Where y’eat? How about where y’eatin’ next? That’s no small question, not in New Orleans, where new restaurants keep coming and our connection to old favorites endure.
In my job chasing the New Orleans restaurant scene I try to keep up with it all, so today I’m offering a quick round up of what’s been on my mind and in my notebook.
Start with Bao & Noodle, a Chinese restaurant newly relocated to St. Claude Avenue for hand pulled biang biang noodles and pan fried pork buns.
Nearby, there’s Tasty Treat, a new restaurant on North Claiborne Avenue for rambunctiously creative takes on Creole comfort food – like seared catfish, grilled shrimp and broccoli under crawfish cheese sauce - all on one plate.
We move upscale and into deeper waters for GW Fins, a longtime French Quarter seafood house where a whole fish approach and some dockside sourcing brings a fuller picture of Gulf bounty to the table.
For a Brazilian breakfast, I’ve been down in Arabi at Quitutes, for breakfast biscuits made on yucca flour cheese bread and gigantic açai smoothies.
In the CBD, a new location for local Congregation Coffee Roasters brings freshly-composed meals or grab-and-go sandwiches and exquisite pastry when the order of the day is something quick.
We go old-school at Gabrielle, the pre-Katrina restaurant reincarnated on Orleans Avenue that’s found some creative ways to change things up, like an October menu themed around the touring Broadway show “Wicked.”
And finally, in old Mandeville, Hambone is a storybook cute cottage that’s now a modern family-friendly restaurant for gorgeously composed contemporary food, mason jars of wine and outdoor tables where, this time of year, you can feel fall on the breeze. The seasons are changing and our cravings will soon shift too, so stay tuned for my next round of rapid fire recommendations.
See my full read on all these spots at NOLA.com.
