Eating in NOLA:

Alright so frozen pizza wasn't enough for you? You think you deserve more? You're looking for classic New Orleans restaurants? Fine.

How about Pascal's Manale?

I managed two and a half years in New Orleans without sitting down to dine at the Napoleon institution. It's even more impressive when you take into account that Kerry reviewed the restaurant during her undergrad days, and said review is up on the wall. Or so she says.

Well, we went to Pascal's a few weeks back because KM had a craving for red sauce and I had a craving for dinner. It was a Friday so we had a little bit of a wait but nothing that a Heineken and a Dixie couldn't solve.



Kerry got me super hyped for an eggplant medallion appetizer special - the Eggplant Dryades - that they normally have. When they didn't have it, we went with the Combination Pan Roast. Chopped oysters and crabmeat baked in a dish with shallots and parsley. Pretty darn good.



We kept it pretty simple when it came to the entrees. Like I said, Kerry was fiending for some red sauce so she went with the famous spaghetti and meatballs. Look how much she liked them!



I went with the shrimp plate. Whatever, I know its broring. It was good though. Not really much else to say about it I guess.



Oh and we had bottle of wine. Looks like it was red! We had to finish it at the bar cause they kinda rushed us out of the dining room come 11pm...

So there you go. The first restaurant review in months. Was it everything you hoped for? Stay tuned for a post about Luke soon and a Thanksgiving potluck post.

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.

So this blog is called "Eating in NOLA" not "Eating in Europe".

So here is what we will do. Because I care about you guys, or I guess mostly I care about taking pictures of food awkwardly in restaurants both foreign and domestic, I took a ton of pictures of food from across the pond. So we are going to do one long post with a ton of pictures and short captions. Then we'll get back to what you come here for. Good old NOLA eating.

So... Here we go...

Here is our meal from the top of Montmartre in Paris. Kerry has Coq Au Vin and I had some sort of steak in pepper sauce. We had a real good dessert with cherries and ice cream too.



We drank lots of red wine that night and this is one of the bottles. We went to a cool little place.


Oh so this was in Dijon France. It was suppose to be one of the best restaurants in the country. It was fantastic and they had colorful plates.

We drank Kir. Its a local specialty with white wine and black current syrup.
And we both had the scallops with a vanilla lime infusion.

So Annecy was another stop along the trip. Annecy is at the foot of the alps and offered some pretty incredible views. It also offered some pretty incredible cheese fondue for lunch one day.
oh and some pretty incredible chocolate fondue for dessert one night too.
And one day I bought some things I thought were cookies but were biscuits and I didn't like them much but I took this picture.


On to Rome. We had our first dinner at this restaurant just feet from the Coliseum.
We started with a local favorite... melon and prosciutto.
Kerry had a classic Caprese Salad
And I ate a pasta dish we are going to try at home really soon so keep an eye out. Its just spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, cracked red pepper and cheese.
And all night this guy sang to us...


So this was a place right by the apartment we stayed in. These are crab fritter things.
They made their pasta fresh and this was some pasta and cheese I ate with cracked black pepper.
Kerry had the gnocchi with Italian sausages

Then we went on an awesome walking tour that took us into some really cool Roman squares. In one we got a cannoli and it cost 11 euro. That's like 89 dollars US.


Alright and the last meal we documented over seas is this one at Vitti, an out door cafe. We got a little wine.

I ate a little pizza. Actually the best pizza I have ever eaten.
Kerry had this pasta that was spicy and good too.
and then we had dessert. We ordered gelato. We ordered the flavors we didn't understand. The flavors we ordered were "kiss" and "egg flop." We are pretty sure the flavors were hazelnut and butter scotch.

So that's it. You never have to hear about Europe again. Start reading again. Don't take us off your blog rolls. We will be NOLA through and Through from now on. Hell I could post a Community Coffee post right now if you wanted.

Oh yeah... one last thing though. I had two connecting flights through new york and Atlanta before I got home to the Big Easy. At JFK I went to Chili's. I'm ashamed about it but in the spirit of full disclosure... Bacon Ranch Burger and fries.

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.

Kerry made dinner. It was awesome. I got to help out too.


First we sautéed up some chicken tenderloins. Along with the chicken we threw in some garlic and onions.

While that was cooking we cooked up some tri-colored (red, orange, yellow) bell peppers and made some angel hair pasta.

After mixing some sauce into the pasta (Paul Newman Sakarooni) we put the whole thing together. Pasta with Chicken on top and garnished with the peppers. For good measure we topped it off with some freshly grated parmesan cheese.


It tasted even better than it looks. We had a glass of red wine with it. The wine was Spanish. We discovered it last week at a tasting at Clever Wines up in Mid-City.


As fantastic as the dinner was, the highlight of the meal had to be desert. Kerry made these little mascarpone stuffed dates with honey on top.



I had never had dates before, especially not any with mascarpone and honey in them. They were so good. They sat in the refrigerated for about an hour while we ate dinner and got cold.

Just to keep with the wine theme we opened a bottle of chardonnay and had a glass with them. So far I think they are the tastiest thing featured on this blog. And the good news is I have the making of about 100 more in my fridge right now.

It was a great dinner though. The bar is set pretty high for my next dinner.

jpv

So Justin and I have been on a bit of a frozen pizza kick lately... possibly because one of our MBA finals last month involved a case study of a "restaurant-quality frozen pizza" manufacturer. They're also inexpensive and pretty tasty if you buy the right kind. Last night we opted for a Digiorno four-cheese brick oven style pizza. Nice crunchy crust and we can thank J for the Roma tomatoes on top.