No neighborhood is more fertile for trying great new restaurants than the Warehouse District. Rene Bistrot bids to be part of that scene, but even with the obvious talents of Chef Rene Bajeux in the kitchen for a year, the place keeps on sleeping. Maybe it looks too good to be hip. Atmosphere is very much out these days.
Another membership held by Rene Bistrot is in the French Bistro Club. That style of cooking is bringing to an end the long hegemony of the grand French restaurant--even in France. It is conceivable that we may have too many of them in New Orleans right now. Even if that's true, this restaurant matches or surpasses all the others. But great food is sliding out of vogue lately, too, while we focus on the latest best hamburger, best hot dog, best pizza and best pho in town.
Here is the fifth restaurant in the New Orleans career of Lorraine-born Chef Rene Bajeux, who seems always to make headlines when he shows up at a restaurant. This is with good reason. He cooks this cuisine as well as anybody, and has the guts to bring to the menu unusual items that until recently you'd have to go to France to try. He admits to an incursion of Creole flavors and ingredients, to make it more amenable to non-gourmets.
This is the restaurant of the Renaissance Arts Hotel, the hip, younger-guest arm of the Marriott group. It opened in 2002 under the name La Cote Brasserie. Chef Rene Bajeux--a French master chef who had come to town to run the Windsor Court Grill Room kitchen--was by then running the first Rene Bistrot at the other local Renaissance hotel. (Where MiLa is now.) The hurricane did away with that Rene Bistrot, and for the next seven years Rene alternated gigs in New Orleans with other assignments in Asia and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, La Cote Brasserie just kept on rolling along. In 2012, the management decided to relaunch the restaurant, and brought Rene back (he was by then at the Royal Orleans), along with the Rene Bistrot name and the country French bistro style.
It's expansive, with continuous windows wrapping around the corner and giving a view of the crowd partying across the street at Lucy's. Enormous round brick columns break up the vastness into smaller zones. The most interesting of these for foodies is a trio of curving counters, two of which replace the front wall of the kitchen and allow a direct interface with the chefs. (The third is the bar.) The main dining area include much banquette seating and several tables next to the windows. Depending on where you are, the place feels either convivial or sterile. Not everybody likes it.
Rene Bistrot lends itself especially well to larger parties. Six or eight people is perfect. Start with the big iced platters of oysters, shrimp, lobster, crab, and ceviche. Then split the enormous bucket of mussels. The Sunday brunch is an underutilized resource, especially if you go to the Latin Mass at St. Patrick's, two block away.
| Attitude | 1 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 2 |
| Hipness | 1 |
| Local Color | 2 |
| Service | 0 |
| Value | 1 |
| Wine | 1 |
