Alan and I just got back from a four day, Thanksgiving holiday trip to New Orleans. The focus was food & exploration of a new city. The weather was gorgeous and we were able to fit in a lot of dining experiences all around The Big Easy.
The first one, lunch at Emeril's original namesake on Tchoupitoulas Street, was right in the middle of the Warehouse district; just a few blocks up from our hotel. The space used to be a pharmacy and has an odd, interesting decor of exposed metal beams, brick walls, bowed wood ceiling and lots of glass & mosaic work around the open air kitchen.
This was the meal I was the most wary of. We've only eaten at one other Emeril restaurant (Emeril's Fish Restaurant in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas) and it was SO bad that we'd almost written off his places all together. But a strong recommendation by Paul and a desire to see how different (and hopefully better) the original might be, we took a chance.
The menu is a nice size - not so small you feel cornered and not so large that it's like being in a Cheesecake Factory. We were mostly interested in appetizers and small plates and wanted to try a few different things. Along with my sangria and Alan's Creole Collins, we ordered the crawfish pasta and gumbo of the day. The fresh angel hair pasta with Louisana crawfish tails in a Creole cream sauce was fantastic! Rich, full of flavor, unique with the distinctive taste of crawfish generously strewn about - this turned out to be one of the best dishes we'd have on this trip.
Alan's gumbo of the day was chicken and andouille sausage; thick with plenty of rice and smokey flavors. Alan thought this one was the best of the gumbos he tried while we were in New Orleans.
The next course was a salad for each of us. I tried the truffled Gulf shrimp "Louis" with iceberg lettuce, asparagus, smoked bacon, chopped egg and Louisiana citrus. This was a pretty nice dish...I really liked the creamy, citrus dressing and the mixture of the bacon for salt and vegetables. Where I did myself an injustice was thinking I was going to magically start loving shrimp just because it was in lovely salad. I had a few bites of the shrimp and it was fine, but I'm the first to admit that it's my least favorite food that comes out of the ocean. If you are a shrimp lover, you'd probably really dig this dish.
On the other hand, score a big win for Alan's yellow fin tuna and bacon in butter lettuce wraps with plenty of jalapenos, grapefruit, citrus hoisin and crunchy Asian noodles. This dish offered a fresh bite with a clean flavor and lots of kick thanks to the peppers.
To end the meal we split a sandwich...the BLFGT. Benton's bacon, butter lettuce, fried green tomatoes on brioche with boiled shrimp and a mustard aioli served with sweet potato chips.
This dish didn't do it for me. There was an interesting blend of flavors and textures - the fried green tomatoes are a little crunchy with a significant bitterness; the mustard aioli was up in your face; the bacon was barely there and the lettuce was (not being iceburg) on the wilted/soft side. I'm not saying it was bad...it was just a combination of flavors and textures that I didn't appreciate. It didn't fit my palate well. I'm also not a fan of sweet potato anything and there was a awful lot of the boiled shrimp which as we've already covered, not my favorite thing. So this was just ok.
Our conclusion - Emeril's New Orleans, pretty good! Loved the pasta and the yellow fin tuna wraps and the gumbo was good. The other dishes we'd pass on next time in favor of trying something else.
Zagat's Rating: 26-25-25
Jenn's Rating: 84
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