Everyone has habits. In the Fitzmorris household, these usually revolve around dining. In New Orleans, Monday means red beans and rice, and that is how we established a Monday lunch habit that may as well be chiseled in stone. Monday means that we will be sitting at one of two small tables in the patio dining room of New Orleans Food and Spirits in Covington.
We love this place. We love Byron the manager, all the servers, the guy who seats us, and everyone in the kitchen we pass and greet headed to our table. Mostly, though, we love the food here. It is not fancy food. It isn’t even top-of-the-line ingredients. It is food like you saw on the plate in front of you growing up.; The force behind all of these dishes is Mark Bergeron, a regular nice guy who happens to be brilliant as a businessman, and a great cook. He is definitely not a chef, nor are any of the people he employs. They are all cooks. Cooking great food.
Our ritual on Monday starts with chargrilled oysters, which I think are too cheesy. MA loves these because she entertains herself removing every crumb of parmesan roasted to the shell long after I am done with them. I eat the generous pile of bread that comes with these; she never touches it. Not good enough to eat on her rigid bread criteria list. (This is true for most french bread for her now.)
She will get a spinach salad with grilled shrimp, or boiled shrimp, and what comes is a pile of shrimp too numerous to eat. She will take them home for later consumption. The spinach salad has the usual feta and cranberries in generous supply. I always get the grilled catfish with pecans in brown butter with a side of red beans. The catfish is nicely seasoned and napped with lots of pecans in the requisite brown butter. I love the red beans here, which I also sometimes get as an entree. These come with smoked sausage rather than hot sausage. I can’t convince them to switch, and the smoked just falls short for me. It is also possible to get these beans with a pork chop or catfish. A very nice lunch.
Habitual though we are, we are occasionally struck by the urge to deviate. The muffaletta is good, Fried oyster po-boy, and all other fried seafood is battered well and crisply fried. Comes out hot and golden. And plentiful. Good gumbo. Meatballs and spaghetti delicious with a long-simmered red sauce. Our favorite special is offered on Wednesday but has sometimes expanded to the menu beyond Wednesdays. It is the Chicken Parm, a fried chicken breast over an angel hair pasta duo of cream sauce and marinara. This is fantastically tasty, and was first discovered by our son long ago. Our daughter’s favorite here is the fried chicken club salad, which comes with lots of chunks of chopped fried chicken breast, bacon and cheese with tomatoes. Always too many croutons on their salads, but that’s our only complaint. Byron makes a great jambalaya when he makes it, and you’ll only see it as a special. Hard to go wrong here, if you have an appreciation for simple food well done. Very generous lunch specials for $9.99.
Why do we eat here so often? Because we like it. Isn’t that why all habits become habits?
New Orleans Food and Spirits
208 Lee Lane Covington 70433
985-875-0432
2330 Lapalco Blvd Harvey 70058
504-362-0800
210 Old Hammond Hwy Bucktown
504-828-2220
Neworleansfoodandspirits.com
11-9 Mon-Th
Friday & Saturday till 10
Sunday 10:30-4
