Eating in NOLA:

So we went to Jackson last night which re-opened three weeks ago. I've only been here since July 2008 so I never got a chance to visit its original incarnation before it closed. From what I hear there wasn't much of a reason to make the trek down to the one-way section of Magazine for the old Jackson.

I want to start this post saying one thing. The food was very good. I'll get into specifics about the food in a second but I want to make it clear that it was good. That doesn't mean the restaurant wasn't without its issues.


You are looking at issue one. The menu lacked a coherent theme. There was some Latin Fusion, some French, some Cajun and some good old American. The decor of the restaurant had a very similar problem. Again really nice and really comfortable but kind of a mixed bag.


Problem two was this. We got a pretty good bottle of Malbec. And we were happy with it but it was not corked in front of us and we didn't get a chance to taste it before the glasses were filled. Again it's a small thing but its probably the type of thing that bothers people more refined than me.

So we started with this Diablo Dip. Actually some pretty good stuff. Pretty much a glorified 7 layer dip but really good still. Even better were the chips that it came with warm and fresh. Oh and good the next day too... left overs are going to be a reoccurring theme in this post.


So Kerry had this. Not the best picture but probably the best thing we ordered. It's the Gnudi or Spinach ricotta dumplings with fresh sage & brown butter sauce. So good. She had leftovers. No way I would have had leftovers.


This is what I ordered. The Blackened Seared Tuna. It came with a Strawberry Jalapeno butter that I was a little worried about but I was wrong to be worried. It was a good. It was also a lot of tuna and made for a good lunch today. I picked the truffle french fries and grilled veggies to go with it. A good selection I think.


So this was dessert. The stuffed cookies. Two with hazelnut and two with chocolate ganache. Again. They were great. Probably worth going back for.

Alright so like I said everything was great if not a little disjointed. The last concern is that we were the only people in the restaurant. Not a great sign for a resturant that I think really does show some good promise. They make good food. If they can get their i's dotted and t's crossed it could do really well. If they are around long enough to fix a few things it could be a really good addition to the area.

So no more of those catch up posts. This post is going up before the Magazine Street Blues Fest is even over.

Obviously we have a festival or two here every weekend but this really was a good one. If you happen to be reading this right after it is posted (I know you stay glued to your laptops waiting for the nest EIN post) then go catch the last few hours.

On to the important part though. First Butter Chicken from from Nirvana. This was go good I went right home and looked for Butter Chicken recipies to make tomorrow.


And some fresh cut fries from Boucherie. Topped with some spicy vinegar... these were pretty incredible too. I was too full to try it, but I got a look at the 12 hour beef brisket po-boy... it looked so good I can't even talk about it.


Hey and Soul Rebels were there. I love Soul Rebels.

So again, this is from a while back. We stopped by the Rum House down on Magazine a few days after they opened.

The Rum House seems like a pretty good idea. I always tend to think of Caribbean themed anything as a little hokey but I'm not really above hokey things - so why not you know? The food was pretty good. We both got a trio of tacos and them came out looking like this on a little three taco stand.

Like I said It was a while back but it looks like I went with a fish taco, their rib taco and the calypso beef taco (Island marinated steak with guacamole and a drizzle of cilantro lime sour cream). The fish taco was pretty good but I'm not really that into fish tacos. The rib taco was pretty great though. Like really great. Besides the fact that I feel like an idiot eating something called calypso beef, that one was pretty good too.

All and all they where some pretty high quality tacos. Only real complaint about Rum House? The tacos are pretty tiny, almost like they are made for some sort of superbly palated child. It would have cost me about $20 to leave the place full. Pretty hefty when you consider the $2.50 price tag on the tacos.

It was good though and worth trying out. Especially if you're some sort of dwarf or pixie.

Coquette is so good it doesn't even have a website.



Coquette doesn't have enough time for websites. They spend all their time making incredible food. I'm not kidding around. It's my favorite restaurant. Not my favorite new restaurant or my favorite restaurant in New Orleans. Its my favorite restaurant period. (This isn't a new realization to me its just that the other times we have eaten there I have been too busy enjoying my food to take pictures of it.)

On top of that they have no corkage fee AND I have a stock pile of $25 Coquette gift certificates I bought for $2 on restaurant dot com.

So after a Happy Hour Drink at Le Cote we snuck into the business center there in the hotel to print off one of these 23 dollar bills. Then off to Breux Mart to grab a bottle of Pepperwood Grove Pinot Noir. It was a red wine?


Like I said getting it from the bottle into two of Coquette's wine glasses cost us $0. And here is what it looked like.


So as is often the case we started with some soup. This soup was the corn kind with crab on top. It was also the hot kind which I prefer to the cold kind. It was a good way to start. It got something in our stomachs but it wasn't too heavy and we really didn't want to be too full before what were two incredible main courses.


I had the short rib. It came on some fingerling potatoes. The thing about potatoes is they are really hard to screw up. But this was the first time in my life that I enjoyed a potato to much I would have been happy with just a plate of them.

The good news is the short rib was on there too and it was one of the most satisfying pieces of beef I have ever had. Just look at how good it looks.


Kerry had the veal. It came in a neat little pile. If i remember right they came with grits. It was really good as well. I'm not a huge veal fan but it was fantastic.


Look and here is dessert! Blueberries and cream. Nice and refreshing after a great meal. We were almost tempted to get the chocolate cream beignts but I think we made the right choice.


I know I'm never very descriptive of the actual food. I'm trying to get better but it seems to be a slow process. Either way don't let Coquette the the victim of my poor descriptive abilities. It is a fantastic restaurant with a good menu a helpful staff and a pretty good venue. Eat there. Eat there everyday.

We headed to Reginelli's Wednesday night before going over to The Bulldog to watch some of the Hornets game. Kerry said it best when she said that Reginelli's always sounds like a good idea, but nothing on the menu really turns out that great. Based on my first experience there, things aren't that great... I had the Baked Ham Sandwich...
When I read the menu I had a feeling it was going to be a little bit terrible. I was right. There were just a ton of flavors going on, and one of the flavors was mushy ham.


She fared better with the bread sticks and a Caprese salad. The bread sticks did come with some weird pepper sauce though, which I'm not going to attempt to explain.

In the end, everyone won, because we walked over to Bulldog and drank some beers and took home some glasses. By far my favorite bar special is Bulldog Wednesdays - buy a pint ($4-$5) and keep the ever changing (and often topical) glass. If you didn't know, now you know sucka.

Why not keep up the Italian theme?


For lunch the next day it was Gelato Pazzo Cafe. Can anyone guess why? That's right, because we read both Bouillie and Blackened Out. Plus, you've got to help out places who had their road literally torn out from underneath them (ahem, Oak Street... ok not literally... whatever).

We got a few paninis.



K Mitch got some with proscuitto, mozzarella, and pesto (I think... I'd ask her but she's fighting with a paper and presentation right now). I had a bite. Hers was better than mine.


I had one with Gulf Shrimp and mixed greens and pesto. It was pretty skimpy on the shrimp but I expected it. I don't really like mixed greens either but I guess that was my fault for ordering it anyway. Both were served with some pretty terrible pasta salad as well.

I think you know that normally I'm not such a Negative Neil about the things we eat. Just blame it on some sub-par meals... and I just finished the aforementioned presentation and paper about 10 min ago.

MMM... Ice Cream. I always forget what good flavors Creole Creamery has. I had a sample of the Saffron Pistachio (it tasted like rice!) but only after I had already ordered a Cookie Monster Sundae.

And Kerry had this Cake Batter Sunday. Mine looked similar before I devoured half...

Whatever... We would have gone to Gott Gourmet today regardless...



It's right on Mag and we needed to be on Mag today for other stuff so we stopped for a quick lunch before our marketing meeting back at school. It was our first time and it sure didn't disappoint. Plus it was warm enough to eat outside and enjoy the view so it ended up being a great idea.



Kerry rarely is more happy with a decision than she was about her Shrimp BLT Wrap. The shrimp was sauteed in Tabasco butter. Now I don't know what Tabasco butter is but I'm pretty sure it was made just to saute shrimp in.



I had the Chicago Dog. A steamed poppy seed bun full of goodness, grape tomatoes, yellow mustard, relish, peppers and onions oh and a pickle I took off. Oh right I forgot the salad... tomatoes are in a salad though.



Why not some dessert from Sucre? How about a pink purse full of $2 a piece chocolates for me...



(flavors: absinthe, port, something else, and wedding cake)


And a strawberry stuffed vanilla cupcake for Kerry.



Oh and some of my hair for this baby squirrel


-- Post From My iPhone

Who says we just read Blackened Out and post on the same restaurant right after?

Whatever, neither Blackened Out or anyone at Stein's Market and Deli read this blog. (Correction: Blackened Out does! Thanks, guys. KMK) But I will admit after seeing the Blackened Out post on Stein's this this morning we were intrigued. There is nothing like the promise of a good cheese steak to get me a little further down Magazine Street than I'm used to.

Well I can't tell you how disappointed I was to arrive to the corner of Mag and Jackson and learn that Stein's only serves cheese steaks on Tuesdays. There were still some pretty good options though...

Like the BLT. That's what I ate. I guess it's hard to really screw up a BLT, but it's hard to really get it right as well. They got it right. Thinly sliced tomatoes, not too much lettuce or mayonnaise, and great bacon. I don't remember what kind of bacon, but I know it was a fancy kind because on the menu it didn't just say "bacon"... there was something else in front of it.


Kerry Mitchell had the Robert sandwich, with imported prosciutto and mozzarella and fresh balsamic vinegar. It was a little pricey for deli food, but incredibly good and worth the money according to her.


Oh, and they both came with two types of housemade pickles. We don't like pickles, but you can have them if you want. And we got the annual festival guide out of the Gambit to plan our upcoming adventures, so a pretty great lunch overall.

After a long stint at CC's on Magazine (we spared you the post... you're welcome) we needed some lunch before a grueling marketing class at three.

The weather here has been really fantastic lately so we decided on a meal outside at Cafe Rani (we normally don't link if there isn't a website but Cafe Rani has a pretty good lunch menu so I decided to break tradition... but seriously, get on it Cafe Rani). They have a great patio, which is rare on Magazine.

Kerry Mitchell went with the Cobb Club sandwich. We wondered why restaurants hadn't thought about this before... or at least enough restaurants for us to have seen it before. The description is below the picture.


Cobb Club

grilled breast of chicken, crisp bacon, roma tomatoes, diced egg, avocado and romaine lettuce topped with crumbled bleu cheese, served on fresh baked ciabatta

I went with a pretty standard club sandwich on a croissant but it was tasty and melty and I really did enjoy it. Both came with kettle chips.  Crunchy.

We drank normal tap water with it but they poured it in a recycled wine bottle, gave us lemon and poured it for us so it tasted fancy. Kerry liked it and she smiled.

... and this was one of those days. So we headed down to the Whole Foods at Arabella Station on Magazine.

The normal thing we do at Whole Foods is get the California Club, which is pretty great. You should get one the next time you're there. Turkey, bacon, avocado, some sun-dried tomato spread, probably some tomatoes on ciabatta and grilled up.

Either way, we get that and we split it.  Then normally we get some soup. This day we got sides from the hot bar at the deli instead. Kerry got the grilled vegetables which you can see below. You won't see my cheese and garlic mashed potatoes below because I ate them incredibly fast because they were the best mashed potatoes I have ever eaten.


The other thing we do is get good drinks to go along with it. Kerry got Pomegranate Limeade by Odwalla, and I got an Orangina.  Kerry doesn't like Orangina so I got to drink every sip of mine. She was nice enough, though, to let me have a sip of her limeade. I was appreciative.

And a funny side note - I just went to tag this post with the word "vegetables" and it was the first time we had used it... this is our 48th post.

Vizard's might be a mob restaurant. It doesn't have a website.

Kerry and I seemed to be the only people in the place that weren't related to the owners, wait-staff, or kitchen staff. People were constantly disappearing behind the kitchen doors to kiss or schmooze with the chef. Either way they had some really good food. Really good.

Kerry had read about Vizard's on Blackenedout and it had gotten a great review so we figured it was worth a try. Here is a picture of Kerry I think she might end up taking down... (Yup. Taken down. kmk)

We took advantage of a Tuesday-Thursday tasting special they have that comes with 3 courses and 3 glasses of wine for $33. Not a bad deal. Actually it was a great deal. Our waiter mentioned that they just started it up this week, and the menu had been different every day so far.

I'll apologize now for the lack of photos in the post -- the possibility of being in a money laundering establishment made me hesitant to pull out my camera.

Along with the bread they brought us a shot glass of a really good butternut squash/potato bisque that I am still craving the next day.

First course was a crab cake. It I'm not really sure how to describe it other than to say it was a jumbo lump crab cake in yellow cream sauce that I cant quite describe now but probably could have at the time. It came with a glass of white wine, I think all the wines of the night were California wines.

Next came a shrimp course which I worked up the nerve to take a blurry picture of...



They were seasoned, grilled and served over a polenta (which is one of my favorite things to eat) then topped with a tomato and olive ragout and a little cheese. It was served with a red wine that we tried to describe for about 20 min unsuccessfully. It wasn't our favorite red wine.

Last was a seared duck breast with pepper jelly. I'm ashamed to say I haven't had much duck in my life but this was really good it was served with some greens that I cant remember the name of but I remember sounds like a cheese. (Swiss Chard. kmk) And it came with a red wine that I liked.

I guess that's it. A pretty good pre-Valentines Day dinner. I'll let you know how it stacks up to Dominique's, in the Maison Dupuy Hotel, which is our V-Day destination.