As summertime rolls in New Orleans, we can all use an escape. But what if travel just isn’t in the books right now? Well, it’s time for what I call the one meal staycation.
Sometimes it only takes a meal to make you feel transported, the spell cast by flavors of somewhere else or an evocative setting. The increasingly diverse New Orleans restaurant scene gives us many gates of departure.
How about a getaway to "Gatsby’s mountain lodge?" That’s the design motif at the Husky a restaurant Freret Street Uptown where the gleaming bar is all done in emerald and brass while the dining room is a mosaic of woodwork that does evoke some kind of deluxe mountain retreat.
You’re settling in at the Husky for a martini and a beef Wellington (which is like a steak wearing a sweater made of pastry). Is it snowing on Freret Street? Maybe in your imagination.
Now for a hop across the pond to the U.K. The Bell, over on Esplanade Avenue near City Park, is a replica worthy version of a British pub right down to the carpet pattern and low stools. The coziness factor is through the roof. Try the frozen gin and tonic, get a proper Guinness and some shattering-crisp fish and chips. God save the king and pass me more minted peas.
Sometimes it’s just the dish alone. That’s how the chicharron and mofongo from El Recoqueo DR can lift one from its strip mall location on the West Bank to the beachfront grills of the Dominican Republic that inspired it. It’s an ode to island cooking done with wonderfully crisp and sticky pork belly with garlicky mashed plantains.
Then there’s the escape into a Tiki fantasy land, that fairytale vision of Polynesia. In the French Quarter, the restaurant and bar Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 is like a miniature theme pork of thatch and island themes serving up nostalgic food and lushly exotic, well-crafted drinks.
Get the Lapu Lapu, a Tiki drink that’s a tidal pool worth of rums and juice, festooned with flowers, plastic monkeys, paper umbrellas and straws as long as opera gloves. Make sure to split it; this ride seats two.
