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.
Avery’s Po-Boys* (#266, 6/24/13) – 76
I had heard some rumors about an outstanding po-boy shop on Tulane Avenue, but I had no idea where it was. Well, it turns out Avery’s Po-Boys are not far from my office at all. It’s very close to all of the new hospital construction; and more importantly, it’s really good! It moved quickly into my second-ranked shrimp po-boy in town.
Now to get into some basic details. I simply went for a shrimp po-boy – I went large (12-inch), which was about $12, so reasonable. It was very good; it was more lightly breaded than most shrimp po-boys and had some excellent seasoning. I didn’t even remember to add hot sauce while eating because it tasted great without. As I took the order to go, that’s all I had as far as food. But I want to try the onion rings, which I heard were good. And very curious about this “horseradish cream” that comes with them. Another future stop may have to include the red beans & rice on a Monday – I saw some and they looked very good. On the food scale, I will give it a 43 out of 50.
The atmosphere…hmm, well, that probably has to include the neighborhood, which is very shady. Not a lot of parking and if you have to go down a side street, you can’t be sure your car will be there when you come out. However, once inside, it’s a nice, clean, basic po-boy joint. You order and pay at the counter and they call you or bring the food out to you. Good and basic. For atmosphere, will say a 20 out of 30.
The service is basic also, but good. No complaints at all. The woman waiting on us, possibly the owner, was very nice and the food came out quickly. Another thing I’m curious about is how quickly you get your food right at noon. We were there before 11:30 so there was no wait, but thinking they could get very busy right at 12. Regardless, based on one visit, I’m giving it a 13 out of 20 on service.
Final score = 76.
Liberty Cheesesteaks* (#265, 6/17/13) – 61
I’ve been meaning to check out this new cheesesteak shop on Freret Street and finally made it to Liberty Cheesesteaks for lunch – Philly Grown, Nola Home. I believe it is some recent Tulane grads from the Philadelphia area who have opened up – smartly realizing that there isn’t a good cheesesteak sub (hoagie) in this town. It’s located in the little building that used to house Dat Dog (Dat Dog is now in the big building across the street).
As far as the sandwich? I went for a Steak Hoagie (about $10), which is a cheesesteak served “dressed” New Orleans style. Except I replaced the oil with JJ’s Sauce, some sort of sriracha mayo. Well, I will say, it’s the best cheesesteak I’ve had in New Orleans. I think the best I had before was at Cafe Nino. Unfortunately, I’ve been spoiled forever by Bill Cahill’s Super Subs in New Hampshire, without question, the best sub around. This one was a bit too salty and the shaved steak wasn’t as lean as I would prefer – a common occurrence for me with philly cheesesteaks, sometimes, I believe it’s by design, just not ideally for my tastes. It was a good sized sandwich with plenty of meat – tough to finish it and I was starving. They also offer a variety of french fires on the side, but I didn’t sample those. So my food ranking for Liberty…I’ll go with 28 (out of 50), better than average.
The atmosphere here is a challenge. It’s a very small place with about three tables inside, and no air conditioning. And it’s summer in New Orleans. They also have a handful of tables outside on the sidewalk, which may work if dressed properly. I opted to take mine to go since I was in work clothes. A big boost to the atmosphere score was back-to-back Doors songs when I walked in – L.A. Woman and Love Her Madly. Good music followed as well. So out of 30 for atmosphere, I’m giving them a 20.
The service was good; guy at the register took my order and they had it bagged up and ready to go in about 10 minutes. So I’ll give them a 13 for service (out of 20).
Final score: 61.
Fresh Bar* (#264, 6/3/13) – 59
Opted for a healthy option for a change at lunch, and while Fresh Bar isn’t quite as good as a solid burger joint, this was a decent option. It has a wide-range of salad products, and even better, they will make any salad into a wrap as well. Much easier in the decision-making process if you can just say, “Give me the Cobb Salad as a wrap.”
Overall, it was a decent meal, not overly filling, but good. The wrap wasn’t huge, but thickly-packed. Tasted good, though quite a few salad products in my teeth after, be warned if you have a bunch of fake teeth. There is a wide-range of items – you pick your lettuce, you pick the type of wrap, you pick your cheese, etc. The prices weren’t too bad either, made it out of lunch for under $10. So I’ll say out of 50 points, this gets a 30 on food.
The atmosphere was pretty basic, but a nice wide-open airy place with everything green and white. The walls may be a little plain, but I guess it’s all to look “fresh.” So as far as atmosphere, I’ll give it a 16 out of 30.
The service was also good. Basic lunch-style, you order at the counter, pay at the counter, then sit down and they deliver it to the table. The woman working at the counter was friendly and helpful, explaining how the ordering works without dirty looks. A wrap and a salad both came very quickly, so a good lunch option as far as time. I’ll give a 13 out of 20 for service.
Final score: 59. One concern is the fact there weren’t many people in the place at noon on a Monday. Could be trouble for the Fresh Bar, hope it survives.
Magazine Pizza (#263, 5/25/13)
This will be a different style write-up as I just had delivery from Magazine Pizza. I went for the four cheese pizza, which had mozzarella, ricotta, cheddar and feta cheese. In hindsight, I should read things more closely. I’m not a big fan of ricotta. And ricotta and feta cooked on pizza was kind of weird. I don’t want to knock them too much for my lack of reading though. With only one “visit” (sampling?) of this place, I didn’t think it was anything spectacular. Probably better off getting pizza from Pi on Tchoupitoulas instead.