A Decadent Food Weekend: Part 3, Lunch at Drago's

After lunch at Café Degas and dinner at Brigsten’s on Friday, it is unfathomable that we would eat for the rest of the weekend, let alone that we stopped for lunch at Drago’s Seafood Restaurant on Saturday on the way out of town.  But we agreed to “go big AND go home!”

Our day-after-decadence plans originally called for brunch at Satsuma, one of my daughter’s favorite Uptown breakfast joints.  But stifling heat (at 10:00 a.m.), long lines, and a hardly-there appetite squelched those plans.

We packed up the car and abstemiously headed home.  But a few miles out of town, I started to feel “peckish,” no doubt because my stomach had been overstretched by the previous day’s indulgences.

So I contacted my BFF Siri, who speaks to me through my phone, about restaurants near us.  The list she provided included Drago’s Seafood Restaurant, a restaurant we had heard about for years but never tried, and we were less than a half of a mile from the exit that would take us there.

With Siri’s careful guidance (don’t try it on your own), we found our way to this Metarie establishment and were given a table immediately.  (Note: Drago’s does not take reservations, so a weekend night might result in a wait.)

Drago’s Restaurant, which opened in 1969, is famous for its charbroiled oysters, and as testament to their oysters’ deliciousness, the restaurant claims to serve 900 dozen a day.

In a final effort to reign in our appetites, my husband “only” ordered a dozen of them, while I ordered a simple bowl of their seafood gumbo.

The oysters were beyond compare—swimming in a garlicky and herby butter sauce and sprinkled with Parmesan.  And Drago’s redefines the term “lagniappe,” which down here in Louisiana means a little something extra.  We counted 17 oysters on this tray—woo, hoo!  Not dipping our crusty bread in the juice left in the shells would have been wasteful.

I have eaten many bowls of seafood gumbo in my 25-plus years here in Baton Rouge, and I have to rank Drago’s in my top five. The roux was rich, but not overly dark, and the soup was enriched by a nice mélange (I love that word!) of diced vegetables, instead of being sort of weirdly, to me, thickened by okra.  I would have liked a tad more seafood in the soup, but there was a decent amount of small shrimp.

We are aware that we only dipped our toes into the pool that is the menu of Drago’s. Many of the items read as standard but, no doubt, delicious fare on southern Louisiana seafood restaurants--fried seafood po-boys and seafood platters.

We will definitely return, but we will never return without ordering a dozen (ha, ha!) charbroiled oysters.

A Decadent Food Weekend: Part 2, Dinner at Brigsten’s

 Although five hours, a thorough tour of the New Orleans Art Museum, and an hour nap separated our lunch at Café Degas from our dinner Brigsten’s, it was a gastronomic undertaking to eat this well, not to mention this much, in one day.  We almost felt heroic when the day was done.

There are so many good restaurants in New Orleans that it’s pretty rare if we dine at one more than once. But Brigsten’s (pronounced “Brightston’s”) is the kind of restaurant you want to return to.  In fact, this was my second visit to Brigsten's.

Brigsten’s is located at 723 Dante Street in uptown New Orleans.  Dante Street is a mostly residential street, and the restaurant is situated a few blocks from where South Carrollton meets the Mississippi River.  So it, like Café Degas, is in a quiet, accessible part of town.  We had the added benefit of being able to walk to Brigsten’s from our daughter’s apartment, and we needed to burn all the calories we could before and, especially, after our wonderful meal there.

The restaurant building is an older home, and inside it’s clear which room was the home’s former porch, parlor and dining room.  The walls and beadboard wainscoting are painted a soft yellow giving the restaurant a homey but elegant feeling.  Most of the relatively few tables (reservations are most necessary) were filled, many with families of parents and college-age children who were, no doubt, returning that weekend to one of New Orleans many universities.

Worth remembering if you visit New Orleans in August is that many restaurants participate in “Coolinary New Orleans” and offer prix fixe lunch and dinner menus at greatly reduced costs. Although we ordered from the regular menu, Brigsten’s Coolinary menu sounded appetizing and offered a nice variety of dishes for $35.

For his first course, my husband ordered “Veal Sweetbreads with Potato Leek Cake, Crimini Mushrooms, Capers, & Lemon Roasted Garlic Butter.”  We both agreed that the sweetbreads were cooked very nicely, but the butter sauce was slightly salty for our tastes.

My first course, a watermelon salad that is offered seasonally, was as beautiful as it was tasty.  Three cucumber slices were placed on a small bed of arugula, and each cucumber slice was topped with a small “cylinder” of seedless watermelon.  Each of the watermelon pieces were topped with a small ball of goat cheese that was rolled in toasted nuts.  A sprinkling of curry-flavored popcorn was an original touch.  My only suggestion would be that the watermelon towers, not just the arugula, be drizzled with a balsamic vinaigrette or reduction.

For his main course, my husband ordered the “Cochon de Lait with Cornbread Dressing, Natural Pan Gravy & Cracklins.”   For those not fluent in French or not from southern Louisiana, cochon de lait means suckling pig, and this “little baby” was exceedingly tender.  My husband commented that his entrée was almost like a full Christmas meal as it included a sweet potato puree and a broccoli soufflé or gratin.

I ordered the “Broiled Gulf Fish with Crabmeat Parmesan Crust, Mushrooms, & Lemon Mousselline.”  The fish of the day was a red snapper, and it was cooked to perfection.  I do have one small complaint about the way south Louisiana restaurants, especially Creole restaurants, serve fish and that is that the fish tends to be overly “accessorized.”   Here crabmeat AND mushrooms AND sauce was just a bit too much.

Even though we were now, like my fish, “stuffed to the gills,” we threw caution and calorie-counting to the wind and ordered dessert.  My husband ordered the pecan pie which our server told us was award-winning, and it only took each of us one bite to understand why.

Most pecan pies are made of pecan halves, and the pecans “float” on top of the rich filling.  Brigsten’s pie is made of pecan pieces which allows the pecans and the filling to be more integrated.  Our server told us that the restaurant doesn’t have a freezer, so the pie would be served on a pool of caramel sauce (the 2nd for the day!) and not with ice cream.  Believe me, we did not miss the ice cream!  (Click here to view Brigsten’s recipe for this marvelous pie.)

Lured by the way name of the dessert rolled off my tongue when I said it, I admit I was suffering under a couple of illusions when I ordered “Café Au Lait Crème Crème Brûlée.”  My first illusion pertained to size. Most crème brûlées are rather small and prepared in shallow ramekins.  This version was served in a full-sized coffee cup!

My second illusion concerned, for lack of a better word, “potency.”  Most coffee-shop café au laits are at least half milk which reduces the strength of the coffee, but this brûléed version seemed quite caffeinated. Don’t get me wrong, the dessert was superb, but my full stomach and buzzing head kept me awake for quite a while.

This was another wonderful dining experience, and if I sound slightly less-than-enthusiastic, it's because decadence can be quite demanding!

A Decadent Food Weekend: Part 1, Lunch at Cafe Degas

By happy coincidence, our daughter, who lives uptown in New Orleans, was out of town the weekend before we returned to our teaching jobs, and she offered us the use of her apartment so we could indulge in some great New Orleans eating (and a little bit of sight-seeing.)  Indulge we did!  Here, in 3 separate posts, are the restaurants we visited.

We began with a late lunch at Café Degas (3127 Esplanade Ave.) We had planned on eating light, but, as so often happens in New Orleans, those good intentions failed.

In fact, those good intentions crashed and burned immediately when we ordered an appetizer called “L’Assiette de Patés” which consisted of two incredibly rich house-made patés—a beef and a pork--and a beef-pork saucisson or sausage. Served with crusty baguette slices, these meat elements were joined on the plate by cornichons, dried figs and a fig mustard that had a great horseradish hit.   The only amount of restraint we showed at this point was in ordering a plate version of this dish instead of the larger board version.

For his lunch entrée, my husband ordered one of his favorite dishes, moules.  Café Degas’s spin on this classic French mussel dish is called “Les Moules au Fenouil," and they serve their mussels, steamed in white wine, on a bed of cooked fennel garnished with fennel fronds.  I didn’t actually get to try a mussel (ahem!), but I can vouch for the wonderful French fries, the traditional moules side dish.

I ordered “La Salade de Chèvre Tiède”  which consisted of roasted beets, Granny Smith apple slices, and toasted walnuts on an arugula salad.  Lightly dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette, the salad also featured two “warm goat cheese croutons” as they were called on the menu.  These croutons were the only weak note of the salad, as they weren’t particularly warm and were essentially crisped baguette slices smeared with goat cheese (which didn’t taste remarkably different from cream cheese).

When we ordered dessert, we salved our consciences by ordering the relatively light “île flotantte” (floating islands) which are soft meringues resting on a puddle of crème anglaise (vanilla custard.)  The “iles” were garnished with blueberries and a particularly good caramel sauce drizzle.  It was hard to restrain ourselves from licking the bowl.

Apart from the delicious food, we also loved the great location and charmingly funky atmosphere of Café Degas.  Away from the hubbub and parking nightmares of the French Quarter, Café Degas is easily accessible and on-street parking is a snap.

As you enter, a deck for outside seating is to the left. Surprisingly the inside seating, to the right, doesn’t look much different as there is a tree growing through the dining room, and the walls are sheets of clear plastic.  Since the plastic is not attached to the wall frames, I assume maybe these are rolled up in temperate weather.  But the room was surprisingly cool on this hot, humid day.

The very friendly wait staff consisted mostly of women, and tattoos seemed to be a job requirement.  But I observed something I’ve never seen in a restaurant.  As the lunch service was coming to a close and only a few customers remained, a small buffet was set up in the dining room, and the wait staff and kitchen crew sat down together in the dining room for lunch.  I am sure that goes a long way in building employee camaraderie and loyalty.

Café Degas calls itself, on its website, “The longest running and most Gallic French Bistro in New Orleans.” I can’t verify either of those claims, but we had a deliciously decadent lunch there, and I highly recommend it!