Restaurant August, New Orleans

For our Thanksgiving dinner I picked one of the most highly reviewed restaurants in New Orleans that was open that evening. Restaurant August is a John Besh establishment located on Tchoupitoulas Street in the warehouse district.

The building is a historic, 19th century French-Creole landmark. The inside is laid out at three distinct rooms. The main dining room shown below, an upstairs wine room for private parties and an intimate little room off the kitchen called the Gravier room. This is where we sat with only five tables, exposed brick walls and darker decor, it was romantic and cozy. All of the tables in our room were booked this evening with folks celebrating the holiday.

In addition to their seasonal menu, August was also offering a price fixed Thanksgiving tasting menu. We opted to order ala carte off the regular menu. Having had a pretty good amount of food at Manning's during the afternoon we decided to go toned down this time and just order a single appetizer and our entrees.

 

Our dinner started off with an amuse bouche of egg custard with creme freche, truffle, caviar and brioche. We've had similar looking eggs at places like Jean-Georges that made me think I'd gone to heaven. This one was unique in that it was chilled. The flavor profile was nice - you just can't go wrong with truffle and caviar and the custard proved a nice, smooth balance.

The bread they served us was wonderful - really. I don't usually take pictures of bread because, let's face it, it's bread. But these warm little baquettes with whipped cream butter were so, so good.

Our appetizers were the trio of foie gras and the handmade potato gnocchi with blue crab and black truffle.

The foie gras was disappointing. We both expected that "three ways" would be a torchon, a pate and most likely a pan seared or other hot preparation. That wasn't the case. The first one on the left was a classic torchon and very tasty with it's apple marmalade and toasted hazelnuts. The middle was a pate wrapped in an odd choice of layer cake with gelee. It didn't work for me. And the final preparation was a mousse of sorts layered with a custard and crunchy, toasted hazelnuts. This was was an out and out miss. The nuts were way to hard and the custard didn't add anything. The foie gras itself was so far on the bottom that it was difficult to manage to get any bite that incorporated all the flavors.

In contrast, the gnocchi was heavenly. Plenty of crab and lots of cheese and truffle over perfectly made gnocchi and a wonderful cream. Alan didn't love it - he's not a fan of gnocchi usually and calls out obvious flaw - - it's super rich. It's hard to eat a plate even of this modest size. I didn't see that as a problem and powered through. Yummy!!

I should note that with dinner Alan ordered us a bottle of J. Dumangin non-vintage Brut champagne that I really, really liked. It's not one we have often but it's really nice with a classic acid profile that goes nicely with things like bread, truffles, caviar and foie gras.

For our entrees we had the grilled Chappapeela Farms duck breast with gratin of covey rice yams and mustard greens along with a Two Run Farms bone in rib-eye with progress whipped mozzarella potatoes, gremolatta and marrow crust. The potatoes were really interesting if a little hard to deal with since they had that stringy quality of melted mozzarella. My rib-eye was grilled to a nice medium-rare with good flavor. Not exceptional, but what restaurant steak ever is? Alan's duck was just okay though he did like the accompanying side dishes.

Upon reflection, we both thought this was going to be The meal for us on this trip and it didn't turn out that way. Service was okay, not great. We waited far too long with empty champagne glasses - something that doesn't often occur. The food was good (gnocchi, outstanding) but not great across the board. I'm wondering if it had anything to do with being a major holiday? Anyway, we wouldn't put this one high on the list of places to go back to.

Jenn's Rating: 85
Zagat's Rating: 28-28-27