When plans to eat in Metairie for lunch blew up because I didn’t check hours of operation before going, I was struck with the terror that I might waste a meal on the south shore. (There is a short window to get home for (The Food Show, which airs 2-4pm each weekday on WGSO 990AM - I met someone just today that didn’t know we were still broadcasting.)
It was fortuitous that I remembered that Crazy Johnnie’s had opened, and I dared to check if they had expanded their hours to include lunch. They had! My companion and I headed over to meet. We were in separate cars and at 11am the lot was already full. (They open for some inexplicable reason at 10:30am.)
Inside, the place was spartan but nice. The bar was especially nice. The place is quite elevated from the old place in Fat City. The original Crazy Johnnie’s was a Fat City bar and a busy one at that, after Johnnie, (a crusty sort of great businesswoman) decided to own a bar. The idea was posited when Johnnie was at another bar drinking with friends and confided that she wanted to open a bar. All present told her, "Johnnie, you're crazy!" The name stuck when she defied their opinions and opened mere months later.
It started as a dark wood paneled bar on a busy corner in Fat City, with great drinks and a loyal clientele. Some food was required as part of the liquor license. There was gumbo, a stuffed artichoke, a filet mignon, and icebox peanut butter pie. There was even a "secret menu" of coffee with four different liquors in it. The place was a smash success, and two years into it one of the friends at the bar where Johnnie's was born came to her with another crazy idea: A steak and some potatoes for $5. A regular of those days seems to remember a cocktail requirement to get this deal. Johnnie's had great cocktails in an era before craft cocktails.
When Steak Night rolled out the friend (Flip Jaeger, who now owns the reboot) was out back cooking steaks on a grill. The first week they sold 27 of these steak deals. Imagine the crush of business such a thing could generate! As is the case, someone called the show to report on this deal, then people went and then they called the show, etc., etc. And soon it was a phenomenon. Flip went into a dumpster of a nearby steakhouse and got the phone number on a package of meat and started ordering steaks by the thousands. Soon they added to the menu a steak sandwich for $2, some BBQ shrimp and Dippin' Bread, all of which made it to the new menu in the rebooted Johnnie's.
When Johnnie mentioned that they were closing, the faithful came back in such numbers they couldn't close, but it only lasted a few months, and it ultimately did really close in 2013. Crazy Johnnie’s enjoyed a great run, packing them in every night until the end.. Johnnie died a few years later. By that time Steak Nights were a regular feature around town, but none of them could compare to the original in value and fun. Johnnie served first-class steaks for an unbelievable price to hordes of grateful customers.
I was curious to see how it would all translate to the new place twelve years later. We had the steak sandwich today. It came with the signature “crazy potatoes” which are rather unattractive smashed potatoes, and that is saying something. We also split the Shrimp SOCHI as an app because it only comes as an entree, and we got a burger.
The SOCHI was tasty, but it didn’t look like it was just made. The food itself was clearly fresh but it looked like it wasn’t made to order. I had the feeling that there were many dishes already prepared and sitting in the back waiting for delivery to tables. The rice was clumped and cold and the seasonings on top had “settled.”
Still, it was hard not to like this. It was probably a dozen peeled shrimp in a butter sauce with plenty of chopped garlic and a lot of herbs, predominantly dill. I was happy that the shrimp were not the “prized” large shrimp. These are not prized to me. I much prefer the size served here, which require one bite rather than three. And I am more comfortable that they are cooked.
I was also impressed by the steak sandwich, which is now $20. It’s a normal-sized sandwich on unbuttered French bread, generously loaded with irregularly shaped and sized pieces of meat. The piece I had was tender, but my companion said it wasn’t all that tender, and the chunks were too large.
The burger was good. A smallish patty whose size insufficiency was exacerbated by the way it was served, this was thick and hand- formed, tasty with fresh dressings, but also a completely bare bun. And more uninteresting smashed potatoes.
Our server looked familiar and I asked her why. She also works at Porter & Luke’s and another place. She was wearing jeans and a Crazy Johnnie’s T-shirt. Cute as can be.
I left feeling a little sad. Even the signature apple slice is only a half now. Crazy Johnnie’s was a phenomenon. An outlier. It offered cheap but high quality steaks for an unbelievable price. It was a quirky place with a cult following. But 35 years is a long time, and the dining landscape has changed so dramatically that much of what made Crazy Johnnie’s special no longer applies. The Steak Night Special is available all over now, and $25 is the least expensive price I’ve seen for this. Johnnie's steak is $34, which is no longer an amazing bargain. Down the street at Desi Vega’s a steak sandwich at lunch is $20, and it comes with housecut fries in a far more glamorous space, with waiters wearing stretched aprons. Such a vibe may make the Crazy Johnnie’s regular uncomfortable, but if we are comparing value there is no comparison.
The dining options have exploded, and the quirkiness factor can be found all over. Prices have made it hard to offer deals, and the new Johnnie’s is across the street from Ruth’s, and a few blocks from Vacca and Fleming’s. The best of them all, the aforementioned Desi’s, is about a mile down the highway. This bare-bones approach to steaks which caused such a stir in the early 1990’s would be fine, but not at the same prices available in places with all the amenities.
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Flip Jaeger, the friend from the beginning who cooked steaks on the grill all those years ago has spent a lot of money to bring Crazy Johnnie's back to life. There are lines of two hours each evening. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, but Flip Jaeger is about to test its limits.
