Friday, August 11, 2017. We finally penetrate Paladar 511. I arrive well ahead of the Marys, and begin executing orders. one of the girls likes the idea of starting with pizza. Although that's not obvious to me, Paladar is supposed to be a pizzeria in a California style. That doesn't register in my brain as having any meaning, although a moment's further thought would reveal a West Coast style I noticed a couple of weeks ago, when my gang spent a few days in San Francisco. For reasons I can't dope out, it is very hip right now for S.F. restaurants to print their menus landscape size (wider than tall. The paper used for the menu is in an odd color, and the type font is even more colorful. Finally, the lighting is low. Add all those parameters and the menu becomes very hard to read.
All of these same things, however, translates into general coolness and cutting-edge food for both of the Marys. They are also in step with the comments I've received about Paladar. Even the name of the restaurant expresses that; it seems to translate from the Spanish into "palatal," or having to do with the palate. How much cooler can a restaurant get than to name itself for itself?
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Seared snapper @ Paladar[/caption]
The pizza comes shortly before the Marys do, but I hold back from eating it for reasons of politeness. I do, however, get a cocktail named for a saint I never heard of, flavored with herbs in a way that reminds me of a Negroni, but hot pepper. It's a smallish pour, but that's all I really wanted.
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The dining room at Paladar, as seen from the second floor.[/caption]
The food order is as original as all the above. Mary Leigh has a pasta dish with corn mingled with the tortellini. Mary Ann has wider noodles (papparadelle) scattered with shrimp and chorizo. All that was better than I expected, for reasons I will get back to. I finish the entree part of our dinner with a pan-sneared Gulf snapper, which is not just perfectly cook (brown and lightly crunchy around the edges, meaty and moist in the center, with garlic, butter and breadcrumbs, to give that Italian quality to the plate, even though the restaurant still seems gourmet American, sort of.
The premises occupied by Paladar is a converted warehouse, in a neighborhood well stocked with warehouses some of them over a block long. Although a photograph of the dining room gives the place a cool feeling, if one studies it more carefully it seems to be. . .a warehouse, I guess. Most of the kitchen is open to view. The cocktail and wine sections also show this quality, along with the guy working in there while dressed in a T-shirt.
At this point I must admit to having come from the era of American dining that suggests at least dressing up at least a little for dinner. And certainly a dress code for the staff. What my eyes behold here are waiters and bartenders and most all other employees showing much decent skin and tattoos. Well, it is a hot day.
The Marys don't have a problem with this, nor did anybody else I observed. The Millennials strike again! And yet again: the Red Dress parade--a second-level festival that's a spoof of a spoof (Dirty Linen Night) of the White Linen Night of last weekend. All this fits perfectly into the unique ethos of Paladar.
Paladar 511. Marigny: 511 Marigny St. 504-509-6782.
Written by Tom Fitzmorris August 21, 2017 12:01 in
