Rue 127* (#298, 5/7/14) – 77
When looking for a higher-end, nice dinner in midcity, I definitely recommend Rue 127 at the intersection of Carrollton and Canal. It’s a quaint/cozy place with good food and drinks at reasonable prices.
I will lead off with the service, which was outstanding. It was a Wednesday night, so it wasn’t busy, but our waitress was outstanding. She was very knowledgeable on the wine list and convinced us to sample a couple of different wines before making our choice – and the one she was pointing us towards (Avancia Godello, $41) was an excellent call. She checked in regularly without being too annoying and kept the wine glasses refilled, but not non-stop. Nice work. I’m giving it a 19 out of 20 for service.
The food was also excellent. I went for the pan-seared salmon. I was a little concerned it wouldn’t be cooked enough – I like my salmon at least medium and pan-seared worried me. I asked for medium and still probably had closer to rare, but no real complaints, it was very tasty, more just my weirdness about rare fish. While I liked it, thinking I would try something else next time. I’d like to see a few more cow products on the menu, but think their specialty is more fish. We also tried the fried olives (with bacon and bleu cheese) and the fried okra. Both were good, though I’d also like to try the fry bread and the fried chicken skins. I think it’s great that they have these friend items under “snacks” and they’re only $3. Easy opportunity to sample some different stuff. Having said that, neither the okra nor the olives were awesome, they were good though. Scallop dish also looked good, but I didn’t try it. Price-wise, everything was very reasonable for a high-end restaurant, though their specialty drinks are a bit high – I paid $12 for a Young Michael Collins which is an interesting concoction of Irish whiskey, port, bitters and strawberry shrubs or something. Seemed odd, but tasted great. Even at the price, I wanted another. They have some interesting dessert drinks as well. Would consider going back just for a few of those sometime. In the food category, I’m giving this a 36 out of 50.
As far as atmosphere, it was pretty good. As mentioned above, it’s “quaint.” Maybe has 10 tables, but also has some outside seating. I would expect when it’s busy, it would be quite loud and you would be jammed up against other people, which would bother me. They have some interesting art on the walls (like the “guy drinking in the bar” piece) and the bathroom was very clean. Everything was very clean actually – our table gave us a direct view of the kitchen. Like I said, I’d be concerned on a Friday or Saturday night, but for atmosphere, I’ll give it a 22 out of 30.
Final score = 77.