Nola in New Orleans

On 9 Nov 1995, Stan H. wrote:
> Specifically, do I need to dress in a suit and tie to go there?
      Coat and tie are not required in the evening.  I think that dressy
casual is the standard.

What's the price range for dinner, and what kind of food is typically available on the menu at Nola?
      The menu has a wide range of selections which vary from seafood
to veal to pasta.  Each dish is prepared in Louisiana-esque style...Rabbit and andouille sauce piquant; pecan-crusted catch-of-the day, etc.  I had a stellar veal entree, and the house specialty, the cedar planked fish, is interesting.  My brother says that it's like gnawing on a pine tree, but I enjoyed it.  The cedar aroma is infused into the fish...mine was Drum...and kills any fishyness that might otherwise ruin the flavor.
      The cost is quite reasonable, as dining here goes.  Three people
for 150.00  (This price included: drinks, a bottle of wine, 3 course meal, and 20% gratuity.)

Enjoy your stay,

EPS
[email removed]
http://studentweb.tulane.edu/~esmith1

says...

>Roughly 2 weeks from now, I will be in New Orleans for the first time. Three
>of my colleagues will be joining me there to attend a conference and one of
>them will be celebrating a birthday there. To celebrate, we decided to eat
>dinner at Nola, the restaurant that's owned by Emeril Lagasse who has a very
>good cooking show on the TV Food Network. Since I have never been to New
>Orleans or this restaurant before, I was hoping someone who reads this group
>who has been there before can tell me a little about Nola.

NOLA Cafe is on St. Louis Street in the Quarter.  It's in the block between Decatur and Chartres.  Napoleon House is on the corner of St. Louis and Chartres for reference.  Great place, but more on that in a bit.  If you like Emeril, there's always his place (Emeril's) on Tchoupitoulas in the Warehouse District as well.  For first-timers, I'd pick NOLA, since you'll be in the Quarter, and can then more easily take in the ambience of the area.

>
>Specifically, do I need to dress in a suit and tie to go there? What's the
>price range for dinner, and what kind of food is typically available on the
>menu at Nola? I am a very picky eater, but my colleagues are all very open
>minded about what they eat.

Three things to eat come immediately to mind: the Mixed Grill, cedar-plank fish, and the pork chop.  Of these, I enjoyed the cedar-plank fish (it was trout when I ordered it, but they've gone to putting "fish" on the menu to be more flexible in terms of what's running well).  It's hard to put NOLA's food in a category.  Perhaps the name of Emeril's cookbook "New New Orleans Cooking" is the best way to describe it.  Emeril (and, by extension, NOLA) takes the things that people have been using to cook with here in New Orleans for generations and puts new twists on them.  Hence dishes like cedar-plank trout.

Dress:  I usually wear a sport coat when dining in any restaurant downtown. Some places still demand a tie (like Galatoire's on Bourbon), but NOLA and Emeril's aren't that type of place.  You can probably go without even a sportcoat, but that's my concession to being dressy.  As a local, I firmly believe in at least a jacket for dinner.  I've worked for myself long enough to have an aversion to ties, however.  :-)

Price range:  We got out for around a hundred for two last trip there.  That included a drink before dinner and a low-end bottle of wine.

>
>Any info you have will be appreciated. I read this group fairly often so
>feel free to post any responses you have back here although a CC: to me
>would be appreciated, if possible, since my newsfeed is extremely slow.

You know, I don't usually say anything techie in this newsgroup, but the auto-CC function in WinVN is one of the reasons I still come back to this program over any other newsreader (including Netscape) for Windows.

Cheers,
Ed.