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.

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.

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.