafood platters
Redfish on the half-shell
Grilled yellowfin tuna
Creole bouillabaisse
New Orleans barbecue shrimp
For a more detailed review, click here.
