Reuben’s Soup & Sandwich Company* (#276, 9/26/13) – 67
Getting quite slow on finding new restaurants. I have to admit, not eating out every meal does save some money! Who knew? Anyway, Reuben’s is another CBD lunch spot. Located on Gravier Street right in the middle of a lot of tall buildings means you better look at getting there early to avoid a major lunch rush. We managed to duck in just ahead of a bid crowd.
I figured that going to place called Reuben’s, I better sample a Reuben. It turns out that the owner’s name is Reuben, so the name doesn’t come from it having some spectacular take on the Reuben sandwich. I’m kind of thinking that if your name is Reuben, and you open a sandwich shop, you better come up with a really good Reuben. No? Anyway, the Reuben here was good, just not great, and it was pretty tiny. I tend to like hearty portions, especially around meal time, so that disappointed me. It came with a bag of chips for $9.00. There is an option for a half-Reuben, but that seems insane; I don’t even think it would count as a snack. I’m going with a 32 out of 50 on food, it tasted good, but not enough of it.
The atmosphere was good. Typical “sandwich shop” style. You walk in, order at the counter and they call your name (they actually called our name and brought it to us). It’s a decent-sized place, probably like 20 tables, but again, in a busy neighborhood, so it could be crowded (it’s only open 11-3). I’ll give it a 20 out of 30 for atmosphere.
The service was good; I believe Reuben himself took our order. He didn’t get excited when I ordered his world-famous special Reuben, which he worked for years to perfect to honor his own name, which should have tipped me off that it may not meet my expectations. Even after the crowd arrived, they kept the line moving and kept pumping food out, so that was good. All very friendly as well. On service, I’ll give it a 15 out of 20.
Final score = 67.
Merchant* (#275, 9/3/13) – 56
In the quest to eat at every restaurant in New Orleans, I am slowly knocking off a string of lunch stops in the Central Business District. My latest stop was Merchant on Common Street.
It’s a very basic lunch stop with a counter with about 8-10 seats. You order at the register and can sit at the counter and watch them make your food. There’s also a large picnic-table type seating spot. It’s an open, bright area, but quite small, doesn’t look like that space was ever intended to be a restaurant but someone forced it in. I wasn’t a big fan of the seats at the counter – they’re bar stools, but they are locked down with a foot rest, so if you have longer legs, it’s kind of hard to sit comfortably at them. Not awful though. So overall atmosphere, well, it’s open and clean, so will give it a 15 out of 30 (seats took away a few points).
The menu is somewhat limited, which isn’t all bad. I went for the prosciutto sandwich; it appears all sandwiches are pressed on either a baguette or “sprouted grain bread” (not sure what that might be). The guy recommended going baguette because with their current press, the other bread wouldn’t hold up well – and I like that. I appreciate when they give you advice like that. Anyway, the sandwich was very good and I heard the kale n’ beans sandwich was also good (though I may doubt a little bit, I’m not sure kale is actually supposed to be eaten). Each sandwich came with a small side salad as well and that was decent. I’m not sure if it was worth $12, but it was good, so I won’t knock the price. One warning is I saw other reviews said the crepes are not enough food at all. For me though, the food was solid, I’ll give it a 27 our of 50 on food.
As far as service, again, I’ve seen other reviews saying it’s slow, but no issues for us. Since there was nobody else waiting for food (bad sign that a CBD lunch spot has very few customers at noon?), ours was very quick. In and out in less than 30 minutes. As noted above, the guy serving gave a solid recommendation as well. So good service; I’ll give them a 14 out of 20.
Final scored = 56.
C&A Seafood (#274, 8/24/13) – 68
Ventured into a bit of a shady area on a Saturday afternoon when I wasted too much time to be able to go to Crabby Jack’s or Avery’s for a shrimp po-boy (they both close early). I have been driving by C&A Seafood in Gert Town pretty much every day on the way to work, so finally decided to drop in.
I was pleasantly surprised. I hadn’t really looked at the building in the past, but it’s a decent-looking stucco type look and inside it’s clean and bright, but not industrial bright. Apparently it’s run by a Vietnamese family (for those outside the city, New Orleans has an ever-growing Vietnamese population) and the cases in front are filled with tons of boiled seafood – dungeness crab, king crab, shrimp, crawfish, lobster, etc. I saw multiple people coming in to pick up large orders.
I just had friend seafood on my mind and was just going to get fried shrimp, but thought for variety purposes, I should add oysters as well. I was quite glad I did as the fried oysters were some of the best I have ever sampled. The shrimp was pretty good, very large, but the issue was that the breading went all the way over the tails, so it was a bit tough to figure out where the shell was – ended up chewing on chunks of shell which is never a positive. It also came with french fires which were good. Out of 50 points for food, I’m giving this place a 38, very good.
Atmosphere was better than I expected, but it’s still basically a walk-up tot he counter and go place. It would be an okay place to eat at (I took mine home), but nothing special – nothing bad either. I’ll give it a 17 out of 30 for atmosphere.
The service was good; again, you order at the counter and they call your name when it’s ready. Not many people there on a late Saturday afternoon so it was pretty quick as well. The guys working seemed nice and willing to work, no bad attitude or anything (again, not a given in New Orleans). I’m giving them a 13 out of 20 in service.
Final score = 68. I’ll definitely be back.
Empire State Deli (#273, 8/22/13) – 55
I made my first lunch sojourn to One Shell Square – the tallest building in Louisiana (51 stories, 697 feet; it was also the first Southern skyscraper to surpass 200 meters). It has a bunch of little lunch stops in the building, including Roly Poly, Subway and some independent places. My independent stop was the Empire State Deli, a taste of the Big Apple in the Big Easy.
This doesn’t look like much from outside the doors, but it was actually a pretty good place. I had a pulled pork sandwich which was good and the veggie burger received solid marks as well. They had a good variety of deli-style sandwiches; I may have to go back to try the reuben as I haven’t found many tasty reubens down here. One pet-peeve issue for me was they advertise a sandwich as coming dressed the way you like (by the way, in this area, “dressed” generally means lettuce, tomato, mayo, but could mean pickles, onions, etc. Somehow you’re just supposed to now what it means). However, lettuce was a 10 cent charge and tomato was 20 cents. Not really a big deal, but again, you’re charging for a slice of lettuce? Out of 50 points for food, I’ll give it a 28.
The atmosphere is pretty minimal. A bunch of basic chairs in a fluorescently-lit open area – typical office building lunch spot. I’m going with 15 out of 30 for atmosphere; average for the type of place it is.
Service was decent. You order at the counter, then wait for your number to be called and you go pick it up. The food came fairly fast, so no issues there. I’m giving a 12 out of 20 for service because of the speed of service. It’s a lunch stop, so it should be quick, but that’s not a given down here.
Final score = 55.
Barcadia* (#272, 8/15/13) – 62
Barcadia was a tough decision for me. Does it count for my list or not? Technically, I say no chains; and Barcadia has two original locations in Dallas/Fort Worth. But, I’m going with it, I see chains as things like Applebee’s, Chili’s or McDonald’s. So this counts for me…which is also going to throw me off on another place; I may have to make some adjustments.
Regardless, Barcadia is an interesting place – it is a bar/arcade (hence the name). They have a ton of old-school video games all over the place. I didn’t really look at what they had for games, but looked fun and interesting. It wasn’t a baking hot day when we went for lunch, so they had the large garage door type entrance open, unfortunately, it wasn’t cool out either, so a little warm for that. Note to restaurants: If it’s August in New Orleans and it is cooler than expected, that doesn’t mean open all the doors wide, it’s still crazy humid. It just has basic tables, but not a bad feel to the place. Adding in all the games, I think the atmosphere has to get a solid boost, so I’m giving it a 23 out of 30.
The food had drawn me in the first place. They have a good range of salads, appetizers, burgers and sandwiches. Being a big fan of the American buffalo, I gave the bison patty melt a try. It wasn’t that great, maybe the lowest on my bison experiences. It wasn’t bad by any means, but I think putting it on rye bread didn’t help, a regular bun would have been better. Just didn’t do anything for me. I had fries with it (extra charge) and they were just average. Some of the other sandwiches were good, but nothing special. I am very curious about the fired peanut butter and jelly. I may have to go back just to try that. However, from this trip, I’d say the food is average, but I’ll give it a little boost for creativity. 27 out of 50.
The service here was good. We sat right away, the waitress was friend;y and competent and we didn’t wait too long for food. Just basic; I’ll give it a 12 out of 20.
Final score = 62.
Lucky Rooster* (#271, 8/6/13) – 60
The Lucky Rooster is a new place very close to work, so I was excited to try, hoping it would fit in as a good lunch stop. It also has a fun name with an excellent logo and a fun slogan – Good Food, Good Fortune. So lots of potential here.
The atmosphere seemed okay. It was quite loud; one of those places where every conversation seems to echo through the place. There wasn’t a lot of seating, but sufficient and we hopped into an open slot at the bar, which was fine. They had random music playing, but pretty good – it closed with Twist and Shout by the Beatles, so that’s a positive. It also has a creative menu broken up into Chow, Nibble, Munch, Crunch and Slurp, so that’s fun. Overall, I’ll give it a 19 out of 30 for atmosphere.
The food was decent, but I have to say, the price-to-quantity ratio is going to keep me away from future lunches. I tired the scratch dumplings from “Chow” menu section. They were quite good. Then I followed with the red ginger shrimp Bao from the “Nibble” section. A bao is a folded house-made steam bun stuffed with your choice of contents (you get two with the order). I thought it was way too much breading with barely any shrimp. The two items were $14 combined, which isn’t bad, but not enough food for a meal. I probably needed another round of dumplings or something. And be careful if you opt to just throw in an iced tea – they’re $2.50 each. I don’t understand why restaurants charge so much for iced tea (or any soft drinks for that matter). It’s really starting to bug me; am I really going to have to start just drinking water at lunch? I’ll give this a 27 out of 50 in the food category; pretty good, but too pricey.
As far as service, I had read some bad service review online, but I had no issues. Food came quickly, bartender was attentive, host even offered us a table when one came open. So out of 20 for service, I’ll give them a 14.
Final score = 60.
La Casita (#270, 7/30/13) – 58
The “brand new, snazzy little taqueria on Julia Street” is La Casita. And it’s…pretty good. Nothing great, but I like the “snazzy little” part of their description. It’s a tiny place with a tiny kitchen, but the key thing I think ti has going for it is its Happy Hour specials. $4 margaritas, $2 tacos, half off queso? Yes, that sounds solid to me.
I did not go for happy hour though, it was a lunch drop-in. The atmosphere was pretty good; again, it’s a very small place, but nicely set-up, almost looks like an old hole-in-wall pub, but clean and decently decorated. I am thinking it deserves some solid atmosphere points because I wasn’t blow away by anything else, but still liked it for some reason. I’ll give it a 20 out of 30 for atmosphere.
The food was good. Not remarkable, but good. It has a very basic menu based around tacos. I tried a mission taco and a basic shredded brisket taco, both were pretty good. One issue was that we switched some cheese onto a taco in place of avocado…and they charged us an extra $1. It’s really not a big deal, but adding avocado is $1.25 and adding cheese is $1. It seems like replacing wouldn’t come with the same charge. I don’t really argue that they couldn’t do that – it says right on the menu that cheese is an extra dollar, but c’mon, you’re a new place, don’t be nickle-and-diming people. They also have some funky drinks. The horchata is some weird tasting drink made from rice in-house daily. I still don’t know what to make of it; I’d like to give one a try with a little bit of rum mixed in. They also had some sort of watermelon soda which was interesting. As far as food, I think it was solid, so 30 points out of 50.
Finally, we get down to the service. Bottom line, it wasn’t very good. Not terrible or anything, just relatively slow and uninspired. Seems like most of the new places I go to, they are a little excited to be working there, but our waitress wasn’t that into it. Not a big deal, but takes some points off; they get an eight out of 20 for service.
Final score = 58.
SoBou* (#269, 7/24/13) – 62
Dropped in at SoBou for the first time – if you’re trying to find it, it’s located just south of Bourbon Street in the W Hotel on Chartres St. I just went for lunch and it was decent, not sure I’ll be hurrying back, but might be up for trying again, especially if meeting some in the Quarter.
The atmosphere was decent, though I was surprised it was so dead at about noon on a Wednesday (though it is July in New Orleans). It is a relatively upscale place, but not too crazy, and being based in a hotel, I don’t believe there is any sort of dress code, which can be good or bad, I suppose. Regardless, atmosphere-wise, I wasn’t blown away by anything, just okay. I’ll give it 18 out of 30 points.
As far as food, the menu seems quite limited, which also may not be bad. I didn’t have trouble finding something to eat. I went with a small plate burger which was only $7 and it was outstanding. Adding fries ($5) to the order made it a light meal for me, but pretty good and not that expensive. I would like to give the full size burger a run one of these days. Out of 50 points, I’ll give it a 30.
The service was fine as well. Again, not many people there, so not a big challenge. Servers weren’t over-bearing (I could have a couple of sips of water before they hurried to refill). Out of 20 possible points in service, I’ll give it a 14.
Final score = 62. Not too bad.
Mia’s Balcony* (#268, 7/19/13) – 32
I’ve driven by Mia’s Balcony many times as it has a great location on St. Charles Ave. Finally, I made my way there (primarily due to a group-on). To start with, Mia’s basically gets destroyed on Yelp. It almost made it more appealing as I wanted to see if it could really be that bad – the service seemed to be the biggest issue. My quick take on the place – I don’t see it staying open much longer. I couldn’t help thinking that it must cost a fortune to have a high-end (high-price) St. Charles Ave location; wouldn’t you spend some money on the workers as well?
Anyway, here’s the breakdown. I’ll start with atmosphere. It is a very nice space in a cool older-looking building. It has a nice deck/patio (not really a balcony) out front, and inside, it is average sized with nice open space and high ceilings. Unfortunately for them, there was nobody else in the place at 7:30 on a Friday night. In some ways, that can be a good thing, but I like to have a little activity around me in a restaurant. The number one atmosphere issue however, was the tv in the bar. The place is split, essentially down the middle, bar on one side, restaurant on the other – though you can look into the bar, just a half-wall type divider. Apparently, with so few customers, they get bored, so the tv was blaring loud enough for us to hear on the other side of the place. Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is a decent show, but I don’t need to hear it during dinner. So out of 30 for atmosphere, I’m giving it a 10.
I’ll bounce to food next. A couple of dishes to evaluate from and the fish was outstanding. Unfortunately, their website is down (another bad sign) and the Urban Spoon menu is from 2010, but it was their main fish special, served with red fish this time and it was very tasty. A solid meal. This shows a major flaw in my ratings/reviews. I often only eat one thing, so if I had this, I probably would have give them in the high 30s for food. Instead, I had the filet mignon – which I was excited about since the menu says it’s wrapped in bacon with a chimichurri sauce, both favorites of mine. Unfortunately, there was no bacon. And no chimichurri sauce. And instead of being cooked medium, it was much closer to well done. In other words, it was quite bad. The potatoes were okay, asparagus was marginal at best. Out of 50 points for food, I’m giving it a 20 – the red fish is the only reason it made double digits.
And now, onto the service. Again, the Yelp reviews killed their service. However, I thought our waitress was nice enough, maybe a little over-attentive at first, but no issues at all. She did tell us the fish was salmon before being corrected by another waiter, but not really a big deal. It did take a little bit to actually get a drink offered, but not a big deal. I probably only noticed because of the Yelp reviews. So service had a chance at a decent score…until the bill. We were actually using a Restaurants.com gift certificate, printed that day. When we offered it up, she said, “I’m sorry, we are no longer accepting those. The owner has been trying to let them know.” To be fair, we didn’t mention it before ordering, but on the other hand, we just printed it that day, specifically for Mia’s. Not all that happy about this development, but whatever. Surprisingly, she came back and said the owner would accept it today. So back on track. The original bill was $52; the updated bill was $37. Let’s see, 52-25 equals…37? We mentioned the discrepancy and she came back with an itemized bill, which included at the bottom an “other charge” for $10. She explained that is the gratuity. Good to know as it was just slipped in with no mention of tip being included. So anyway, that seems like a pretty dirty trick which gives them a 2 for service.
Final score: 32. I believe my lowest ever, which seems mean. It has some good food and some location, but the bad steak followed by them essentially trying to cheat us makes them deserving of a terrible total.
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.