Whoever designed this restaurant has a great sense of the New Orleans restaurant past. Throughout Ignatius's dining room are are references to eateries from the dim past. None in particular, but a fanciful hybrid of many of them. That's charming, but for the kitchen to accomplish the same feat is remarkable. You find dishes whose origins range from a century ago to about 1979. That's further enhanced by the most important and difficult accomplishment: everything comes out delicious. What with the neighborhood prices, it becomes one of the most likeable restaurants on Magazine Street. Which is saying something.
[caption id="attachment_43510" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Ignatius's bar.[/caption]
In the same way that Mardi Gras royalty makes fun of authentic leaders, Ignatius is a subtle, tasty parody of the classic old French Creole restaurants in the Quarter. It serves shrimp remoulade, trout meuniere, filet mignon, and other dishes in that category. In fact, Ignatius makes nice work of all that. Yet, it's equally rewarding to get a roast beef poor boy or a plate of red beans.
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Trout meuniere at Ignatius.[/caption]
The name invokes the milieu dreamed up by the late John Kennedy Toole in his unique, meme-generating New Orleans novel Confederacy of Dunces. The restaurant has had two lives. The first was a poor boy shop that opened during the immediately post-Katrina boom on Magazine Street--a good time for a restaurant to become established. In 2011 Ignatius moved to a much larger space in the densest part of Magazine Street's restaurant row. The bigger kitchen allowed a more extensive menu.
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Ignatius's dining room.[/caption]
The dining room looks like Galatoire's, Arnaud's, Antoine's or Tujague's, if those places had been done on the cheap. That seems to have been the goal, not likely to have been executed inexpensively. Big windows face the street. Passers-by see an appealing cafe-like environment, with mirrors and ceramic tile floors. Inside its a bit starker, but in a charming way. The servers are not the quickest-moving in town, but this too seems to fit with the mood of the place.
Any one dish here may work as an entire meal. A bowl of gumbo will not allow those of normal appetite to also have a poor boy.
| Attitude | 1 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 1 |
| Hipness | 1 |
| Local Color | 2 |
| Service | 1 |
| Value | 2 |
| Wine | 0 |
