In the last installment of The New Orleans Menu Newsletter we highlighted Friday Fish Fry season, which made me want to go get some of these plates of seafood. And our plan the first Friday of Lent was to have the Trout Amandine at Galatoire’s.
But Tom was not up for it and that meant lunch on the Northshore. It was a perfect spring day but I just couldn’t bring him to our usual outdoor place, La Caretta. We drove around a little until I spotted Don’s Seafood, a place Tom has always dissed. My feeling has always been, if you have been around over 85 years, you have to be doing at least something right.
Don’s sits right inside our circumference of dining spots, but we never go because it is not our habit to go. A few years ago we met the owners there to sample their Brunch menu, and loved it. With seafood on the brain this first Friday in Lent, and tables outside at Don’s, here was an obvious choice.
There is actually a lot of outdoor seating at Don’s, and we chose a table right out front, which meant anyone entering the establishment from the parking lot could pull up a chair at our table.
We had a lovely server, ordered our teas, and started in on the menu. My eyes fell immediately on the seafood platter. It had a lot on it, but I was taken aback by the $31 price. This just seems high to me for a seafood platter, but I think I am living in yesteryear.
When it arrived at the table, I was shocked at how small it seemed…for the price. There were three enormous fried oysters, about five or six butterflied shrimp, six thin pieces of catfish, four small hush puppies, a stuffed shrimp, and a stuffed crab, plus a huge pile of frozen fries. It also came with coleslaw and shrimp etouffee.
As I read the list of items on this platter I realize that is a lot of food. And it was. We were both popping when we left, and we split that platter.
The oysters were really plump - so large they were eaten in three bites. Fried in corn flour, they were not all that crispy but they were greaseless.
I am not crazy about the breading at Don’s, but it seems to only come on the fried shrimp. It is interesting that they use a different breading on each seafood. The fish was straight cornmeal.
Despite the breading I did really enjoy the shrimp. The fish was good for fish fried in cornmeal. There wasn’t any particular dominant flavor but fish.
There were two things about this platter that impressed me most, and they were unlikely. I thought the stuffed crab was maybe the best out there. I was shocked by the amount of crab in it. There was no excessive breading to make for so much stuffing it looks really generous when it isn’t. This was stuffed crab, and a lot of it. And the price of crabmeat now makes the $31 price for this platter look like a bargain.
The stuffed shrimp was also overstuffed, but not with bread, with shrimp. So nice when this happens! So I think it’s fair to say Don’s does a good job with stuffed things.
And I loved the ordinary frozen fries. I’m glad there were a lot, because they were good enough to want more. I don’t know what they do to a basic frozen fry, but these are great. Relatively speaking, of course.
The hush puppies were extraordinarily good, and I don’t care for hush puppies. They had a nice corn flavor with a hint of sweetness.
Any etouffee is completely lost on me, so I shrugged at the little dish of shrimp etouffee. But it was quite good. Loaded with shrimp and ladled over white rice, this was tasty, with its thick sauce and a hint of freshness from chopped green onions.
The coleslaw immediately turned me off on sight because it looked like my school cafeteria’s coleslaw. But it was not at all like my school cafeteria’s coleslaw. I liked this enough to not want to share it with Tom. It was not sweet, and it was not too mayonnaisy. It was perfect.
We got to sample it again a few days later when we returned for Brunch. I don’t remember what we had that one time years back when we met the owners for Brunch, but I was intrigued by the Brunch placard I noticed at lunch the other day. I saw crabcake and had to have one.
It was another gorgeous day when we went in for Brunch, back at the same table. On this visit I noticed a deterrent to this table. The clientele at Don’s contains a lot of smokers, and we were definitely in their smoking area.
Fortunately, they leave rather quickly, and unfortunately, are replaced immediately by another bunch of smokers. We won’t sit there again. There are a lot of other tables tucked out of the main entrance from the parking lot.
None of this unpleasantness had any effect on the food. We started with chargrilled oysters, which were done exactly as I like them - cooked enough but still some juice for dipping. The covering had a hint of sweetness to it, which did not register as a bad thing. These were nice.
The bread that arrives when you sit down at Don’s is ample, six slices of French bread drizzled in what appears to be bright yellow margarine. It’s good for dipping in those oysters shells, and for making pain perdu at home a few days later.
The crab cake that attracted my attention on the Brunch board the other day could be better described as a crabcake patty. There are two, and at $19 I am suspicious of the provenance of the crab, but upon inspection it certainly looked like Louisiana blue crab bits. Normally it comes deep fried, but I asked for a pan saute, and they obliged. This was covered in a really delicious crawfish sauce that would be fabulous on fettuccine noodles. Or anything. It was great over these crab cakes. Studded with a lot of crawfish tails and topped with a bit of the cheese which heavily flavors the sauce, this was a great taste. My only complaint about this dish, if there must be one, is that some of the vegetables were a little crunchy in the crab cake. But I don’t want to complain about this dish. I loved it.
Meanwhile, Tom was exceedingly happy with his fried oyster platter. This comes in two sizes, and we got the half dozen. Again, they were large and golden brown and greaseless, though not excessively battered enough to be too crunchy.
There were more of the good fries with this plate and a side of coleslaw, which seemed sweeter than the last version of coleslaw we had here.
And I look forward to exploring more of the menu here.
I can’t say I am so enthusiastic about Don’s to ask where it has been all my life, but I am happy to be able to add it to the roster of places near us with outdoor tables on beautiful spring days.
