Happy Hour

There is a caller to The Food Show who should have been an evangelist. At least he has that effect on me. Even knowing full well that we do not have the same taste in restaurants, I often want to close the mic after the show and beeline to the restaurant he talked about. I sometimes do that, (though never right after the show) knowing full well I will be annoyed at myself for falling to the temptation.

Recently, I did just that, and I was indeed annoyed with myself, though I didn’t jump up and run out. One afternoon when it was beautifully sunny but too cold to eat outside, I went to Landry’s Seafood House at the New Orleans lakefront for their Happy Hour.

Landry’s has long been on my list of one of the worst restaurants in town, though that is a bit harsh. I have relaxed that sweeping condemnation. The restaurant is part of the wildly successful empire owned by Texas billionaire restaurateur Tillman Fertitta. This outpost, Landry’s Seafood house, is built on sacred ground to some locals, once the home of iconic Bart’s Lighthouse. Bart’s came back after a devastating fire in 1976, but it closed for good in 1994, when the building was razed to make room for Joe’s Crab Shack, another concept in the Tillman Fertitta group. We paid little attention to this, but somewhere in the last twenty years Joe’s became Landry’s, the original concept in the Fertitta group.

I think I went once and was severely underwhelmed by the place. But the radio caller is so very enthusiastic I fell for his gushing. He was delighted with the Happy Hour at Landry’s, talking about mini crabcakes and crawfish bread and popcorn shrimp, all things I love. When I had the opportunity to go see if it was all that he promised (knowing deep inside it wasn’t) I went. The Happy Hour is only available in the bar, meaning the actual bar and surrounding three booths and a few high top window tables. I was worried that it would be crammed with people, but it was scarcely inhabited.

The prices were ridiculously low for what came to the table. Some things were cheap and some not. These made up for the cheap ones. As usual, I went overboard, spending over $60 with no drinks on plates priced on average $9. I ordered crawfish bread, popcorn shrimp and fried onion strings, the mini crabcakes that got me there, crab, spinach and artichoke dip with chips, stuffed mushrooms, and bacon burger sliders with fries.

One of the main reasons I went was for the crab cakes which the caller was most enthusiastic about. At $11 for three little discs barely larger than a quarter and 3/8” thick, this was a deal but only because there was a decent amount of crabmeat in these little pan-seared morsels.

I was really unimpressed with the stuffed mushrooms, which were mostly swimming in a cheese sauce that was much too intense, and totally uninteresting.

The sliders were large at first glance, but the little patties were a mere wisp of meat like the Krystal burgers. There was also bacon and cheese on these, but it was mostly lettuce tomato and pickle on a big bun. Nice fries, though.

What I really liked was the crawfish bread. There were 4 triangles that were cheesy, rich, and very creamy, with a lot of little crawfish tails on them. Tasty.

And the spinach dip with crabmeat was also very good. I liked this very creamy contrast with crispy chips. This would surely be on a return list.

The best value of all of this was a huge pile of popcorn shrimp and onion strings that were literally popping out of a large bowl. At $8 this seemed a steal. This was a crispy, greaseless and golden brown mass of fried things. Very good.

In all, this was pretty good, and pretty ordinary. Landry’s is not the disaster I thought it was, but neither is it any place I need to go again. And certainly not enticing to drop everything and rush to have what we talked about on the radio. I do want to say”Amen!” though.