Wednesday, March 30, 2016.
Big Dinner In A Little Place.
We're supposed to get four inches of rain in the next three days. I have my umbrellas ready at all stations where I might be caught. No rain falls.
I do carry the bumbershoot with me as I walk the two blocks from the parking garage at the corner of Iberville and Dauphine. (This is the best parking garage in the Quarter, and they always have someone there who knows how to drive a car with a standard shift.) I was thinking of going to Broussard's, but I have another thought: it's been a long time since I last dined at Bayona.
And then I walk right in front of the Louisiana Bistro, a little café just before Conti Street. I look over their menu, then I continue walking. But I stop and think. I haven't been there in years. And a couple of weeks ago, I ran a top-dozen list with the theme, "Small Restaurants With Excellent Food." Louisiana Bistro was on that list.
So I enter and take a chair on the left wall. Yes, it's as small as I remember. Were it not for the big mirrors on the walls, the place would be claustrophobic. But it felt busy, with a table of six nearby, most of them attractive young women who seem to be in town for some kind of meeting. I'll bet a lot of concierges send customers to the Louisiana Bistro. The smallness is cute, the food local, the prices moderate. I'll bet it's better known among frequent New Orleans visitors than it is to local diners.
[caption id="attachment_51141" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Quail stuffed with boudin, on greens @ Louisiana Bistro.[/caption]
The waiters are scurrying about for no apparent reason. But they get the job done. I ask my server about whether I should get the flounder special--which sounds great--or the pork chop. "Definitely the pork chop," he says. The two are the same price, so I know he means it.
I begin with a salad of hard-to-eat leaves, too big to pick up resting on the fork's tines, and too small to be effectively speared. But, with its glazed pecans, good enough. Then comes a quail stuffed with boudin, resting on a pillow of cooked greens. This is very tasty and convincingly spicy. They are not toning things down for the tourists.
[caption id="attachment_51140" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Pork chop with asparagus and sweet potatoes.[/caption]
The pork chop I had in mind was the thick beauty they serve at Rue 127. This was a bit smaller than that, but big enough to satisfy. It's generously peppered and set down in a puddle of buttery sauce that probably had come with the three asparagus.
The waiter touted me on the creme brulee earlier. He was little embarrassed to have to tell me, when dessert time rolled around, that they had just sold the last of the brulees. But he says that he actually prefers the Creole cream cheese ice cream, served with a chocolate-tinged caramel. That worked for me.
[caption id="attachment_51139" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Creole cream cheese ice cream.[/caption]
My reading material is a magazine from the Historic New Orleans Collection. On the cover is a hundred-year-old photo of fifteen very young babies, all dressed in lacy white, with a nun standing behind them. Many of them look like the photos of grandson Jackson that Mary Ann and Jude send me daily. But these babies surrounding the nun are all in an orphanage. That gave me something to think about.
Louisiana Bistro. French Quarter: 337 Dauphine. 504-525-3335.
Quail stuffed with boudin, on greens @ Louisiana Bistro.[/caption]
The waiters are scurrying about for no apparent reason. But they get the job done. I ask my server about whether I should get the flounder special--which sounds great--or the pork chop. "Definitely the pork chop," he says. The two are the same price, so I know he means it.
I begin with a salad of hard-to-eat leaves, too big to pick up resting on the fork's tines, and too small to be effectively speared. But, with its glazed pecans, good enough. Then comes a quail stuffed with boudin, resting on a pillow of cooked greens. This is very tasty and convincingly spicy. They are not toning things down for the tourists.
[caption id="attachment_51140" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Pork chop with asparagus and sweet potatoes.[/caption]
The pork chop I had in mind was the thick beauty they serve at Rue 127. This was a bit smaller than that, but big enough to satisfy. It's generously peppered and set down in a puddle of buttery sauce that probably had come with the three asparagus.
The waiter touted me on the creme brulee earlier. He was little embarrassed to have to tell me, when dessert time rolled around, that they had just sold the last of the brulees. But he says that he actually prefers the Creole cream cheese ice cream, served with a chocolate-tinged caramel. That worked for me.
[caption id="attachment_51139" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Creole cream cheese ice cream.[/caption]
My reading material is a magazine from the Historic New Orleans Collection. On the cover is a hundred-year-old photo of fifteen very young babies, all dressed in lacy white, with a nun standing behind them. Many of them look like the photos of grandson Jackson that Mary Ann and Jude send me daily. But these babies surrounding the nun are all in an orphanage. That gave me something to think about.
