I love New Orleans! I'm lucky that sugarhusband comes from such cool city and that we get to visit several times a year. I don't think he is as excited to visit New Jersey as I am to visit New Orleans. (He can just live his life eating disgusting bagels and pizza in ignorance). I've never been to Mardi Gras, but I did have a recent trip to the Big Easy and I celebrated a few weeks early.I thought I'd share my top three dishes from this trip in honor of Mardi Gras today!
I stopped into Sucre before brunch one day (you read me. Brunch appetizer). I've been meaning to get there on my past couple visits, but this was my first time -- so naturally I had to try some of everything! We tried a slice of King Cake (pictured above), some macarons, and a salted caramel eclair. That's right, filled with salted caramel pastry cream. Eclairs were one of my favorite foods as a little kid (ok, actually, the favorite food was Boston Creme donuts, but they are essentially the same thing right? I lost my ish the first time I tried an eclair) - this was a fun spin on a classic favorite.
In addition to being delicious, the eclair was also covered in gold glitter. Boom.
After our brunch "appetizer", we headed to Coquette, where the brunch is pretty freaking amazing. Some of the dishes we tasted included sweetbreads (which are basically like offal nuggets), a pickled veggie plate, and some ballin shrimp and grits. The winning dish dish was pork cheeks over a biscuit with braised greens. It pretty much melted in the mouth. Accompanied by a delicious bloody mary, it was pretty much the ideal Sunday morning brunch!
On Friday night, I attended a rehearsal dinner at Calcasieu, Donald Link's event space above his tremendously popular restaurant, Cochon. This was a pretty baller rehearsal dinner - the number of forks and knives set at our seats was almost overwhelming. Some of the pre-dinner highlights included a giant charcuterie plate at each table and an artisinal moonshine tasting. The star dish of the dinner was this chicken agnolotti with crisped prosciutto on top. The pasta was perfectly cooked! I need to try and recreate this dish at home.
There were a lot of standout dishes in this meal, but for the most part I kept my camera hidden to avoid being a rude poodle and enjoy the event. The weirdest dish served was a mushroom, fried lemon rind, and mint salad. It was both refreshing and earthy, except I don't like mint or mushrooms, so it wasn't really my thing. There was a course of pork cheeks (they are seriously in vogue right now!) and a pineapple upside down cake for dessert. I thought the cake was amazing, but most people were too stuffed to eat it!
These are just 3 of the awesome dishes I had in NoLa for my last visit -- there were also plenty of chargrilled oysters, grits and grillades, gumbo, and more than enough Bloody Marys to go around. I'm telling you, if I lived there, EVERY Tuesday would be Fat Tuesday. It would just turn into Fat 2014… and 2015…. and 2016.
I hope that everyone had a sinful treat today! I am having some salted caramel gelato as we speak. It's bringing me back to that killer eclair from Sucre!
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