Galatoire’s, New Orleans
Posted by bellastraniera - 28/05/10 at 04:05 pm Life is grand at Galatoire’s, the century-old restaurant in the French Quarter, where ladies in hats and men in white linen jackets gather under the ceiling fans in the sunny, tile-floored interior for a lunch that stretches into the afternoon. An oasis of air-conditioned civility on rowdy Bourbon Street, Galatoire’s still requires men to wear jackets, even if the mercury’s pushing 95. It’s one of many ways that Galatoire’s hews to tradition, even as the rest of the world constantly changes.
One of the best windows into New Orleans food, Galatoire’s specializes in the remoulades and etouffees that give Creole cuisine its particular French-Southern twist. The crowd is largely local, and there’s lots of table hopping on the main floor. Service is genteel, efficient but unhurried. A recent lunch here began with a cocktail proffered up on a silver tray. Cocktail hour seemingly never ends in New Orleans: the bar here was full by 2 in the afternoon.
The Galatoire Grand Gouté ($32) is the New Orleans equivalent of a Northeastern seafood platter, though here, the shellfish isn’t presented unadorned but dressed as several salads. All the better to sample the technique that goes into their zingy shrimp remoulade with a spring onion and tomato dressing, a bluefin crab salad with fennel seeds, and an excellent crawfish salad that tasted of the sea with a hint of cayenne.
It would be hard to stay slim as a lady who lunches here, since this is no light fare but rich, butter-drenched Continental cuisine that predates Julia Child’s heyday in the rest of the country. Historically, residents of the French Quarter didn’t consider themselves American but Creole, long after the Louisiana Purchase was signed. Carpet-bagging Anglo Saxons were called “the Americans” and shut out of Creole social life and traditions. (Thus they moved uptown, where prosperous merchants built their grand houses in the Garden District.) There is a fierce pride behind the French-influenced recipes that continues to this day, and Galatoire’s follows the old recipes to the letter, current diet trends be damned.
A fillet of tender salmon comes dressed with a minor river of decadent, buttery Hollandaise sauce ($21) and eggplant gets stuffed with a dense mixture of breadcrumbs, shrimp, crawfish and crab. You’re as likely to hit on the baby in a Mardi Gras king cake as you are to hit upon the vegetable in this dish, but it lives up to the Creole authenticity of the menu. Fortunately, all this came with a platter of perfectly cooked, barely dressed asparagus spears.
The puffy hunk of bread pudding, another New Orleans specialty, arrived warm and laced with bananas. It’s hard for a visitor to wrap her palate around New Orleans’ sweet tooth, however: the sauce was as tooth-achingly sweet as melted pralines.
Though the menu is overall quite good, particularly the seafood salads and fish entrees, Galatoire’s restaurant is not just about the food. For visitors, it’s about taking in the scenery and getting a lesson in genteel, slow-paced New Orleans culture and cuisine. For locals, it’s an essential signifier of home.
Galatoire’s
209 Bourbon Street, between Iberville and Bienville Streets
New Orleans, LA 504-525-2021
galatoires.com
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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.
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