Perhaps the most anticipated restaurant opening of 2023 was TANA Italian on Metairie Rd. It opened very late in the year and is a collaboration of Hicham Kohdr and locally renowned Chef Michael Gulotta.
Michael Gulotta’s claim to fame stems from his seamless fusion of Vietnamese flavors into our local cuisine. His roots are Italian, so it seems a natural evolution of his career to return there. Since I heard of TANA’s coming arrival on the culinary scene I wondered how he would interpret the flavors of his childhood, knowing it would be different. And that is an understatement.
We had him on The Food Show (airs 2-4pm weekdays on WGSO 990AM) recently to ask these questions. I asked him what his mother thinks of his cooking. She has a lot of questions as well. It was a fun interview where the word blasphemy came up quite a bit. He assessed his menu at TANA as about 20% blasphemy, which seems fair but not excessive for a chef with his creative streak.
TANA is a beautiful place at the less-traveled end of Metairie Rd. near Labarre. There is a large and comfortable bar, now called a lounge, that is nearly the size of the restaurant. At a window when you walk in a young lady makes pasta all day and night.
The hosts are accommodating and friendly and the place seems well-run, with waiters and managers aplenty. We recognized several of them from other places.
Michael seems to also be making his own bread back there, and the bread service is distinctive. A small seeded Italian loaf (similar to the fantastic ones from Angelo’s Bakery, but more elastic) comes to the table with a little ramekin of soft butter and another of olive oil with pepperoncini. This goes away quickly. It is warm and irresistible.
The menu does not excite me, but there were things on it that made me curious. I asked about the stuffed focaccia, which they described as a take on a muffuletta. We were told it was maybe their most popular appetizer. Tom got the Oysters Bordelaise, a unique take on his most popular appetizer, fried oysters.
There were only four entree choices: roast chicken, Veal Marsala, a red snapper dish, and a pork chop. Referencing them like that diminishes their complexity, and complex they are. Tom had the roast chicken because I order for him and redfish or red snapper is so ubiquitous on a menu now I don’t even notice it anymore.
I wanted pasta so I chose the four-cheese ravioli.
The appetizers arrived after we had gone through two orders of bread. It was good enough to make a meal of it. The little loaf had a slick of melted butter on top and enough sesame seeds to make it interesting. The crumb was elastic and warm and the olive oil was spicy. It was hard to stop eating it.
Tom’s oysters were exactly what they were named. Fried oysters with a New Orleans Bordelaise on top and pooled underneath. Tom loved this sauce and used more of the bread to mop it up. The oysters were crispy and greaseless and plump and golden brown, exactly as they should be, with a copious amount of shaved and grated parmesan throughout.
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And then there was the focaccia. It arrived at the table looking like a savory muffin, with bits of olive salad and olives cascading from the top, and olive oil drizzled on the bottom. The focaccia was topped with a layer of melted cheese, salami, and mortadella fonduta, though I am trying not to think how meat can become fondue.
This entire thing was toasted on top, adding a sear around the edges that was quite nice. The bread itself was tasty and had a great texture for cutting into. The entire thing was puzzling but very good. And then I tasted something sweet in the olive salad. I wasn’t sure, because what could be sweet in olive salad? But this is Michael Gulotta after all. I inspected it and decided that there were cherries in the olive salad. When I chatted with him for a second I asked if there were Luxardo cherries in the olive salad and he told me they were reconstituted Bing Cherries. It was an interesting twist on olive salad, which is so salty and oily a sweet thing dropped in seems incongruous, but there it was. Overall it did not diminish the dish enough for me to stop eating it. All the other elements were terrific, and the sweetness was not really prominent, just there.
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Tom was crazy about his oysters, as he always is. But this was combined with a taste of New Orleans. The Bordelaise sauce was a little thicker than I am used to seeing, given texture by the double dose of shaved and grated Parmesan cheese.
The entrees arrived, and things went downhill, but not horribly so. The Roast Chicken with potatoes and peppers, oregano, and pan drippings was very good but I expected brilliant. That’s on me though. The chicken was moist and herbal and the potatoes were roasted nicely. The peppers added a nice dimension to the dish. This was a perfectly fine roast chicken.
My pasta was too much. I ordered it by process of elimination. Had there been even a weird version of lasagna or Bolognese on this menu I would have gotten it. But the pasta menu was filled with shaved truffles and clams and lamb ragu and the like. I settled on four-cheese ravioli as a default.
This dish was so rich two ravioli were enough, but I ate it all and it was just too much. Each ravioli was overstuffed with cheeses and then the cream sauce was heavy on the cream and cheese. A little of this went a long way. It wasn’t bad. Maybe too much of a good thing.
TANA is an exciting development for Metairie. Having a glamorous Italian restaurant around eliminates the need to go into town. It is hardly traditional, though, since Michael Gulotta has a different approach to everything. It is still beautiful, with a great buzz about it, a competent staff, and food that is very modern and fresh. What’s not to love?
