Baie Rouge* (#267, 7/10/13) – 66
I had a bit of a craving for a club sandwich and remembered reading about a new place in a Yelp email, so tracked it down. Baie Rouge had a ton of good reviews on Yelp, so even more appealing. Off I went. It is located on Magazine Street, not far from Napoleon, and I found parking right in front with no problem at all. The place had a cool sign and was much larger than expected and wide-open inside. Right off the bat, I wanted to like it.
I’ll start with atmosphere, since I already did somewhat. It had good music playing – Manu Chao…now that I think about it, they may have only played Manu Chao while I was there, which is a little bizarre, but not bad. Like I said, nice and wide-open, very comfortable. Out of 30 points, I’m going to give it a 25 for atmosphere – high score, but like I said, I wanted to like it from the start, so positive energy gets points.
The service was solid. The waitress seemed a bit bored, but there weren’t a lot of people there at 12:15 on a Wednesday afternoon. She was still nice and the food was very quick – I was very impressed by that. Of course, it was just a club sandwich, but you never know. I think I’ll give some negatives for service for two quirky complaints. No pink sweetener. What the heck is with that? Is there some sort of bad thing done by the makers of Sweet-n-low? Seems like a handful of places don’t have it, instead going with only yellow and blue. I prefer pink, what’s the deal? Anyway, that hasn’t grown into a large issue for me yet. The large issue that I have is….glass ketchup bottles. They drive me crazy. I have said for years that when I’m President, one of my first acts will be banning glass ketchup bottles, especially in casual lunch spots. I have heard a handful of reasons (excuses): they look more classy, they’re easier to refill, etc. I don’t buy it. Ketchup sucks when you have to bang on the 57 over and over until finally you get a few drops. Or even better, stick your knife up in the bottle (who knows how many used knives have been jammed in there). Give me squeeze bottles, please. Actually, I think I heard that scientists have developed a non-stick ketchup bottle. If that’s the case, then okay, you can use those fancy, new, space-age bottles. Anyway, service, 12 out of 20.
Finally, we get to the food. Should I always start with food? Oh well. Anyway, the french fries were excellent (especially once the ketchup came out of the bottle). And then the club sandwich. Unfortunately, it was kind of bland. However, I started debating it (just in my head, not aloud)…I don’t think I like club sandwiches. I used to, but I haven’t really liked one in quite awhile. I think it comes from living in New Orleans. In Connecticut, you can bite into toasted bread and get bits of ham and buzzard and say, “Wow, this is good.” Live in New Orleans for awhile, and it’s more like, “Where is the spiciness and the chunks of shrimp and some kind of amazing sauce?” So anyway, I can’t knock them too much for the uninspired club sandwich. By definition, a club sandwich is uninspired. So I will give them a 29 out of 50 for food. Twenty-five is average, this was a little better than that.
Final score: 66.
Pingback: The Rankings | Sudsbury.com