Perino's ranks highest in my casual count of men wearing white T-shirts in sit-down restaurants. In a boiled seafood house, this is probably a good sign. Boiled seafood is messy, and you don't want to wear your best tie while pulling a crab apart. The people who most love boiled seafood know this, and keep the restaurant focused.
Finding a restaurant with boiled seafood is harder than we tend to think it is--even on the West Bank, which has the best seafood markets in the area. Perino's is the definitive West Bank place for making a mess cracking crab shells and peeling shrimp and crawfish hot out of the pot.
Sam Perino was a seafood dealer for a long time before he had the idea, in 1972, to open a cafe for his well-regarded take-out boiled seafood. The place did well enough that, twenty years later, it moved across the highway to a more amenable but no more visible location. Eight years after that, Perino's took over an adjacent building and expanded yet again.
Boiled seafood and raw oysters--the two main specialities of Perino's--are among the most primitive of dining activities, as they should be. Perino's is right in step with that. Although there's no connection with the motel next door, the exterior doesn't promise much. Inside the place is brighter, spartan but pleasant, with tables a shade too close to one another. On the other hand, when the place gets busy on Friday at lunchtime or Saturday evening, you'll be glad all those tables are there..
The tangle of ramps from the West Bank Expressway can be confusing for non-West Bankers. If you're coming from the Crescent City Connection, get off the elevated at the Barataria Boulevard exit, hook a U-turn at the intersection, then stay at ground level in the right lane, headed for the nearby Harvey Tunnel. Perino's is right before you veer into the tunnel.
| Attitude | 1 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 0 |
| Hipness | 0 |
| Local Color | 1 |
| Service | 1 |
| Value | 2 |
| Wine | 0 |
