Chris "Bozo" Vodonovich passed away in the cold winter of 2015, satisfied that the restaurant where he'd spent so many hours at the stove was in good hands. The new management accomplished a difficult trick: how to keep the old regular customers happy while at the same time create a buzz among potential new, younger customers. It worked so well that a smaller duplicate of the place has opened in the French Quarter.
It took about a year, but Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar & Fish Grill has become one of the three or four best fried-seafood houses in the New Orleans area. By incorporating the essential dishes from the old Bozo's with the well-practiced style of seafood cookery at his Bucktown and Kenner restaurants, this new place satisfies the demands both of the people who've come here for decades with a younger, more adventuresome crowd. The restaurant is sharply defined and consistent.
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Oysters Amandine.[/caption]
The most revered and meticulous cook in the annals of fried seafood in New Orleans was Bozo Vodonovich, one of many first-generation Croatian restaurateurs in New Orleans. Bozo opened his restaurant in Mid-City in 1928, then passed it along to his son Chris ("Chris" is the English nickname for "Bozo"). Chris stood in the kitchen for over sixty years, cooking the overwhelming majority of his customers' platters personally. The restaurant moved to Metairie in 1975. In 2009, Chris retired, but the transition to a family friend went sour. He finally escaped in 2013, when Metairie restaurateur and longtime Bozo's customer "Mr. Ed" McIntyre cut a deal with Chris. After a renovation, the place reopened as "Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar & Fish Grill," with many dishes from the old Bozo's cookbook. Mr. Ed opened a second location in the French Quarter in 2014.
The new Metairie restaurant is laid out like the old one, but it's more colorful, brighter, and spacious. The rear dining room and the deck on the side--rarely used until Mr. Ed came along--are now busy and lively. The oyster bar is the focus of everything, and is the first thing you see when you walk in. The French Quarter Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar is a smallish restaurant in the middle of a somewhat dark block of Bienville Street, a stretch that seems to be headed towards becoming a new restaurant row.
Because all the cooking is done to order and with great care, it takes longer to get food than in most seafood places. This is also not the place for you if you measure the goodness of a fried platter by its enormity.
| Attitude | 2 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 1 |
| Hipness | 0 |
| Local Color | 2 |
| Service | 1 |
| Value | 1 |
| Wine | 0 |
