710 Arnaud's
From
MICHAEL LOO@1:123/140 to
ALL on Saturday, December 22, 2018 11:05:44
Arnaud's was my B-team go-to place, essentially for
when I wanted creole food and Galatoire's was closed.
It's nicer-looking, but traditionally the food isn't
quite so well done. The tables appear to have turned.
Here the service is and always has been less formal
but cheerier than Galatoire's; today was no exception.
We got seated by a hostess with a big puffy red bow
in her hair, at the John H. O'Connor table and
subsequently served by an assortment of perfectly
fine waiters and hostesses and runners.
For starters a glass of a Moulin-a-Vent from someone
I'd never heard of and whose name I didn't note. It
was richly excellent, and I regretted my inattention.
Souffle potatoes are one of the specialties of this
place and of the city in general. Here you get among
the best. Today, they were a tad on the chewy side,
though as puffy as ever - about the most soufleed
I'd ever seen, which the resiliency might have helped.
The flavor is of course just potato and oil, same as
French fries, of which this is a variant. Some kind of
Creole mustard sauce came on the side, but I found that
unnecessary. The dish as a whole is a tour de force and
mostly a way to allow the restaurant to sell one small
potato for $9.
For mains, Bonnie got the drum Pontchartrain, a very
nice piece of mild seabassy meat with a substantial
blob of crab, which was overlemoned and underbuttered;
she compounded the problem by adding more lemon. The
fish itself was very nice; the crab itself had been
very nice before the lemon.
I got crabmeat Karen, essentially a crab pot pie in
the shape of a puff pastry crab, rather silly, and I
think it was decorated with a smiley face or the crab
equivalent thereof. The inside was good, though less
than a quarter pound and heavily mixed with mushrooms;
the pastry decent though made with something other than
butter, so I didn't eat much of it; the taste I had
reminded me of cheap pot pie crust but a bit flakier.
A Gruner Veltliner Schloss Gobelsburg was superb with
both dishes, suave of texture and with a flavor that
would be hard to describe - citrus, tropical fruit,
who knows - all one should say was that it was good.
For afters, a creme brulee was pretty classic though
a little starchy; caramel custard was extraordinarily
good almost to the degree that Galatoire's was bad.
I ordered a glass of Daron Calvados, What came, well,
I don't know what it was, but it was much better than
any Daron I've ever had.
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