Shortly after Ida, we decided to meet friends at the new Blue Crab in Slidell. Going to Blue Crab’s Slidell outpost is not an easy thing. It is tucked very deep into a cove off the lake, beside a channel offering boat access to a neighborhood. It is not near Middendorf’s, as we and our dinner companions painfully discovered. It is even confusing to one’s GPS.
This Blue Crab is much smaller than I expected, on the ground rather than high up like in New Orleans. There is a similar outdoor space for music, and I’m still not sure where the outdoor dining is.
Blue Crab is a favorite of mine, but a lot of what I love about it was not there on this first visit, mostly due to staffing issues. Their fantastic fresh cut fries were missing, and the menu was much-abbreviated. We were told of the 25 positions in the kitchen, 5 were filled.
Another favorite here is their excellent version of the ubiquitous chargrilled oysters. We got the last dozen that day.
They did have another of our favorites, the Blue Crab dip with crostini, and they had whole flounder, either fried or broiled.
Flounder is a wonderful gulf fish, which is not around on menus that much. It used to be a staple at the old West End, usually fried, or stuffed and fried, and in the latter days of that special corner of New Orleans, broiled or grilled. But it was the memory of the fried flounder from back then that attracted me to that special on this visit.
When it arrived in all its fried glory I just stared a minute. What would I do with this? We are so used to eating fish that has been prepared so well we can eat it effortlessly, that eating a whole fish is stressful, at least for me. Since I am now responsible for Tom, it is even more stressful.
It was stuffed with the dressing that is likely in my favorite Blue Crab menu item, stuffed crab in the crab shell. Since they did not have that on this limited menu, I was glad to see it as part of the flounder dish. As I stared at this large fried fish on the plate before me, I remembered that I had once seen a waiter remove the spine of a fish and all its bones in a single skillful process. I would do the same. It’s not hard, but doing it right is important, or you will have a lot of little outlier bones still menacing.
And that’s what I had. The process is so terrifying that I will likely not get a whole fish again, no matter how good the fodder for radio and print. My friend got the broiled version of this, and it was much easier for her to see the little bones than it was for me, since the breading obscured it on my plate. I really didn’t enjoy it at all, and I can’t even remember how it tasted, so occupied was I with the process. Since I like pretty much everything from the kitchen at Blue Crab, I can just assume it was good. My friend liked the way mine looked and wanted a fried head, which I gladly gave her, and I think she ate more of it than I.
It’s a good thing that Tom had a lot of chargrilled oysters or he might have gone hungry. We also got the Blue Crab dip, which is as good as it has always been there. Creamy and tangy from cheese, it is loaded with blue crab, and every bit as tasty as the combination of those divine raw materials suggest. I like the dippers here too, and I could always make a meal of this. But not sharing seems greedy, and it’s too pricey an item to get more than one.
After the things I just mentioned it seemed that there wasn’t much else in the house. I left knowing I would have to return in order to write a fair appraisal of the new place.
And we did, not long ago, when we met a NOLA friend for a Sunday afternoon lunch. It was a perfect day but they were not serving on the patio outside, and I was surprised it was so easy to sit inside.
It was a chargrilled oysters bonanza, since our friend got two dozen as a lunch, and Tom got a dozen too. I ordered onion rings for my onion rings search. These were wider than the ones in New Orleans, a tad greasier, and it seemed a smaller portion than at the NOLA original. They were definitely still worth eating, and we did exactly that, pretty quickly.
I saw a long list of sides on the menu, and extras, including cheese biscuits, which I remember getting before and liking a lot. Who wouldn’t? These came as a threesome. Two were large and another tiny, like the bigger two had a baby. Odd. I was surprised they were $5.95, because for some reason I thought they were .95, and I’m embarrassed to say I ever thought that. There is no defense for such stupidity, but I think the paper menu was crumpled in a way that obscured the first 5.
And Tom got a combo seafood platter of catfish and shrimp, and I ate the shrimp. This platter was somewhat smallish, and served with another pile of the mediocre frozen fries.
The seafood was nicely fried, as is the standard at Blue Crab. All of this was $139, and I left even more puzzled than the first visit here.
I was determined to return to the flagship location to see if anything had changed dramatically since early 2020 when “two-weeks-to-flatten-the-curve” arrived.
It was just last week when I met a friend on a sunny but chilly day out on the deck at the original Blue Crab. We had the worst service I’ve ever encountered there, the complete opposite of the warm, welcoming and attentive service we had in Slidell. I ordered the onion rings again to see if they had grown thicker like the ones at the Slidell location. They had a little, but were still crispy and good, with a crust that flakes off as you eat it.
My lunch companion got a salad that looked exactly as I remembered them. And when the Blue Crab platter arrived at the table it was really good-looking. At $38.95 I was expecting a lot, and I was not disappointed. It was a heaping platter of perfectly fried seafood, with shrimp, oysters, and catfish accompanied by fried crab claws and a stuffed crab, along with hushpuppies and fries.
Blue Crab is the closest thing we now have to our much-beloved West End, which was an integral part of New Orleans from the early 20th century until its obliteration with Hurricane Katrina. Despite promising rumors of its return, it is likely that we will have to settle for only this one restaurant to remind us of those glory days of seafood consumption.
The food at the Blue Crab has always been better than any of the restaurants at the West End, with the possible exception of Bruning’s. But it seems more modern, using fresh cut fries and premium ingredients in everything.
To my taste, the chargrilled oysters are the best around. I prefer drier and more cooked oysters than the Drago’s original, and these are definitely that. With just the right amount of Parmesan, and a light toast on the bread, it’s a great version of a great dish.
All the seafood comes out crispy, greaseless, golden brown and usually hot. The stuffed crab here is the one I remember when these were good. Deanie’s set a downward standard of absurd size of mostly breading, and then others have deep-fried that giant ball. The stuffed crab plate here is reminiscent of the old days, but the deep-fried version comes on this platter. I asked for mine to come out the old way, and they did. It too was as I remembered it. I also like the fried crab claws, but this is something I would never order fried. There was so much on this platter I brought half of it home to Tom.
There is a good burger here, and the pastas are deliciously creamy and spiced, with an ample amount of seafood throughout. I was surprised to see pizza on the menu on this last visit to the New Orleans lakefront.
Huh?
So the Blue Crab in Slidell is a textbook example of what Tom has said his whole career: A new restaurant is a new restaurant, regardless of whether it is one in a line of establishments with the same owners and managers. It simply takes time for them to get their groove down. That goes double now in COVID world.
