Best Of New Orleans Blog

Recent visits to Maximo’s Italian Grill for last week’s review got me thinking about the trend of open kitchen’s and “food bars.”

It’s an entertaining concept, and there are now plenty of upscale restaurants where you can watch cooks prepare your meal. Emeril’s has its food bar, for instance, and I’ve long regarded the handful of bar stools facing the tiny kitchen at One Restaurant in the Riverbend as some of the best seats in town because they allow such a detailed view into the preparation of your meal. Even the updated, post-Katrina reincarnation of Ye Olde College Inn, that once crotchety old dining den, has two seats facing the kitchen, for those interested enough to watch orders of onion rings and sheets of paneed veal come together. (more…)

Did you know that a Southern Sea Otter eats five meals a day? Well, one who resides at Audubon Aquarium does, anyway. That can add up to more than 20 pounds of seafood a day, according to the Audubon Institute’s Web Site. The otters’ snack of choice is an ice-cold seafood popsicle that comes as part of a specialized diet planned by their nutritionists at the Institute. They are just a few of the more than 15,000 animals living at Audubon, all of whom are fed according to meal plans designed especially for them.

It takes more than $60,000 to foot just part of the animals’ monthly grocery bill, the Web site says, with that amount spent just on grain and hay for the Zoo animals alone. Imagine the dent you’d put in your pocketbook if you had a 20 to 50 pound per day appetite in addition to the rising cost of fuel and grain shortages that are already inflating the cost of groceries. And imagine if you had to rely on somebody else to procure that sustenance for you. A trip to the grocery on the way home from work for a $6.99 gallon of milk doesn’t sound so bad anymore does it? (more…)

The Carrollton area restaurant Iris is hosing a special wine dinner with Beringer Vineyards on Thursday with an eye-catching menu and a visit from the winemaker herself.

The chef and co-owner of Iris, Ian Schnoebelen, was named one of the 10 best new chefs in 2007 by Food+Wine Magazine. That’s an honor he shares with his former boss, John Harris of Lilette, where he worked as sous chef for several years before opening Iris in the months after Hurricane Katrina.

Iris has been among my favorite New Orleans restaurants ever since it opened, and it’s the kind of place where I have faith that the impressive list of high-end groceries going into this special menu (see below) will get its due. The chef takes an eclectic approach, borrowing elements from classic French, Italian and Asian cuisines, among others. What ties it all together is the friendly professionalism that pervades the restaurant, a place where the food is taken very seriously but not placed up on a pedestal. One recent example of Schnoebelen’s approach was a memorable preparation of Alaskan halibut with green garlic and blood orange vinaigrette (pictured above). (more…)

New Orleans Food Co-op proudly announced their latest membership total today — a total of 331 members and counting. Having exceeded their goal of 300 by May 1st, this puts them on target to open in the proposed healing center on St. Claude in the Marigny/Bywater area. The group’s next set goal is to increase their membership to 600 by October, with a total goal of 1000 members by the time they open next year.

With the assistance of a grant from Entergy and Food Co-op 500, the group has already obtained a start-up budget estimate, a timeline and a market study. Currently it’s working on creating a preliminary floor plan and estimation of equipment costs as well as a formal business plan. For more information or to become a member, visit the Food Co-op’s Web site.

The new “Ralph Brennan’s New Orleans Seafood Cookbook,” reviewed in this week’s Gambit, is destined to be a hard-working cookbook. Though it was published in the elegant format of a coffee table book, this weighty volume is clearly intended to be used in the kitchen where its thorough advice on seafood selection, handling and preparation will be invaluable to those who weren’t necessarily brought up shucking oysters and catching redfish.

But there is a small narrative element to the book as well, and right up front the lead author and restaurateur Ralph Brennan shares a few stories about his own upbringing in the city’s most important restaurant family. In particular, he provides a touching account of childhood romps through his extended family’s original restaurant, Brennan’s on Royal Street, and a succinct assessment of the quarrel that has famously divided the family since 1974.

During an interview, Brennan shared more about those young experiences at the family restaurant in the 1960s, when his aunts Ella and Adelaide Brennan would take him out on day trips.

“My aunts were the right age, I was the right age, and we would have a lot of fun together,” he says. (more…)

NOLA Grocery, the Warehouse District sandwich shop I wrote about this week, is big on Cajun flavor and very scant on creature comforts. So scant, in fact, that it’s strangely entertaining.
This is a take-out place for sure, but owner Murray Tate has made some accommodations for people who want to unwrap their po-boys and eat them right away. This amounts to a pair of glass-top patio tables pushed together in an area wedged between a bank of drink coolers and a metal garage door. The garage door is usually open, and the view it affords (above) is primarily of a marine industry workshop.

More interesting, though, is what goes down on some days just around the corner. An alley there is often jammed with trailer-mounted crawfish boiling rigs and assorted other catering prep operations for events at the convention center a block away. (more…)

The same day Billy Joel performs at Jazz Fest, his wife Katie Lee Joel will be holding a book signing for her new cookbook “The Comfort Table.” The event and potential celebrity sighting takes place at the Garden District Book Shop tomorrow, April 26, beginning at noon. Mrs. Joel’s book focuses on recipes for Southern-style “comfort food” and was published earlier this month. Piano man Billy Joel headlines on the Acura Stage later that afternoon.
Meanwhile, at the Fair Grounds itself tomorrow, the book tent will host signings by authors of two New Orleans cookbooks and one New Orleans food memoir.

The lineup begins at noon with a visit from Kit Wohl, a local writer and publicist for Arnaud’s Restaurant, who is promoting her latest cookbook “New Orleans Classic Seafood.” (more…)

The Mid-City Green Market opened today, April 17, for the first time, and this new, weekly farmers market appears to be off to a great start.

The market continues through 7 p.m. this evening outside the American Can Co. building at 3700 Orleans Ave., near Bayou St. John. There is a live music from the DeSoto Street band and a free wine tasting at the adjacent Cork & Bottle Fine Wines from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. (more…)

I’ll admit a certain level of fascination with the variation on the buffet concept at work at Carnaval Bar & Grill, a Brazilian restaurant I reviewed this week.

Unlike the more familiar, higher-end churrascaria service style of unlimited portions and theatrical, table-side delivery of the various meats (as seen locally at Fire of Brazil), Carnaval offers a more modest, self-directed experience. You take as much as you like, the cashier weighs your loaded plate and your check is tabulated by the pound (as pictured above, with a friend going through the drill).

This was the same style employed by Brazil Latino Restaurant in Gretna, which closed recently after one of its owners, the former New Orleans Hornets forward Marcus Vinicius Vieira de Souza, was traded to the Houston Rockets. That left Carnaval in the dominant position of bargain lunchroom and de facto clubhouse for the area’s Brazilian population, which certainly seems to have swelled since Katrina. (more…)

by Sam Winston

The Pope’s upcoming visit to the U.S. is even more highly anticipated by several Catholic parishes that are going through “a time of pain and uncertainty”

Louisiana prosecutors spur review of the 8th amendment with Child Rape punishment.

Time for panic at the Hive? Chris Paul is 16-for-48 in the last four games, in which the Hornets won only once, and the top seed appeared to be slipping away (as well as the MVP for Paul?). (more…)

There is some serious cooking going on in the kitchen at the Country Club, a Bywater institution with a new restaurant I reviewed this week. Still, for those familiar with the Country Club, what may come to mind first is more likely to be the sun bathing, pool lounging and boozy gay social scene in the huge and lushly planted patio behind the club’s 19th century house.
The restaurant functions as a different operation, however, and if you didn’t know about the bathing club out back, which is run as a private club, there is nothing to give it away in the handsome dining roomsor the beautiful front porch (pictured above). For those as yet unsold on the idea that the address can be a serious dining destination, chef Miles Prescott has put together one of the more generous – alright, decadent — wine and cheese pairings in town to lure people in.

Each Thursday, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. the restaurant puts out samples of its dozen or so cheeses collected from the Uptown purveyors Stein’s Market and Deli and St. James Cheese Co. At the same time, the bar serves up samples from any and all of the wines on its by-the-glass list. The price for both is $19 a person, and for that you can nosh and drink your way through the early evening. There is usually live music in the lounge as well.
- Ian McNulty

Let us all take a moment, shall we, to reflect on the utter badassery, the sheer Rambo-in-Crocs machismo, of one Paul “Bulletproof” Prudhomme. Revered by Louisiana’s foodies and feared by its redfish, the iconic cook seems to have further fattened his legend with Tuesday morning’s near-death (or, at the very least, near-Meuniere-breaking) experience at the Zurich Golf Classic.

To recap: Chef Prudhomme was setting up his station near the links sometime after 9 a.m. when he felt a sudden stinging sensation above his right elbow. According to multiple news reports — each of which has taken on a new, superhero-like characteristic with every retelling — he shook his sleeve and out fell a .22-caliber shell casing. The ammunition, believed by authorities to have been fired in the air within a mile or so radius of the golf course, apparently had found Prudhomme’s appendage on its parabolic return to Earth. (more…)

A new weekly farmer’s market is coming to Mid-City, taking over the same space and being held on essentially the same schedule as a market operated here before Katrina.

The Mid-City Green Market is set to make its debut April 17 in the parking lot of the American Can Apartments, at 3700 Orleans Ave. near Bayou St. John. It will be held each Thursday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., says market founder and local wine merchant Jon Smith.

Before the storm, the Loyola University-based nonprofit MarketUmbrella.org ran one of its three Crescent City Farmers Markets at the same spot each Thursday. Following the storm, the group’s Uptown and Warehouse District markets reopened but the Mid-City market was put on hold indefinitely. (more…)

Like any tavern, the drinks are at least half the point at Yuki, the new Frenchmen Street hole-in-the-wall I reviewed this week.

Yuki is an example of an izakaya, the type of place where in Japan people typically go after work for drinks and snacks or light meals. I’ve never been to Japan, but when I e-mailed a description of Yuki to a friend of mine who lives in Tokyo he confirmed that it sounded a lot like the izakayas he frequents in his adopted home.

Instead of Buffalo wings, jalapeno poppers and fried mozzarella, patrons of izakayas — in Tokyo or, now, the Faubourg Marigny – munch on yakitori , karaage-style fried chicken and sweet, grilled eel. And to wash it down, Yuki offers sake, the light, distilled liquor called shochu and an array of Japanese beers including more than few I have never seen before.

My new favorite from the latter category is an offering from the Hitachino brand. The white ale, served in a beautiful 22 oz. bottle (pictured above, at left), tastes like a Belgian wheat beer with bright flavors of orange. (more…)

Dinner last night at Reginelli’s in Lakeview was the first time I can remember ever spending more for tap water than I did on beer at a pizza joint, or at any other restaurant for that matter. Our waitress said their last keg of Abita ran dry halfway through pouring us a pitcher, so that was on the house. Meanwhile, our glasses of tap water cost a dollar each, and for once I was glad to pay.

That’s because the local Reginelli’s chain is among the host of New Orleans-area restaurants participating in the Tap Water Project. The program is a fundraiser for UNICEF, the global children’s health and nutrition agency, and it couldn’t be simpler.

All this week, through March 22, participating restaurants are asking customers to donate a minimum of $1 for the tap water that is normally served free. They give the money to UNICEF, which will use it to fund clean water initiatives in 90 countries. The program started last year in New York City, where 300 restaurants participated, and now UNICEF has expanded it to 12 other cities across the country.

The New Orleans recovery effort has been the beneficiary of countless restaurant-based fundraisers held around the world since Hurricane Katrina. The Tap Water Project is an incredibly easy way to help return the favor to others in need.

You can see a list of local participating restaurants here.

- Ian McNulty

I think people who grew up eating muffulettas tend to think of them as, well, muffulettas – a sandwich unto itself, a given in the local catalogue of good food. Others who discover the sandwich later in life after forming all kinds of food associations – like myself – sometimes tend to define the muffuletta by what it resembles. I remember one early attempt going something like this: “It’s like an Italian grinder on better bread. And, um, with lots of olives and olive oil. And, ah, yeah, no lettuce or tomato.”

Recently, I’ve heard the more erudite description of the muffuletta as antipasti on a sandwich, which seems like an especially apt comparison for the specimen prepared at Just Italy, the Metairie deli I reviewed this week.

That’s because owner John Bellini takes a purist’s approach to both his muffuletta and his antipasti platters. Both are assembled from a truly well stocked deli case and both are several levels of ambition higher than the familiar standard. (more…)