Arnaud's Restaurant 813 Bienville Street in the French Quarter +1.504.523.0611 **** There aren't many traditions that go back as far as the city itself, but Reveillon is one of them. The Reveillon is a classic creole feast. It's the Creole equivalent of going to grandma's for Christmas dinner. The dishes that adorn the Reveillon table, however, are traditional Creole, not the all-American turkey with all the trimmings. Because even most Creole families are American-ized these days, we have the turkey with the family on Christmas day, and preserve Reveillon by going out to eat with the family to a nice restaurant sometime in the holiday season. What's nice about this, of course, is that others visiting the city can enjoy and celebrate with us. We decided to go out to Arnaud's for Reveillon this year. Arnaud's is one of the classic, old-line restaurants in New Orleans. Others in this category would be Antoine's, Brennan's, Broussard's, Commander's Palace, and Galatoire's. Arnaud's was started by Arnaud Cazenave around the turn of the century. The building is a converted Creole "mansion." I say "mansion" because most of the nicest houses in the Quarter don't look like much from the street. To fully appreciate this, you have to go inside. Brennan's, Arnaud's, the museum homes like Gallier House, all look very plain from the street. When you step inside, however, you're greeted by magnificent entrance halls, beautiful rooms, and elaborate courtyards. Anyway, Arnaud took one of these big houses and converted it into a restaurant, in the same manner that the Brennan family converted their location on Royal St. Arnaud's seats 400, but you'd never figure that out from any one table. The restaurant has six public dining rooms and 12 rooms available for private parties. We were seated in the first public dining room, off of the entrance hallway (slow night). I could hear that several private parties were going on upstairs. The dining rooms in our old-line restaurants are not the richly-appointed places some folks associate with fine dining. There's no fancy artwork on the walls--old photos adorn the walls at Arnaud's. There's no expensive wallpaper--just wood paneling with coathooks on two sides, the front windows on the third. The floor is white tile with small inlaid designs. Lighting from simple chandeliers above. The overall effect at Arnaud's is just plain New Orleans. Arnaud's dining rooms are not as dark as Antoine's, but not as stark white as Galatoire's. The tables and chairs are simple old wooden stuff--you gotta love a 4-star restaurant that has wobbly tables (the floor is uneven in several places; a problem in old buildings). Not a problem--the waiter will just grab a piece of cardboard box and level out one of the legs! Most places would never allow such a thing to be done in front of the customers, but this is New Orleans. Who cares about the table, so long as it doesn't cause your food to plop into your lap. The dining room was decorated for Christmas, however, with big wreaths on the frosted glass windows that face Bienville St. and pine and holly garland hung around the walls. There greenery and overall festive atmosphere makes puts you in the mood and certainly gets your appetite going. And you better have a big appetite when coming to Arnaud's. This is a Creole-French restaurant where they don't believe in letting you go away hungry. The regular menu has all of the classic Creole dishes, with Shrimp Remoulade being the signature appetizer (Arnaud's actually bottles and sells their remoulade sauce). Reveillon is a table d'hote menu, however, so the courses are fixed. The reason Reveillon is a fixed menu is that Christmas tends to be a busy time of year for Quarter restaurants. Lots of companies book private rooms to take out employees and clients, etc., and lots of families go out to celebrate the season. Busy nights can be hard on quality control, but if everyone's ordering the same thing, that helps a good bit. The Reveillon dinner is fixed, but it's also cheaper ($35 per person), as an incentive to stay away from the regular menu. You certainly may order off the regular menu, however, and there's no penalty in terms of service or waiting, etc. In fact, there was a couple sitting next to us where the gentleman ordered the Reveillon, the lady ordered off the menu. Since the Reveillon comes with a small sorbet between the appetizer and main course as a palate clearer, they brought the lady one as well, to keep things even. What's important is keeping things even and happy. The Reveillon meal at Arnaud's is more limited than other places. Most restaurants serving Reveillon offer two or three choices for entrees, such as steak, seafood (fish or shellfish), and a chicken or duck entree. Arnaud's just offers a steak (filet). That's OK for us, because Helen and I both enjoy a good steak. Reveillon is a five-coure meal: soup, appetizer, sorbet, main course, dessert. The soup was French Onion. Arnaud's does their onion soup with a large puff pastry cap over the bowl, rather than french bread in the soup. No cheese in this broth--this is an onion soup made with a roux. Thick, hearty, beefy, and delicious. The pastry cap keeps the soup very hot in the trip from kitchen to table. Following the soup was Crawfish Cakes with Smoked Shrimp Butter. The cakes have the consistency of a stuffed crab, but the flavorings are obviously completely different. The dish comes to the table with two crawfish cakes about the size of silver dollars and half an inch high, with the butter sauce poured around them. Some of the crawfish fat and finely chopped green onion are swirled into the sauce. The plate is garnished by two small boiled crawfish. This is a very colorful dish, and it tastes wonderful. The crawfish cakes were followed by a small cranberry sorbet. This gives the diner a chance to clear the palate of the seafood (and possibly the white wine that often accompanies it), and get ready for the steak and the red wine. The sorbet was a light cranberry ice, topped with a single cranberry in a sherbert dish. Nice, light, and did the job. The other thing serving a sorbet does is gives the kitchen a chance to sync the cooking of entrees. Right on time after we finished our ice was the Torunedos Grand Veneur, a filet covered with grand veneur sauce. Also on the plate were some steamed veggies in butter, and a couple of spicy new potatoes. The steaks were done just as ordered, mine rare, Helen's medium well. Both had a peppery crust, then the sauce. The grand veneur sauce is a red wine and sugar beet sauce. The color is very much beet-red, almost cherry red. The sauce includes little diced beet cubes. It's very tasty, and an interesting change from the more common hollandaise or marchand de vin sauces you find at Creole restaurants. It's not a sauce I'd want every day (I actually make marchand de vin at home), but this is Reveillon. Arnaud's knows how to put a good crust on a steak. In these days of blackened whatever, this is becoming a lost art. It doesn't take much talent to dust a steak in cayenne and burn it, but it takes a bit of effort to sprinkle just enough ground black peppercorns on a steak to give it a spicy crust without the pepper overwhelming you. Creole is about balance in flavors, not dumping pepper everywhere (as is suggested by a certain rotund Cajun chef who likes to burn food and sells his own line of cayenne-based seasonings). The steak about wiped out Helen. Both were 8-ounce filets. I swiped a bit of hers, ostensibly to make sure that they know how to do medium-well as well as rare (which is how I ordered mine). Yup, they can cook both extremes just fine. It's important to save room for dessert at a Creole restaurant. The dessert was a square of puff pastry with an almond filling topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then drizzled with chocolate syrup. Wonderful. Add a good, hot cup of coffee with chicory to the dessert, and the meal is complete. Several parties in the dining room ordered a fancier coffee, Cafe' Brulot. This is a coffee-and-brandy combination that is an Arnaud's signature dish. They wheel a prep cart tableside, and put in lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, several other spices, a bit of Grand Marnier, and the brandy. The mixture is flamed, then the preparer cuts the peel of a big navel orange into a spiral, but only partially, so that the peel is still attached to the orange. He then holds the orange in one hand over the pan, and ladles the flaming liquor onto the peel hanging down. The flaming liquor runs down the orange peel, the heat pulling the orange flavor with it. This makes for a great, flashy presentation. You not only have the flame-up when the brandy is ignited, but this show of skill when the mixture is poured over the orange peel. The finished liquor is then mixed with our good, strong coffee and served in a demitasse cup. Wine: Arnaud's has an extensive wine list. You can get first growth Medocs, the best of California, or some fine old Barolos, none of which are really in my budget. I went with a Clos du Blois Merlot. Helen's not big on Cabernets, and I can never remember which years the Bordeauxs are more of one than the other, so it's easier to cop out and get California. Many couples will go for wine by the glass for a dinner like this, so you can have a good white Burgundy or California Chardonnay with the appetizer and a hearty red with the steak. The bottle of red worked out well, because the soup was such a rich one, and the crawfish cakes were so flavorful that both held up well against the red. Had we been a party of four or six instead of two, one or two bottles of white and a bottle of red would have been perfect. Service: There's none better than Arnaud's, but that's the same for all of the old-line restaurants. I couldn't help but chuckle when the waiter came to the table and greeted us, because I kept thinking about the recent rec.food.restaurants thread on waiters who do the "Hi, I'm Mike, and I'll be your waiter this evening." routine. Our waiter's name was John. His assistant/busboy was Placido. The captain for our section of the dining room was William. I know all of this because their nametags said so. One thing about these folks, they're professionals who know their craft well. Both John and William were older men, in their late 40s, early 50s. They took excellent care of us. John didn't bat an eye when the cork broke in the neck of the wine bottle, and just went for a decanter. William saw this, came over, and was able to pull the broken piece out of the bottle himself. Both chatted with us in true New Orleans style, William sharing stories of his time in Italy as he kept an eye on his half of the dining room. We were at the back of the room (farthest away from the windows), so I could overhear the comments made by the staff back and forth. Excellent communication between everyone working the tables. Price: The dinner was fixed at $35 per person. The wine was $35 (a bit high for a bottle I could have bought at Zuppardo's grocery for thirteen bucks, but that's typical restaurant, isn't it?). I had a scotch before dinner, so the total was $108 before tax (9% in New Orleans), which put the bill a bit over $118. I left seven twenties, $140, which was a tip of more-or-less twenty percent. I tipped on the wine because they not only handled the cork well, but they kept our glasses filled and looked after that aspect of the dinner well. It would be fairly easy to keep this dinner closer to $100 for a couple. Nothing can compare to dinner in the Quarter at Christmastime. We've been having some pretty cold weather for down here. There were actually snow flurries Friday, which kept Bourbon Street a bit emptier than one might expect. When we walked out of the restaurant, there was a budled-up Lucky Dog vendor right at the corner of Bourbon and Bienville. No better way for me to wind up a pleasant evening than with thoughts of Old New Orleans and Ignatius J. Reilly. Happy Holidays, everyone! Ed.
New Orleans, LA