Salú -- New Orleans

This site at 3226 Magazine Street has been home to several restaurants, most recently an Italian bistro that we enjoyed, but its latest incarnation as Salú, a small plate and wine bar, is its best, in my opinion. 

The décor is pleasant and tasteful. Along one wall is a long banquet, and this wall has several large mirrors hung at a downward angle that bring a lot of light and character into the space.

The tables are all covered by the obligatory paper squares, but underneath the paper are gold, royal blue, and crimson cloth tablecloths grouped in three sections in the restaurant.

This color scheme is repeated in the art work on the walls but most strikingly by the large, framed glass disk that is mounted on the ceiling. This blue circle is covered with smaller red and gold shapes so that it looks like a large and luminescent pizza. I guess it looks better than it sounds.

The menu has 5 categories: sopa y ensalada (soups and salads), frio (cold tapas), caliente (hot tapas), paella, and dulche (desserts). The list of dishes in the two tapas categories are the most extensive.

For our late afternoon lunch, we chose 3 “frio” dishes.

First, we ordered the “Deconstructed Beef Tartare.” The beef was very coarsely chopped, not at all near ground. On the plate were small “piles” of roasted peppers, capers, chopped eggs, diced onions, and a “smear” of a mustard sauce. The dish was served with a small pottery dish of crostini. Rich and tasty, this actually might have been enough for us. But we’ve never been into moderation.

Our second dish was white wine poached mussels with a roasted pepper coulis. This was a very generous bowl of tasty mussels drizzled with the roasted pepper sauce. I think I prefer hot mussels to cold, but it was a good choice nonetheless.

Our third dish was the charcuterie and cheese plate. The ingredients, artfully arranged on a “slice” of wood resembling a cross-section of a small tree, consisted of substantial wedges of bleu, brie and, my favorite, Manchego cheese. There were two rolls of salami wrapped around chorizo. Grapes and olives were also part of the presentation. O.K. This might have been enough, too.

With a great wine list and free parking available in the nearby bank parking lot, this will be a place we will definitely be returning to.