culinary tour, part 1 (New Orleans)

I seem to have embarked on a culinary tour of America over the past week. Well, a few parts of it, anyway. Here are the highlights from New Orleans...

Galatoire's - I think every single restaurant guide for New Orleans mentions this place. We ordered the "Galatoire Gouté" appetizer, which includes shrimp rémoulade, crabmeat maison, and crawfish maison. Surprisingly, the shrimp was just okay, and my favorite was the crawfish; it was done with a pink creamy sauce. For my entree I had crabmeat "Saint-Pierre" which turned out to be crabmeat and veggies served in a thin, tomato-based soupy sauce which was just sour enough for my taste, but might have been too sour for some.

Cafe du Monde - Also really famous, the branch on Decatur is open 24/7. The first time we ate there was for breakfast, and the beignets were yummy but I made a mess with the powdered sugar. The coffee with chicory was really subtle; it wasn't until I dipped one of the beignets in the coffee that I really noticed a difference. The second time, we stopped by around midnight after some drinks, it was much less crowded, and the beignets were noticeably better; light, fresh, and so hot they burned my fingers.

Mmm...beignets:


Le Salon at the Windsor Court Hotel - As part of a bridal shower event, we had afternoon tea at Le Salon. The ambiance is charming; there are lovely flowers up the walkway, the lobby is well-decorated, and there is live music. The service was excellent, and the tea is among the better teas I've had. The scones in particular were amazingly delicious; I polished off both the walnut and the fruit one, even though they were quite large. I'd ordered the Royal Tea, which typically comes with some salmon sandwiches, but when I pointed out to our server that I didn't like salmon, she substituted two extra caviar sandwiches instead. Score! The teas themselves were pretty good too; I especially liked the "four fruit" special. The desserts were fine too, but I was getting pretty full by then, so I may have enjoyed looking at the cute swan-shaped cream puff more eating it.

Tea time!



Felix's Restaurant & Oyster Bar - After the super-girly afternoon tea experience, we thought the best thing for dinner would be to go somewhere that we could get a pile of crawfish by the pound. It was surprisingly hard to find a restaurant fitting that description in the French Quarter; we first tried Acme but were told the wait would be 45 minutes (at 8:30pm!) and the crawfish were $9 per pound. We finally ended up across the street at Felix's, where we got a pound and a half for $12, with corn and a potato. The crawfish was decent, but it's hard to beat home-cooked, and I definitely could have used some more corn. Afterwards we stopped by a daiquiri bar; there are tons of them all over Bourbon Street, but this one had a huge variety; we tried Mango Madness, Texas Margarita, Strawberry, and others. We did not try the 190 Antifreeze, made with 190-proof rum.

Crawfish by the pound:


Court of Two Sisters - For brunch the next morning, we ate in the courtyard at the Court of Two Sisters. The setting was very cute, and the food was fine (I've never been a big fan of omelets, which were a big deal there), but for me the highlight was definitely dessert. I had second servings of the Bananas Foster, the whisky bread pudding, and the Crepe Suzette. Yum.

Jazz Fest - As I mentioned before, there was lots of scrumptious-looking food at Jazz Fest, but I was too full to eat more than a little bit. I had some crawfish beignets (very good) and a boudin (eh), and eyed a mango freeze but decided against.