Coulis on Prytania

Photo Courtesy of Coulis Facebook

This little breakfast spot down the street from my house is one of my favorite close-by spots for breakfast. Located on Prytania between Amelia and Foucher, Coulis, takes a relatively small space and opens it up with brightly painted walls and huge glass windows.

The Good
-The menu is small, but every dish on it is worth trying. I'd specifically suggest the Eggs Creole or the Special French Toast.
-The coffee is good, better than most breakfast places I've been to in New Orleans.
-If you can't find anything you like on the menu, the omelettes are pretty killer and are gigantic. They also have a good selection of veggie/meat/cheese toppings.
-Two Words: Cheesy. Grits.
-Two More Words: Amazing. Biscuits.

The Not so Good
-They don't serve iced-coffee, which I love, and will make me think twice about going there in the summer. I need the cold stuff.
-If the restaurant is packed, the service is great; if the restaurant is slow, service is awesome; if it's right in the middle, for whatever reason, the food etc has always taken longer.


Good to Know
-They do make gluten-free dishes for anyone who has gluten allergies.
-BYOB - which I've actually done before when I left the bar and went straight to breakfast.

Parasols provides great atmosphere, killer food

While walking around taking pictures on a sunny Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I found Parasols in the Garden District. I had heard the name before, but never actually seen the place. The interior seemed too tiny to be functional at first, with barely any room between the bar and the wall across from it. I had heard they served lunch, and there were people sitting around grubbing on sandwiches, but couldn't even fathom where a kitchen might fit into the tiny building. While searching for the bathroom, I found my answer. The door to the right of the bar led to a non-smoking dining area with ample seating and a window for ordering food. Since I was there, I figured I'd stay for lunch. I've been back three times since.

The Good
-Killer onion rings - everything is fried in peanut oil so it all tastes delicious (unless you're allergic to peanuts)
-My grilled cheese was cooked in a garlic butter, which seams to be the way they cook anything with butter. Amazing.
-Decent remoulade.
-The Chicken gumbo looked pretty good (my friend actually drank the dregs, so I'd imagine it was awesome)
-Irish Sundaes = potato salad, roast beef and gravy

The Not So Good
-This is one of those rare times where I have few if any complaints. I heard that the change of ownership (which happened in the past few years) wasn't the most amicable, but I met the new owners and they're great people.


Good to Know
-The bathrooms are clean as hell, ladies. Just so you know though, it's a single room (no stalls) so if the place is busy get ready for a wait.
-Not entirely sure how late they serve but when I went in around 9pm and asked if they were still serving food, the guy at the counter looked at my like I was crazy and replied, "of course we're still serving food! Who told you we weren't?"
-The bar area is in fact smoke friendly and small so if you don't like smoke, you'd do better in the back.

Buffa's - Best Late Night Food in Town

Photo Taken From Buffa's Facebook

I never thought bar food could actually wow me. Buffa's Bar was one of the two bars I went to this weekend that absolutely killed it in the kitchen. Honestly, even without the food I'd probably still want to hang at this spot. The darkly-lit, single small room (side note: there is a non smoking dining area in the back) with a bar, jukebox and a couple tables is my kind of scene.


I showed up with a kid from the neighborhood, and it became clear to me that almost everyone in the bar was also from the neighborhood. The bartenders and patrons were swapping stories about old friends ("Isn't he in jail in Thailand?" etc) and chatting about the weather as they drank. By the time I finished my meal I was sold. You will be hard pressed to find me at any other dive bar when I make it downtown.

The Good
-Where to start? The fries are a gift from God. Crunchy on the outside, melt in your mouth hot on the inside.
-I had one of the best black bean burgers I've ever eaten. That's right fellow vegetarians, a black bean burger in New Orleans. So. Good.
-Aside from Crystal at every table, there were three shelves of hot sauces in the back room.
-Great jukebox selection as well as good people picking the music.

The Not-so-Good
I'm hard pressed to think of anything. I mean, the bathrooms were regular bar bathrooms (welcome to New  Orleans) and the bar stools didn't have cushions.

Good to Know
-As of recently, Buffa's has started taking credit cards. So bust em out and get drunk!
-They do have feta in their selection of sandwich cheese on their menu. I got some on my fries.

The Grocery - a sandwich for the hangover in everyone

So this morning afternoon, after Rebirth at the leaf and Snake N' Jakes, I was hungover. I have passed by the Grocery a million times, but decided to walk on down there and see what the food was like. I walked out an hour later with a cured hangover and a beer in my hand.

The Good
-Great menu selection: classic po'boys, pressed sandwiches, and clubs. I got the California Avocado (tomatoes, cucumber, avocado, pesto, cream cheese) and it was fantastic.
-Large sandwich size: My friend ordered a small roast beef po'boy and it was at least 6-7 inches across and loaded with goodness
-Beer!

The Not So Good
-Honestly, I'm having a tough time here. I mean I guess it looks more like a deli than a restaurant.. but I don't really have a problem with that. Do you?

Good to Know
-They had a huge lunch rush when we showed around 1:30. By 2:30 when we were leaving the place was almost empty. If you don't want to wait 10 minutes for your order to come up, go early/late.

Surrey's Cafe - Lower Garden District

New Orleans has this random sect of breakfast places that all serve gourmet-ish, super fresh, relatively original eggy concoctions. I don't know if Surrey's Cafe started the trend, but as far as I've seen, they're leading the pack.

The Good:
-The Banana's Foster French Toast is fantastic. I'm not usually one for sweet breakfast dishes (there's something sickly tasting about sweet stuff in the morning), but a few bites of this dish definitely made me happy. If you're a pancakes/waffles kind of person - go with this.
-The sandwich menu looked delicious. I was feeling breakfast when I went, but the spread looked inventive and definitely worth trying.
-Yummy biscuits. Very homemade looking, pretty damned tasty.

The Not-as-Good:
-The Huevos Rancheros dish that I ordered wasn't bad, just ordinary. The black beans etc were all fine, but they skimped on the avocado. It's basically the same Huevos Rancheros you can get anywhere.
-The coffee was stale. I'm a coffee person. I like good coffee. With everything else in Surrey's being homemade and delicious, I was surprised that their coffee failed so hard.
-The Carrot Juice was chunky. I showed up a half hour before closing, so I don't know if everyone was just tired of cooking at that point (might explain the coffee too) or if that's just their style. I didn't enjoy it too much.

Good to Know:
-There's usually a hefty wait in the mornings. When they say 45 minutes, they mean 45 minutes. I tried calling ahead once and it didn't work. Don't go if it's cold, raining or before noon on a weekend.
-They're only open till 3pm so factor that in to your drinking/sleeping habits too.
-CASH ONLY.

Cafe Nino - finally! good pizza

New Orleans lacks in four major areas of delicious food: Mexican food, Deli (po boys are not deli food), Chinese food and Italian pizza parlors. As far as Italian goes, the options are limited to shoddy replicas of New York-style pies, "hipster" pizza(which isn't always bad), healthy cardboard crust pizza, and bs American chain restaurant garbage.

Luckily, one place stands above all of that disappointment. Cafe Nino rivals most of my favorite pizza places up north and puts the rest to shame. The marinara makes the parlor, and Nino's has it covered. Nino, an old Italian dude who runs the place and can be found sitting at the counter most afternoons, listening to Louis Prima and watching soccer on TV.

The building looks like an old, converted Subway sandwich shop. You can grab a slice of pizza, order one of the daily entrees and a side of pasta, or order something off of the menu to be made for you. I usually get a cheese calzone, which is always amazing.

Their selection of wine is as follows: "red" or "white." But for 4.50 you get a 20oz styrofoam cup full - which is a great compliment to the food (and a trip to drink with a lid and straw). (If Nino is working, chat with him. Sometimes he'll give you a little free wine (read: about a normal glass size) "for the digestion.")

What else can I say? Go there. You won't be disappointed.

Slim Goodies - dirty hands in the kitchen

I always liked Slim Goodies. They have a fantastic breakfast menu, and the Veggie Slammer, as it states on the menu, is a killer cure for a hangover. The waitstaff is appropriately apathetic (in that indie, too-cool-for-school kind of way) and the photography on the walls is awesome. The coffee isn't half bad too.

Recently, though, I heard something that made me think twice about eating there. A friend of mine, a Coast Guard chef, told me about the downright gross sanitary standards in the kitchen at this local breakfast eatery.

When you first walk into Slim Goodies, there are a few booths and a counter that is attached to the kitchen. I have never sat at the counter myself, but my source has, and he ended up throwing his entire dish away.

"It was pretty gross," he told me over a drink the other night, "I saw one cook sneeze into his bare hand and then go right on preparing someone's dish... another went from handling raw meat to handling fresh fruit without washing his hands. That's some nasty cross-contamination."

Now this information comes to me through another party, so I can't verify its truth. However, I wouldn't post it if I didn't trust the source. I like the food there but now I'm unsure of what else, aside from eggs and chili, might have been lingering in my slammer.

Sometime in the next month I'll head back and sit at the counter to see for my own eyes, but until then: order at your own risk.

Dinner at Jacques-Imos is well worth the wait

Every single time someone comes to visit me, I take them to Jacques-Imos on Oak St. The restaurant is packed from 6pm, when it opens, to 11pm when it closes. From outside, you can hear ridiculous pop hits from the 80's and 90's blasting from the outdoor speakers. In front of the restaurant is a painted pickup truck that has a table for two set up on warmer days.

The crowd outside and in the first room may scare you out of putting your name on the list, and if you make it to the hostess, the wait time may scare you even more. Don't walk away! That hour and a half to two hours will fly by, and the food is completely worth it.

Steps to take in order to handle the wait time:
1. Show up really early or really late. They start taking names at 5:30 and stop at 9:30. I'm nocturnal so I show up around 9ish to put my name down. This way you won't get bulked into the middle.
        1a. Make a reservation if your party is larger than four. Parties four and under can't make reservations - sorry folks!
2. Once your name is on the list, grab yourself a drink. Get a double, get it in a Crabby Jack's plastic cup. The bartenders at Jacques are some of the best in the city so feel free to ask for your favorite complicated drink. It will taste good. The bar specialty is a watermelon mojito (I think - I know it's something with watermelon in it) but I prefer a madras to start the night off.
3. Take a walk across the street to Frenchy's gallery. Frenchy is a live painter - that is, he paints events (music concerts, sporting events etc) while they are going on. If you are a music fan, Frenchy has almost definitely painted your favorite band - probably while you were watching them play.
4. Poke your head into the Maple Leaf Bar. If it's earlier in the evening, there's usually something going on for free - Oak Street locals jamming etc.
5. Head back to the restaurant and borrow a menu. The deliciousness of everything can be overwhelming so you might want to do some planning.
6. Only keep half an eye on the time. Usually the wait is a little less than what the hostess says it is, but if you aren't in the restaurant itself, the hostess will come out onto the street and yell until she finds you.

5 Delicious Dishes(apps and entrees):
Carpet-Bagger Steak
Alligator Sausage and Shrimp Cheesecake
Crab Stuffed Shrimp
Eggplant Priogue
Fried Green Tomatoes with Shrimp Remoulade


Vegetarian/Vegan Friendly Dish:
Vegetarian Delight -Halved/Cored squash with mixed veggies in a Thai coconut cream sauce with black beans, topped with fried sweet potato slivers