Zimmer's Seafood

Restaurant Review

Why It's Essential

Here and there around New Orleans--but not as numerous as most of us believe--are neighborhood seafood markets with a restaurant sideline. Zimmer's is a classic example of the genre, ready to sell fresh and boiled fish, shrimp, crabs and crawfish in season. But since they have all that stuff, they may as well fry all that and enclose it in a poor boy, right? And as long as they're making shrimp poor boys, they may as well make roast beef, ham, and sausage sandwiches, too, right?

Backstory

Craig Zimmer opened his namesake restaurant in the 1980s. It was known mostly to people who lived in the neighborhood of Pap's Supermarket (once across the street, now extinct) and the UNO community. It was in one of the worst flood Katrina flood zones, with a levee break was just a few blocks away. Yet it opened fairly early on, and became both a corporal and psychic godsend for the Gentilly neighborhood.

Dining Room

The old building needed to be rebuilt after the flood, and presents a pleasant if spare space for dining.