Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published Winter-Spring, 2008 The 100 Best Restaurant Dishes The Grand New Orleans Culinary Repertoire What we expect of our best restaurants (or what they think we expect) is that their menus be full of dishes created more or less that day. Dishes never seen before, and will not be available again any time soon. Using ingredients that come and go. In practice, though, even the most adventuresome restaurants develop repertoires of dishes that are either always available, or intermittently so. They have to. Nobody's talented enough to create an entirely new menu daily. And most customers, having enjoyed a dish at a restaurant once, want to have it again. This is how signature dishes come to be. Only the most fanatical gourmets and restaurant critics--neither of whom eat like normal people--never eat the same dish twice. For the next one hundred editions of the New Orleans Menu Daily, we'll explore the same number of repertory dishes currently on local restaurant menus. They must be available at least most of the time when the ingredients are in season to qualify for the list. And they must be so delicious that you'd make a special trip to the restaurant to enjoy them. We published a list like this five years ago. On looking through it, I was surprised by the number of entries that either are no longer available (usually because the restaurant has closed), or have been superseded by other versions of a similar item elsewhere. About one-third of the list has turned over. But that means that a majority of the best dishes of five years ago are still out there, creating raves from people who very likely have eaten them repeatedly. To compile the list, I set the old one aside and made a list of all the great dishes I could think of, checking recent reviews and other notes. I also asked listeners to the radio show to suggest dishes for the list. I also ask you to do so: send suggestions to tom@nomenu.com. I came up with a hundred eighty dishes, all of which fit the criteria. Whittling that down to a hundred was difficult enough that you can believe that even Number 100, below, is a terrific piece of work. We started with #100, and I'll add another entry in the countdown every weekday until we get to #1. #7 Turtle Soup Brennan's French Quarter: 417 Royal, 525-9711 New Orleans' best turtle soup--and its best soup of any kind--is this absolutely perfect, totally consistent version of a local classic. Creole turtle soup is different from--and superior to--from what's made from the reptile in other parts of the world. Ours is thicker, chunkier, and full of big flavors that balance one another out in a thrilling total flavor. Brennan's is made entirely with turtle meat, a bit of tomato, sherry in the pot (don't add sherry at that table!), lemon, what I think is cloves, egg, and a first-class stock. I get it every time I dine at Brennan's, and start thinking about it days in advance. #8 Fricassee of Seafood Pelican Club French Quarter: 615 Bienville, 523-1504. This is the best entree at one of the most underrated restaurants in town. It's hard to pin down its provenance; it has aspects of French bouillabaisse, the local seafood courtbouillon, and an Italian cioppino. The big bowl contains slabs of fresh Gulf fish, big diver scallops, jumbo shrimp, mussels, clams and lobster. All of this is as fine as I've seen around town, often in eye-popping size. Underneath it all is a risotto flavored with saffron, vegetables and a garlic black bean sauce. It's a tremendous fresh flavor, and unlike most such dishes it's very ample to boot. #9 Sirloin Strip Steak Delmonico Lee Circle Area: 1300 St. Charles Ave., 525-4937. The name Delmonico connotes a steakhouse in the minds of a lot of people. Unless they remember the Delmonico that operated for over a century on St. Charles Avenue before Emeril Lagasse bought it in the late 1990s. It's evolved a long way under his management, and in recent years steak has moved to the forefront. They buy prime beef (even the filets are prime), and they dry-age everything in house. More important than that, however, is that they're using the technique Emeril picked up when he was at Commander's of rendering a sirloin strip (one of the dry-aged cuts) black and crusty on the outside, even if it's rare in the center. And of applying a convincing seasoning to the steak. And of serving the steak with interesting sauces. It all adds up to the best steak in town. One of the best anywhere, in fact. #10 Oysters Foch Antoine's French Quarter: 713 St. Louis. 581-4422. The sauce is where the main action is, although the rest of the dish is pretty good, too. It's a variation on hollandaise, which will come as a surprise to those who like it, because it doesn't resemble hollandaise at all. It's so dark that it looks as if it's made out of chocolate. The flavors of tomato, sherry, and pepper come through, too. There's nothing like it in any New Orleans restaurant (or any other restaurant anywhere, to my knowledge).  The sauce goes over the top of a eight to ten cornmeal-coated fried oysters, placed on foie-gras-slathered toast. It's supposed to recall the horrible battles in World War I led by Marshal Ferdinand Foch, but the less you know about that, the better. It's a fantastic and unique appetizer. Antoine's also uses this sauce (its name is Colbert, but it's not like the French classic of the same name) on breaded trout or soft-shell crabs. That's marvelous, too. #11 Gumbo Ya-Ya Mr. B's French Quarter: 201 Royal, 523-2078. Mr. B's has two gumbos: seafood gumbo without a roux, and a chicken andouille gumbo with a very dark roux. When the place opened in 1979, chicken gumbo was a rarity in restaurants. It would not remain so. Gumbo ya-ya--the name they gave to their dense chicken gumbo--was so spectacular and created so much talk that other Creole bistros, who were busy imitating Mr. B's in other ways, added it to their menus. The recipe was created by Paul Prudhomme at Commander's Palace, and brought over to the more casual Mr. B's. It has remained their signature soup ever since. The dark roux is abetted with an intense chicken stock, great smoky andouille from Laplace, and a perfect seasoning balance. It's difficult for me to dine at Mr. B's without at least a taste of the stuff from somebody else's bowl. (Like my son's. He loves it as much as I do.) It remains, after all these years, the best gumbo of any kind in this city. #12 Galatoire Gouté Galatoire's French Quarter: 209 Bourbon, 525-2021. This is a combination of three familiar cold appetizers, all of which are good to make it on this list on their own. The crabmeat maison (a dish other restaurants call crabmeat ravigote) is jumbo lump crabmeat touched with a very light mayonnaise flavored with a touch of mustard, capers, and lemon. The sauce is minimal, the crabmeat almost as good as it gets. (It would be better if it were always unpasteurized, but they run through so much crabmeat here that it's a logistical problem.) The second part of the trio is shrimp remoulade, second only to Arnaud's, tangy, spicy, and involving Louisiana shrimp of unimpeachable merit. The third item on this platter varies with the season. Winter and spring, it's crawfish with a mustardy variation of the sauce on the crabmeat. Shrimp pinch-hits when the mudbugs are gone. A great nibble with cocktails. The Grand Goute take this one step farther by adding the delicious oysters en brochette to the platter. #13 Grilled Fish With Salsetta Alla Minuta Andrea's Metairie: 3100 19th Street. 834-8583. Chef Andrea Apuzzo crows maybe a bit too much about the fact that his fish comes swimming to the door, that he checks the eyes and gills, fillets the fish himself, etc. In fact, all of that is true. Beyond that, no restaurant buys more variety of fresh fish than Andrea does. He prepares it many different ways, quite a few of which are along these lines: the fish is baked or grilled, and moistened with an almost sloshy sauce made from fish stock, fresh herbs, wine, garlic, and perhaps a little tomato. A sauce he makes called "salsetta alla minuta" is the most elemental of these; it's deliberately undercooked to give it a great fresh taste. All of his other variations on that theme are also good, notably the fish basilico or aqua pazza ("crazy water"). The excellence of the fish comes through in all these. #14 Soft Shell Crab with Crabmeat Meuniere Clancy's Uptown: 6100 Annunciation, 895-1111. Dish #15 on this list uses the Creole style of meuniere sauce. This one is more along classical French lines, although it's a pure New Orleans creation. Clancy's proprietor Brad Hollingsworth came to appreciate it when he worked as a waiter at LeRuth's. It's simple enough: the crabs are dusted in flour, fried in such a way that the legs and claws fan out, then served with brown butter. This is classic French meuniere. Chef Warren LeRuth added another touch, topping it with lump crabmeat. That's without doubt the most popular gambit for cooks and waiters in New Orleans restaurants, so much so that more fish is served with crabmeat on top in white-tablecloth restaurants than without. But LeRuth hatched the idea of doing that with a crab, which makes eminent sense. Clancy's turns this out as well as LeRuth's did, and when soft-shells are in season it's the best dish in the house. #15 Pecan-Crusted Fish With Crabmeat Meuniere Dick And Jenny's Uptown: 4501 Tchoupitoulas, 894-9880. As is true with many New Orleans dishes, those named "meuniere" are made in more ways than one. Two, in this case. The version they do at Dick and Jenny's is the one originally created at Arnaud's, with a thick, light brown sauce with a buttery, lemony flavor and a hint of stock. It also takes an idea from Commander's Palace. In the 1970s, Ella Brennan told Paul Prudhomme to replace the trout amandine everybody in town served with a more distinctly local fish dish using pecans. It was a tremendous hit and widely copied. This is the best version I've found around town, generous with the fresh local fish, and an exciting, big-flavored sauce. And, like everything else at this rightly popular restaurant, the price is a bargain. #16 Oysters Bienville Pascal's Manale Uptown: 1838 Napoleon Ave., 895-4877. The most famous of all the baked oyster dishes is oysters Rockefeller. But the best of them is oysters Bienville--if they're made with some care, anyway. Lots of restaurants make the dish, and there's almost no agreement among them as to what the recipe is. If I had to pick a gold standard, it would be Manale's version. Like most of the food there, it's an old-fashioned style. The sauce start with shrimp, mushrooms, and a little bacon, all of which is folded into a roux with a bit of Parmesan cheese and green onions. That makes the sauce sit up in a pile, as well as gives it a fluffy quality. I could eat a few dozen of these, were they not so rich. One other quality: they don't make each shell so full of stuff that you can't eat a half-dozen as an appetizer. #17 Double Cut Pork Chop Emeril's Warehouse District: 800 Tchoupitoulas, 528-9393. Emeril's restaurants have always featured a killer pork chop. Its goodness begins with Emeril's assiduousness in the purchase of first-class ingredients. In this case, the chops come from Niman Ranch, a top producer of naturally-raised meats. The tenderness and flavor are an obvious step up from what you're used to eating. The thing is cut generously--two bones--and seared on the grill until it picks up some smoke flavor. You can order this one with a blush of pink in the center; it's perfectly safe, according to USDA rules, and still juicy. Two sauces get slathered and striped (respectively) over it (and the plate around it, in an arresting presentation. The slather is a pale green chile mole, thick and mildly spicy. The stripes are of a tamarind glaze. (Tamarinds are steak sauce on the hoof.) They finish the plate with caramelized sweet potatoes. A hearty plate of food, and the city's finest pork chop. #18 Chicken Pontalba Palace Cafe CBD: 605 Canal, 523-1661. Chicken Pontalba was created at Brennan's back in the 1940s. Even the Brennans look upon it as an almost hopelessly antiquated dish. Which it probably is. That, however, takes nothing away from its goodness. It's a half-chicken (or perhaps just a breast) that's been broiled or baked. It's covered with a combination of ham, mushrooms, and potatoes, all sauteed in butter. Over the top of it all is bearnaise sauce. Chicken Pontalba reached a peak some years ago when the Palace Café had rotisseries for the chickens. They got rid of those, but brought them back last year. Even though the Palace Café offers the dish only on their weekend brunch menus, at least we know where to find it. Clancy's, on the other hand, has it on the menu all the time. Other restaurants serve it as a special. Brigtsen's, which acquits itself well on the dish, is one of those. But, like everything else there, it's here today, gone tomorrow. #19 Duck Tchoupitoulas Tommy's Warehouse District: 746 Tchoupitoulas, 581-1103. In an era when most duck dishes consist of either the grilled breast or the confit of leg, the duck at Tommy's is unusual in being a half duck, still in one piece. It's roasted to a crisp skin and a tender interior and fills a plate grandly. Also on there is a slightly sweet, slightly peppery sauce sharpened with vinegar and raspberries. The whole thing is underlined with fresh spinach, and there's wild rice on the side. In other words, it's the kind of duck dish that was almost universal twenty years ago. It's great to know a few places that still roast duck that way. Tommy Andrade's excellent Creole and Italian restaurant is the best. #20 Oysters Giovanni Cafe Giovanni French Quarter: 117 Decatur, 529-2154. Chef Duke Locicero won a big cooking contest years ago with this dish, and it's easy to see why. It starts out with money in the bank: fried oysters, crisp with cornmeal at the exterior, still bulging. A bunch of those are arrayed in a circle on a plate spread with a unique brown sauce. It tastes like nothing else I know: sweet, gingery, savory, a little peppery--hard to describe, but perfect with oysters. In that sauce three colorful fruit-flavored sauces get swirled in to make a stained-glass effect. My first impression was that this was too much fooling around, but the sauces actually add quite a nice flavor. It's such a terrific dish that it's hard to go to Café Giovanni without starting dinner off with these. At the very least, get an order to pass around the table. #21 Rabbit Two Ways Bayona French Quarter: 430 Dauphine, 525-4455. It seems to me that this is a new dish since the hurricane at Bayona, whose menus evolved quite a bit after the storm. The rabbit loin gets stuffed with Italian sausage and grilled. The rabbit leg meat is panneed and tossed between garnishes that evolved. It's white beans now, but I remember an herbal gnocchi another time. Escarole now, broccoli raab in the past. A marvelous Marsala-based sauce completes the Italian aspect. This is the best dish I've had at Bayona in recent times, as well as the best rabbit dish in town at the moment. #22 Bananas Foster Arnaud's French Quarter: 813  Bienville, 523-5433. Bananas Foster was invented at Brennan's, whose version remains one of the best desserts in town. As often happens, however, a determined imitator made an improvement. Arnaud's version of bananas Foster has a little more cinnamon, a little more dazzle in the preparation, and in every other way is a little bit better. Bananas Foster was created because the Brennans were very intimate with the family that ran United Fruit Company, the world's largest banana importer. It was the recipe of Chef Paul Blange, who inspired most of Brennan's early cooking, and names after the people who owned the Foster Awning Company. To me, the most telling aspect of the dessert is that even the most uppity French chefs I've known think it's brilliant. And it is. The best dessert in New Orleans. #23 Scallop Stuffed Artichoke Pelican Club French Quarter: 615 Bienville, 523-1504. Scallops are not from around here, but in these days of being able to fly any seafood anywhere, it's easy to find good ones around town. I can think of many versions around town that I love, but none better than the way they cook the big diver scallops at the Pelican Club. They sear them first, and place them around some artichoke heart, splayed out into a flower around an artichoke bottom. The whole thing is touched with a garlic beurre blanc, and the net effect takes full advantage of the flavor affinities between scallops (or any other bivalve, for that matter) and artichokes. This is the best appetizer in the house, which is saying something given the size and goodness of the shrimp remoulade and lump crabmeat ravigote the Pelican Club puts out. #24 Confit Of Duck Leg Gautreau's Uptown: 1728 Soniat. 899-7397. Gautreau's menu is ever changing as the ingredients of the seasons change. But I can't imagine the day will come that they will remove this tidbit. It’s mind-bendingly good--and it’s peculiar, too. Duck as an appetizer? It works. Duck legs are initially cooked in duck fat, making them absurdly tender. That's done in advance. When you order, the chef (Sue Zemanick, who recently received some nice attention from Food & Wine magazine) gives it a quick pan-broiling in duck fat to crisp up the skin. It gets a quality almost like that of cracklins. The flavor and mouthfeel is a distinctive grabber. No small number of people ask for a double order as an entree. Not to be missed on any visit to this consistently fine Uptown pioneer. #25 Crabmeat au Gratin Bon-Ton Café CBD: 401 Magazine, 524-3386. The Bon-Ton is best known (especially this time of year) for its crawfish dishes. With good reason. However, it is also one of the three or four best restaurants for the eating of crabmeat. They prepare it many different ways, but the star is their crabmeat au gratin. It's the best version of that dish I've had anywhere. The crab is jumbo lump, comes out in a ceramic baking dish bubbling and aromatic, spooned onto your plate by the waitress. It's very rich, but--and this is what's so good about it--it's not especially cheesy. The sauce is a bechamel with just a touch of cheese, and it comes out a little crusty on top. They always have it, but if you order it when crabmeat is out of season, please don't let on that you heard about it from me. #26 Oysters Al Oreganate Ristorante Filippo Metairie: 1917 Ridgelake. 835-4008. Baked oysters in the Italian style appear more than once on this list, representing different recipes. This is the most polished of them all. Phil Gagliano serves them sizzling in an au gratin dish, topped with the usual bread crumbs, garlic, Parmesan cheese, herbs, and a bit of pancetta. The aroma of this is marvelous, and the taste even better. Be careful eating: this is a real mouth-searer when it first arrives. And it's also one of the few baked oyster appetizers of which one can actually eat a half-dozen and then move on to an entree. Maybe even a salad. #27 Mussels With Chorizo Vizard's Uptown: 5015 Magazine. 529-9912. Kevin Vizard, a more itinerant chef than most, created this dish during a brief interregnum at the Indigo restaurant on Bayou Road. It's shown up at every restaurant he's had since, including this little shop on Magazine Street. It's hard to resist ordering them as an appetizer. Spicy and lusty, it starts with a classic sauce of the mussel juices with a little tomato and onions. He ought to call the sausage component by the Creole name chaurice, since its crumbly texture more resembles the local version of that sausage than the Spanish one. It not only adds substance to the brothy sauce, but no small amount of pepper. In its latest version, the chef added ziti pasta to spread the flavors out even more. The eating is so intense that this is one of the few servings of mussels I must limit to the appetizer portion. Even then, it fills you up more than you expect. #28 Blackened Tuna K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen French Quarter: 416 Chartres. 524-7394. There are many stories behind the origin of blackened fish. The one I believe began at Commander's Palace, where one of the Brennan's wondered whether fish could be cooked the way they were searing their steaks--in a very hot black iron skillet. Whatever happened, Chef Paul Prudhomme, who was the head of all the kitchens allied with Commander's at the time, put the name on the dish. When Chef Paul opened his own place, blackened redfish became a signature dish almost immediately. Crusted with Creole seasoning, passed through butter, and slammed into the skillet, it often flamed up for a few seconds. When the dish became so popular that the commercial redfish fishery had to be shut down (it still is), Chef Paul put the word out that he thought everybody should stop blackening redfish for awhile. He added that blackened tuna was a better dish anyway. He was right. It remains a specialty at K-Paul's, where they cut the fish thick and leave it a little rare in the middle. When it hits the plate, it looks more like steak than fish. In my opinion, there is no better way to cook tuna. #29 Shrimp Arnaud Arnaud's French Quarter: 813 Bienville, 523-5433. The best version of shrimp remoulade in New Orleans (and that's saying something) has a lot of history, some of it a little nutty. It was created by one of Count Arnaud's chefs in the early days of the restaurant, following a common formula of the day. The original Creole remoulade was very different from the French classic of the same name. It was an oily marinade with paprika, Creole mustard, green onions, and little else. Arnaud's sauce still contains a great deal of oil, emulsified with the other ingredients tp make a sauce that's at the same time powerful and rich. When the Count's daughter Germaine sold the restaurant to Archie Casbarian in 1978, she retained the rights to the remoulade sauce. For a time, her personal chef made and bottled it for the restaurant. After she died, a brief interval passed when a puzzled banker, in charge of Germaine's trust, had to make the sauce himself. Finally, the restaurant got the right to make the stuff, according to the same exact recipe. It's the one thing at Arnaud's that never changes. There's more to this essential appetizer than just the sauce. They undercook the shrimp when they boil them, and let the acidity of the sauce finish the cooking. That may be the step that makes shrimp Arnaud so distinctive. Unless it's the unfettered sharpness of the ingredients. Which, it must be said, will be too much for some palates. I absolutely love it. #30 Eggs Sardou (And Its Ilk) Brennan's French Quarter: 417 Royal, 525-9711 This dish as an exemplar of a range of similar creations on the unique and famous breakfast menu at Brennan's. It's one of the two or three most popular entrees on that card, and it makes a good preliminary course at dinner. The eggs are poached to perfect spheres, the creamed spinach has just the right richness, the artichoke bottoms are firm, and the hollandaise is a little spicy and perfect in consistency. Other Brennan's egg dishes about which many of the same things can be said include eggs Shannon (on fried trout with spinach and hollandaise), eggs Hussarde (atop ham and tomatoes with a brown mushroom sauce and hollandaise), and Nouvelle Orleans (on lump crabmeat with a brandy cream sauce). Trying to pick out which is the besrt is like deciding on the best sno-ball flavor. It's strictly a matter of personal taste, or one's own whim of the moment. There are other Sardou dishes here and there. Notable among them is eggs Sardou at Antoine's, which actually created the dish and makes it differently than anyone else (no creamed spinach). Crabmeat Sardou is one of the best lighter dishes at Galatoire's. Still, when you say "Sardou," Brennan's comes immediately to mind, because of the perfection of this dish. #31 Roast Duck with Green Peppercorns Andrea's Metairie: 3100 19th (at Ridgelake) Any restaurant that serves roast duck shows a commitment to its diners. Duck requires more attention from the kitchen than most dishes, having to be roasted most of the way to doneness in advance. Then there's the inevitable squawk from naive diners that they've been served two leg quarters rather than breast and leg quarters (this is because the two look very much alike). The sauce takes a bit of thought and work, too. Chef Andrea, who claims to be able to do all things for all people, does not mind that a dish requires work. This is why he offers no fewer than four different preparations of roast duck, with sauces made from oranges, raspberries, plums, and peppercorns and cream. All are wonderful, although the peppercorn is the one that hits home for me. The duck is crispy at the skin and grandly served. #32 Porterhouse Steak For Two Ruth's Chris Steak House CBD: 228 Poydras (Harrah's Hotel),587-7099. Metairie: 3633 Veterans Blvd., 888-3600. They don't sell a lot of these forty-ounce slabs of prime beef at Ruth's Chris. And, as I gather from talking to the management, that's fine with them. Even at the lofty price they charge (last time I looked, it was gaining on $80), the margin on this isn't great. It takes a lot of time and attention on the part of the broiler chef. It's a little difficult to serve. But this is without question the finest steak on Ruth's menu. It's a bone-in job that they carve up for you in the kitchen to make it easier to dig into. If you want to be certain you're eating a prime filet mignon here, get this. The porterhouse always has a large filet on one side of the bone, and it is unimpeachably USDA prime grade. (The standard filet probably isn't.) #33 Vermouth-Steamed Mussels With Tomatoes And Pancetta Bacco French Quarter: 310 Chartres. 522-2426. Except during white truffle season, this is easily the best dish at Ralph Brennan's unique Italian trattoria. Like all great mussel dishes, it's quickly and simply cooked. Like many dishes these days, its name pretty much gives the entire recipe. The vermouth is a subtlety, but everything else is right up front. The tomatoes aren't in there long, so they still have a nice sharpness. Richness comes from the pancetta--unsmoked Italian bacon. Aroma from fresh herbs and  garlic. Enough crushed red pepper to create a pleasant glow. The mussels are never overcooked, and in fact sometimes come out lukewarm--but this is a dish where that might be the perfect temperature. They send you a generous dozen mussels as an appetizer, and a satisfying entree can be had by doubling that order. The recipe for this dish is on Bacco's web site, here. #34 Soft-Shell Crab With Tomato-Garlic Sauce Vincent's Metairie: 4411 Chastant St. 885-2984. Riverbend: 7839 St. Charles Ave. 866-9313. "This is the dish that convinced me I could cook as well as any of those idiot chefs that used to scream at me when I was a waiter," says Vincent Catalanotto. The idea is simple: it's a fried soft-shell crab (nice and big, greaseless) that he tosses around for a few seconds with a combination of his tomato sauce and garlic butter. It also has a little spice to it. It creates as original and tasty a version of soft-shells as you're likely to find. It's not on the menu anymore, but Vincent says that you need only ask for it (during soft-shell crab season--the warmer months) and they'll make it. One more miracle about this dish: it leaps over the usual aversion I have to seafood with tomato sauces. When those are good at all, they're outrageously good, and this is that. #35 Peking Duck Café East Metairie: 4628 Rye, 888-0078. One of the grandest dishes in the Mandarin cuisine, Peking duck looks simple enough. But the preparation is involved. The duck is hung up to age for a few days, coated with herbs and sometimes honey. Then it's slowly roasted for a long time, after which the heat is turned up to crisp the skin. Out comes the whole duck on a big platter, for the diners to ogle and approve. It returns to the kitchen, where it's cut up into skin and meat portions. When it returns to the table, each diner gets thin "pancakes" (most restaurants now use flour tortillas for this). You spread hoisin sauce on the pancakes, add pieces of skin or meat or both, and some green onions. You roll it up and eat it like a burrito. It makes a magnificent first course for six people or so, or an entree for two to four. The Café East performs all these feats very well, plus one more. The parts of the duck that don't usually make it into the final presentation are turned into an extra stir-fry dish, making another course entirely. The Peking duck does not need to be ordered in advance; it's on the menu all the time. #36 Slow-Roasted Squab Peristyle French Quarter: 1041 Dumaine, 593-9535. I don't remember which of Peristyle's first two chef-owners installed squab as a regular menu item, but it was a good idea. The immature pigeons are seldom offered even as a special in local restaurants, even though there's a long history of serving the birds in New Orleans. (Antoine's and Mosca's both made specialties of squab at one time.) This, despite the fact that the red-meat bird is the most delicious and interesting fowl available to non-hunters. Squabs are farm-raised, and harvested right before they get ready to start flying. At that time, they're bigger than their parents--and the extra avoirdupois is all fat. (Which on a bird that size is not a dangerous amount.) A squab breast resembles baby beef in color, but not flavor. The way Tom Wolfe does it these days at Peristyle is original: instead of roasting or grilling it, he cooks it slow with a lot of moisture, flavored with orange--along the lines of what one might do with a duck. Wolfe didn't have squab when he first took over Peristyle, but the restaurant's fans made him do it, and we're glad he took their advice. #37 Wood-Grilled Pompano With Crabmeat And Lobster Butter GW Fins French Quarter: 808 Bienville, 581-3467. Pompano is the best fish in our seas. In fact, based on my experience so far, it's my favorite fish in any sea. Chefs who understand pompano's merits know better than to add very much to it. The version at GW Fins is available most of the time, although the nature of pompano is that it comes and goes a lot. It's straightforward: the fish goes on the grill with its skin intact, gets a little crisp at the edges, and has the butter-soaked crabmeat deposited thereupon. The garnish is really unnecessary, but it doesn't make such a powerful statement that it gets in the way. Also laudable about GW Fins: everything's fresh, and they don't hesitate to pull a menu item if they don't like the looks of it. Know that pompano has a bigger flavor than most fish. That's what I like about it, but those who don't like the taste of fish may want to leave it for those of us who do. #38 Pain Perdu Café Adelaide CBD: Loew's Hotel, 300 Poydras Street, 595-3305. Pain perdu is French for "lost bread," and is to my palate the single most delicious, distinctly local item on the breakfast menu. what the rest of America calls "French toast" is raised to high art here by a simple step: the stale French bread is soaked in the rich, cinnamony custard until its so saturated that it's almost falling apart. I've never seen that done better than the way they do at Café Adelaide. And the kitchen goes two steps beyond, cutting the bread extra thick, and topping it with pecans and slices of strawberries. They also bring some syrup on the side, but it doesn't need it. #39 Crawfish And Goat Cheese Crepes Muriel's French Quarter: 801 Chartres, 568-1885. This appetizer (made with shrimp when crawfish are out of season, with no loss of goodness) first appeared on Muriel's menu during the chefhood of Erik Veney. Two subsequent chefs made many changes to the food during their times, but the crawfish and goat cheese crepes remain inviolate, a classic dish for which it's hard to imagine an improvement. The goat cheese is inside the crepes, softened by an admixture of cream cheese and sharpened with chives and shallots. The crawfish are in the sauce, with butter, a little tomato, and bell peppers. It's a wonderful taste with which to begin a meal--rich, but not too. Muriel's recipe for this is here. #40 Sweetbreads With Serrano Ham And Crimini Mushrooms Vega Tapas Café Old Metairie: 2051 Metairie Rd., 836-2007. Sweetbreads languished on menus for decades, eaten only  occasionally by gourmets. But these thymus glands (they come from the neck of a veal calf) have become more popular, ever since restaurants began serving them as appetizers instead of entrees. They're too rich for a main course, really, and are more compatible with the kinds of intense sauces that show up on smaller courses. Which is almost the only size course they serve at Vega Tapas Café. They're give a bit of Spanish flavor there, combined with the dry-cured serrano ham and crimini mushrooms (those are small portobellos). The sauce--sherry mounted with butter--pulls it all together into a very convincing mouthful of food. #41 Fried Catfish Bozo's Metairie: 3117 21st Street. 831-8666. A perfect example of something simple has an extra level of enjoyment: you don't have to think about it to love it. Fried catfish is a straightforward proposition. The quality criteria are clear: you want wild-caught, small, fresh fish from good waters. Then you want it coated in cornmeal, fried until golden brown and crisp, and sent to the table immediately. As obvious as all that may seem, I know of only one restaurant that prepares catfish like that all the time: Bozo's. Chris Vodonovich built a network of connections to get the sweet, wild fish most of the time (he takes it off the menu if it's not to his liking, but that doesn't happen often). He still cooks most of it personally. And there's nothing like it. It needs nothing but maybe a squeeze of lemon juice. Keep that tartar sauce away. Only Barrow's rivaled it for goodness--but Barrow's hasn't returned since the hurricane. The only way one could fail to be impressed is if one's criteria were for something other than goodness. (A need for massive piles of food, for example.) #42 Soft-Shell Crab Stuffed With Seafood Dakota Covington: 629 N. US 190, 985-892-3712. It looks like a golden-brown, fried baseball with legs and claws. Chef Kim Kringlie thought there was something missing from a soft-shell crab after he cleaned out the gills, so he stuffed the cavities with crabmeat, crawfish, and shrimp, the latter two chopped into pieces about the size you'd use for a crab cake. He kept adding more of the stuffing until it became very impressive to see on the plate. And to the point where one crab would fill you. After frying, the thing is set on a light stew of wild grains, and topped with "Creolaise"--hollandaise with some Creole mustard mixed in. That's been on the menu at Dakota since the beginning, and when the crabs are available it's the thing to get if you never did before. #43 Trout (Or Veal Or Soft-Shell Crabs) Marianna Impastato's Metairie: 3400 16th. 455-1545. Sal & Judy's Lacombe: 27491 Highway 190 , 985-882-9443. Here is the coming together of four ingredients--artichokes, mushrooms, butter, and lemon--that are so much in harmony that it's a wonder this isn't a universal dish. Impastato's deposits that concoction atop several different central proteins, but the best combination is with fish. Speckled trout is the standard, but if red snapper or lemonfish were available, I'd go for those. The fish is grilled, and comes outjust short of bubbling with heat. The same dish with a soft-shell crab or medallions of veal is also excellent. A variation on the dish that includes crabmeat and shrimp (it's named for whoever the coach of the New Orleans Saints happens to be) goes one step too far for me, but it's popular. Joe Impastato's brother Sal makes the same bunch of dishes just as well at Sal & Judy's in Lacombe. Marianna is Joe and Sal's mother's name, so you know they hold it in high regard. #44 Salmon with Choucroute and Gewurztraminer Sauce Bayona French Quarter: 430 Dauphine, 525-4455. As good as Bayona has been during its entire eighteen-year history, it seems to me that it's improved since the hurricane. One index of that is what happened to this dish, a standard on Chef Susan Spicer's menu since opening day. The salmon is now routinely wild-caught Pacific salmon. That's exceptional here; I know of only one other restaurant that offers that incomparably superior salmon all the time. The dish itself always was good. Its flavor is that of Alsace, the ancestral home of the spicy, white Gewurztraminer grape. That's the flavor of the sauce. The salmon is encrusted with bread crumbs, then semi-panneed in butter. Although Alsace is long part of France, it has been German in its history as well, and you see that influence in the food. Choucroute is French sauerkraut. I've been to restaurants in Alsace and had this very dish there, and Susan has it nailed. Every time I order it, my mind is prousted back to Colmar. #45 Taste Of Rue Conti Broussard's French Quarter: 819 Conti. 581-3866. Most traditional Creole-French restaurants offer a cold seafood assortment as a possible first course, usually including shrimp remoulade and crabmeat ravigote. Broussard's is the best of these. The remoulade sauce for the sizeable shrimp is the mayonnaise-based French kind--not my personal preference, but there's no besmirching its goodness. It's garnished with celery root cut into matchsticks, the classic partner of remoulade on the continent. The crabmeat also has a mayonnaise sauces, but with a different taste, and subtly enough applied that the goodness of the crabmeat takes over. The unique part of this trio is Chef Gunter Preuss's excellent home-cured salmon gravlax, a specialty of his (and almost nobody else locally) for most of the forty years he's cooked around New Orleans. A great beginning to a dinner. Originally, this dish was called "Delice Madame P.," after Chef Gunter's wife Evelyn. No mean dish would ever be allowed to bear her name. #46 Oysters Italian Style Mosca's Waggaman: 4137 U.S. 90. 436-9942. It's an automatic order at the great old Italian roadhouse on Highway 90. You know you're going to have some variation on the marinated crab, some pasta bordelaise, and chicken one way or another. And oysters, Italian style. That's the name of the dish at Mosca's and always has been. But when it began to be imitated elsewhere around town the name oysters Mosca stuck. (That's actually a registered trademark established by Chef Nick Mosca, so it shouldn't be.) Mosca's version is unique, as originals tend to be. It's made with a pile of bread crumbs, lots of garlic and oregano, Parmesan cheese, olive oil. . . and I could swear I taste something like the fat from Italian sausage, although they say no such thing is in there. They bake a some two dozen oysters under that pile, and they come out irresistibly aromatic and good. One order is too much even for an oyster lover like me, as are all the other entrees at Mosca's. #47 Osso Buco Maple Street Cafe Riverbend: 7623 Maple, 314-9003. The osso buco at the Maple Street Café is a descendent of the one at Andrea's, where co-owner T.J. Qutob worked for a time as the maitre d'. Also there was a veteran chef, Jonathan Peters. He was cooking at Etienne's when Chef Andrea Apuzzo bought the restaurant. "Chef Pete" learned Northern Italian food quickly, and added his own exquisite sense of taste to the recipe. When Qutob left to open his own restaurants with his brother Jameel, Chef Pete came along. Sooner or later, osso buco ran as a special. It was a tremendous hit, and now appears at least once a week--although those of us who think it's the best version we've ever tasted wish they would run it every day. It's a three-inch-high veal shank bone, the meat falling off it in absurdly tender, bite-size chunks, in a light brown sauce with an herbal background. Nice plug of marrow inside the bone. A big dinner--so take it easy on the first courses. #48 Barbecue Oysters Red Fish Grill French Quarter: 115 Bourbon, 598-1200. The name is misleading. Doubly so, because not only do the oysters have zero barbecue aspect, but they're also unlike that other misnamed local seafood classic, barbecue shrimp. To make a long story short, it's the same dish as Buffalo chicken wings, but with oysters instead of chicken. The oyster is fried, then topped with a hot-sauce-laced butter and blue cheese dressing. This dish actually made its first appearance at Mr. B's, where they still serve it now and then. But when Ralph Brennan (who still co-managed B's at the time) opened the Red Fish, he absconded with the barbecue oyster idea and made it a signature. A waiter once told me, "If you work in a restaurant, after awhile you get sick of eating its food. But this is one dish none of us ever get tired of. We're always picking at any extra ones that come out." That is easy to understand. The things are irresistible. #49 Tasso Shrimp Henican Commander's Palace Garden District: 1403 Washington Ave. 899-8221. Commander's Palace is one of the city's most important restaurants, but not much of its food winds up on a list like this one. The restaurant's food relies so heavily on seasonal products and daily inspirations on the part of Chef Tory McPhail and his staff that not much of its menu stays put for long. This dish is an old-timer, even though it's only been on the menu for about a decade. (Not long for a restaurant founded in 1880.) It's a fine example of the deliciousness of sweet heat. Big shrimp are saddled with a ribbon of tasso (the smoky, spicy, salty Cajun seasoning ham) when they go into a frying pan with a light dusting of flour. The sauce is an emulsion of butter and Crystal hot sauce, with some pepper jelly providing more both in the sweet and heat departments. They send it out with pickled okra. The pepper level in this has increased notably (perhaps too much) in recent times, but it's still an unforgettable dish. #50 Baked Alaska Antoine's French Quarter: 713 St. Louis, 581-4422 Baked Alaska is a strange idea: ice cream, hot out of the oven. This is accomplished by insulating the ice cream with a layer of meringue all over the top, and a foundation of pound cake. (I keep telling them they should replace the pound cake with bread pudding, but nothing yet.) It's an old dish--created in French restaurants in the mid-1800s, made popular at Delmonico in New York City, and adopted by Antoine's about a hundred years ago. They're one of the few restaurants still making it. No other comes close to its perfection. It's beautiful: a toasty, smooth-skinned, light brown mound, decorated with Antoine's name and "Since 1840" and a few little birds that resemble Peeps. In recent years, they've taken to offering chocolate sauce with it, but I insist that baked Alaska is a study in vanilla. With a half-bottle of Sauternes, it's among the best dessert-wine combinations imaginable. You must order it at the beginning of the meal. And make sure the one they make is big enough, or some people won't get any ice cream (the only possible problem that might come up). #51 Zuppa Filippa Ristorante Filippo Metairie: 1917 Ridgelake. 835-4008. The house soup in this well-hidden and excellent Italian trattoria in Metairie is named for chef-owner Phil Gagliano's mother. So it had better be good, and it is. So good, in fact, that you may well be tempted to have a second helping if you ordered a cup of it. A bowl, as a light lunch entree or as the start of a big dinner, is not a bad idea. It's a fish soup made with big pieces of fresh local crabmeat, shrimp, and oysters, in a lusty fish broth with a little cream and just enough red pepper and herbs to create complexity without getting in the way of the seafood. #52 Oysters With Fennel And Herbsaint Bistro Daisy Uptown: 5831 Magazine. 899-6987. The oysters are poached instead of fried or baked, and they're sent out in a soupy sauce of their own liquor with fresh spinach, fennel, garlic, and bacon. A splash of the anise-flavored liqueur Herbsaint emphasized the fennel. Although most of that is present in many versions of oysters Rockefeller, this dish doesn't have that flavor, and sure doesn't look anything like it. What comes out is nearly a soup, reminiscent of the way mussels are served, but without the shells. After the oysters and vegetables are gone, you will need a spoon, or at least some bread so the juicy part isn't left behind. A great appetizer in this fine new gourmet bistro. #53 Oyster-Artichoke Soup Mandina's Mid-City: 3800 Canal, 482-9179. Mandeville: 4300 La. 22, 985-674-9883. Oysters and artichokes go so well together that it's no wonder a soup made from them is right up there with gumbo and turtle soup among our favorite potages. The original version as we know it was created by Chef Warren Leruth at his legendary, extinct restaurant in Gretna. It was widely copied around town then and now. Nobody does a better version of it than Mandina's. I doubt they use fresh artichokes (neither did Leruth), but the flavor is all there. The soup has a great, thick texture (from a bond roux--no cream) and just the right herbal component. And always more and bigger oysters than you expect. I prefer it not only to other such recipes around town, but also to Mandina's vaunted turtle soup. #54 Twin Beef Tenders With Debris Sauce K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen French Quarter: 416 Chartres, 524-7394. One of the most popular dishes at Paul Prudhomme's unique restaurant, this is something he created--in a much more polite form--when he was executive chef at Commander's Palace in the 1970s. The debris is the distinctive part. That's what's left on the cutting board after you slices up a beef roast. You combine it with the makings of a brown sauce, plus some beef you shredded on purpose, and add some Cajun seasonings. The steaks are nice USDA Prime tenderloins, cut thick from the narrow end (the best part, if you ask me), and rendered crusty on a hot black iron skillet. While you might feel funny about passing up the likes of crawfish for a steak in this place, don't. It's as distinctive and exciting as anything else there. #55 Snails And Tails Nuvolari's Mandeville: 246 Girod St. 985-626-5619. Nuvolari's is not the same restaurant it was before the hurricane. The former menu was dominated by Italian dishes. Now, even if you stretch the definition of Italian, those account for only about a third of the offerings. The result: significantly more interesting dining. However, a few dishes from old menus are so good that they're permanent fixtures. The dish now called "snails and tails" goes back to the beginning of the twenty-five-year-old restaurant. Chef Tim Eihausen brought escargots, crawfish, mushrooms, and and a winy demi-glace into one of the two or three most distinctive treatments of snails ever to thrill New Orleans diners. The dish is as good as ever--and, after having it a week or so ago, I'm tempted to say it's even better, with more pepper. It's a generous serving, too--two people could split it, especially if you get in there with the restaurant's ciabatta bread. #56 Crabmeat and Brie Soup Dakota Covington: 629 N. US 190. 985-892-3712. This soup--now such a signature item for this five-star restaurant that they bring it to every charity event they join--was created when the kitchen found itself with an excess of Brie cheese. Brie does not last forever, so chef Kim Kringlie plowed it into the already rich crabmeat and cream bisque. What emerged was a soup with the tang of cream, the bitterness of Brie, the fat mouthfeel of both, and, overriding it all, the flavor of crabmeat both from backfin lumps and crab stock. It's certainly the best-selling first course at Dakota, and so popular that they get requests to sell it by the quart and gallon. It teaches us that for some people there is no such thing as too rich. I think this is right on the edge of that, and occasionally over it. But the taste is marvelous. #57 Salt-Baked Crab Kim Son Gretna: 349 Whitney Ave. 366-2489. The dish, a Vietnamese specialty, is a misnomer. There's more pepper than salt. And it's not really baked, but stir0fried and finished briefly in the oven. It is, however, really made with crab--good lake blue crabs cut into quarters, cooked with a tremendous amount of garlic and pepper. It's a major mess to eat--along the lines of boiled crabs. But once you start eating this, you'll find it impossible to stop, particularly during the best months of crab season (early and late summer). Also good are the scallops and shrimp done in the same style. At a significantly higher price, Kim Son also does salt-baked Maine lobster. There's always someone in the dining room eating that. All if it is lusty eating. #58 Double-Cut Pork Chop Nola French Quarter: 534 St. Louis, 522-6652. The double-cut pork chop--an item absolutely unknown to New Orleans restaurant menus until about ten years ago--has become one of the most popular entrees around town. There are many good ones, and if you think you've found the best, by all means keep eating it. But consider the one at Nola, Emeril's most casual restaurant. Two aspects of it appeal greatly. First, the crusty, Creole-seasoned exterior. Second, the highly reduced, almost sticky pork glace that blend with caramelized onions to make the sauce. I like the garnish, too: Bourbon-flavored sweet potatoes, and shrimp and pecan relish. The best dish in the house, and the best pork chop in town. #59 Frogs' Legs Herbsaint CBD: 701 St. Charles Ave. 524-4114. I keep hoping for a renaissance of frogs' legs. But every time one restaurant adds them to the menu, another one removes it. The most consistent--and best--restaurants for this stereotypically French dish is Herbsaint, Donald Link's French-inspired but original bistro. The legs are the small, tender ones, complete from hip joint to feet. They're dusted with a little flour (I think) and fried. After tossing them with more than a little butter and fresh herbs, the chef stacks them, alternating the direction of each layer. The presentation is almost as good as the flavor, which is simply finger-licking good. A fantastic appetizer. A double order with the house's fresh-cut pommes frites wouldn't be bad, either. #60 Oysters Irene Irene's Cuisine French Quarter: 539 St. Philip. 529-8811. The simple, lusty, distinctive style of Irene's cooking is epitomized by this dish. The oyster is broiled on its shell with a scattering of roasted red peppers, pancetta (the unsmoked, lean Italian bacon), lemon juice, and a sprinkling of Parmigiano cheese. It emerges from the oven with an incomprable aroma, the pancetta crisped at the edges and the cheese lightly browned and crusty. It's entirely different from the thick, smooth sauces found on most baked oyster dishes, and as delicious as any of them. #61 Roast Beef Poor Boy Johnny's French Quarter: 511 St. Louis, 524-8129. My taste model for a roast beef poor boy was Clarence and Lefty's, a long-gone Ninth-Ward bar where my parran introduced me to the joy of the distinctive sandwich when I was about eight years old. I rediscovered the place many years later (not knowing I'd done so until my parran reminded me of it), and once again registered the flavor as definitive. While every city has its version of a sliced-beef sandwich on a long bread, there's nothing that tastes like a poor boy. It's hard to describe, but you know it when you taste it. (You also know when you're not tasting it. Example: Mother's, whose roast beef is good but non-standard in flavor.) While there are many great roast beefs around town, to my palate the sandwich Johnny's makes comes closest to the ideal. It's enormous, the gravy is just right in flavor and quantity, the beef doesn't leave too much to floss out later, and the dressings are good and fresh. Cheap, too. #62 Quail Gumbo La Provence Lacombe: 25020 US 190. 985-626-7662. This unique variant on the classic bird-and-dark-roux gumbo was created some years ago by Chris Kerageorgiou, the founder of La Provence. It's the only dish that made the cut more or less unchanged after John Besh bought the restaurant from Chris last year, and after current chef Rene Bajeux applied his taste to the menu. It starts with a well-made, Cajun-Creole, dark-brown broth. In the center of the soup plate is a single whole quail, stuffed with jambalaya. When you cut into the quail, its contents fall into the broth, thickening and seasoning it. Everything about it, from the concept to the eating, is brilliant and unforgettable. This dish didn't come along until Chris had run the place for twenty years, but it was an instant hit. Amazing: nobody, to my knowledge, has copied it. Yet. #63 Moules, Pommes Frites Bistro At The Maison De Ville French Quarter: 733 Toulouse. 528-9206. Mussels are a relatively recent mania in New Orleans restaurants, rarely seen until the 1990s. Then many fine practitioners came along. Most of them prepare the bivalves (relatives of the oyster, but with a different flavor) in the mariniere style of France, steamed in a sauce of wine, olive oil (or butter), garlic, parsley, and the juices of the mussels themselves. The ones at La Crepe Nanou and the new Patois are exemplary, but I have a slight preference for the ones Chef Greg Picolo makes at the Bistro. That restaurant's former manager Patrick von Hoorebeck--a native of Belgium, the mussel capital of the world--persuaded Greg to add them as a lunch special. Now they're exceedingly popular both as such, and as an appetizer at dinner. Extra attraction: the large pile of fresh-cut French fries, the great partner to a giant bowl of mussels. #64 Stewed Rabbit New Orleans Food & Spirits Harvey: 2330 Lapalco Blvd., 362-0800. Bucktown: 210 Metairie-Hammond Hwy., 828-2220. Covington: 208 Lee Lane, 985-875-0432. Stewed rabbit is the long-running Thursday special at all three of these mostly-seafood restaurants. It's a simple country Cajun dish, tender and delectable, even to someone who has never tried rabbit before. If you stewed chicken with brown gravy and rice, you'll enjoy this. (Rabbit is light in every way, and not even a little gamy.) The version here is a half-rabbit cut into quarters, and smothered with the brown sauce, not too thick, not too spicy, but a little of each. The dish doesn't seem to fit the rest of the menu, but go with it anyway. #65 Chicken Grande Mosca's Waggaman: 4137 U.S. 90, 436-9942. Chicken is one of the high points of the menu at Mosca's, with that bird (and sometimes others) cooked several ways. I find them about equally good--very, very--but this one is the most offbeat. They cut the chicken into smaller pieces than the Colonel would, and roast it in a pan with olive oil, potatoes, mushrooms, rosemary, and a tremendous amount of garlic. I think there's a bit of white wine in there, too. You get a whole chicken, or close to it; a single order of chicken grande is more than enough for one person, anyway. It tastes as good as it smells, which is irresistible. #66 Mirliton and Shrimp (or Crab) Bisque Le Parvenu Kenner: 509 Williams Blvd. 471-0534. When Le Parvenu's chef-owner Dennis Hutley was chef de cuisine at the now-gone five-star Versailles on St. Charles Avenue, he made what he called a "cappuccino-style" crabmeat soup. It was so called because it had a foam of cream on top. It was spectacular: giant flavor, but in a light delivery vehicle. At his own restaurant, the chef has continually tweaked the idea. The current version--now made with shrimp and the addition of mirlitons--is a signature of the restaurant. As it should be. It's one of the best and most original soups around. #67 Pho Kim Anh's Noodle House Harahan: 6624 Jefferson Hwy. 739-9995. The passion held by many New Orleans diners for the Vietnamese beef and noodle soup called pho runs to illogical extremes. More than a few non-Vietnamese people eat it several times a week, and to hear them talk you'd think it was the rarest, most wonderful food on earth. We're talking here about beef broth with noodles, sprouts, herbs, and various forms of beef--or other meats. Really, there's not much to it. And then one encounters the version they make at this teeny café in Harahan--never a town known for its food. Kim Anh's pho could hardly be better. The broth has a depth of flavor you don't quite notice until you're about a third of the way into it. It's translucent and lacks the muddiness I find in many other phos around town. All the additives are of great quality and freshness. It's as delicious on a hot summer day as on a freezing winter night. #68 Coq au Vin Flaming Torch Uptown: 737 Octavia. 895-0900. A coq is, strictly speaking, a rooster--a bigger, tougher old bird that requires a long, slow, moist cooking. That's the concept behind coq au vin, even though most chefs who make it use a standard broiler chicken. The one at the Flaming Torch--whose menu is full of country French dishes--uses a free-range chicken, to boot. It comes out in a bowl, the chicken cut up into the standard pieces, with a sauce made with red wine, chicken stock, pork belly, and small onions. Also in there are some potatoes, carrots, and turnips. It's the best version I've ever had of this old classic. #69 Barbecue Shrimp Emeril's Warehouse District: 800 Tchoupitoulas, 528-9393. Emeril Lagasse's finest renovation of a great old New Orleans dish is what he did with barbecue shrimp. He completely rethought the preparation, and came up with a somewhat different dish--but a very good one. Emeril started by peeling the shrimp before cooking them. Peeled barbecue shrimp were never very good, because so much flavor and fat comes from the heads and shells. The chef solved that problem by cooking the heads and shells down into a stock so intense that it's essentially a shrimp demi-glace. The peeled shrimp are then cooked in a peppery butter sauce to which some of this shrimp essence is added, making for a dark, thick sauce that glows with flavor. It's good either as an appetizer or as an entree, and the rosemary-flavored biscuits that come with them have their own fans. It's served not only at Emeril's but also NOLA and Delmonico. #70 Veal Tanet Andrea's Metairie: 3100 19th Street. 834-8583 The dish was the joint creation of a chef and a customer. Attorney Ron Tanet asked Chef Andrea Apuzzo, when he was chef of the Royal Orleans, to pannee a big slice of veal and serve it atop a stack of romaine leaves, with tomatoes and an Italian vinaigrette. The resultant dish, a wonderful contrast of cool and warm, crisp and meaty, is an uncommonly delicious light lunch. It's available at Andrea's anytime. It's still on the menu at the Rib Room, where it started. And it's turned up at Clancy's, too. All it needs is a squirt of lemon juice over the top. #71 Grilled Fish Romesco RioMar Warehouse District: 800 S. Peters, 525-3474. Romesco is a Spanish sauce made from a puree of tomatoes, red bell peppers, and almonds. It looks like ketchup, but instead of a sweet insipidness it's a unique deliciousness, and a natural flavor partner with fish. Chef Adolfo Garcia grills all sorts of fish in his restaurant and pairs one or two with romesco--but ask for the sauce on the side no matter what kind of fish you get here, or how it's prepared. It's especially spectacular with thick slabs of rare tuna, one of the best dishes on the menu at this Latin American-and-Spanish inspired seafood restaurant. #72 Chirashi Sushi Megumi Mandeville: 4700 LA 22. 985-845-1644. Chirashi means "scattered," and it's an interesting variant on sushi. All the rice is pressed into the bottom of a deep rectangular dish, and topped with tobiko caviar or bonito flakes. An assortment of fish, cut in the sashimi style, goes over the top of the rice. In the standard chirashi assortment, there's three or four kinds of fish, shrimp, squid, and small wedges of the sweetened, cold Japanese omelette. The chirashi at this small, handsome North Shore place is anything but standard, though. All the fish come out in a separate dish that fits into the top of the rice dish. That not only makes it much easier to eat, but also gives room for bigger pieces of better fish--and they take advantage of the opportunity. (If anything, the slices of fish here are too big.) As for the omelette, they crumble it up and scatter it atop the rice--a better place for it. It's more expensive than chirashi in most places, but at least twice as good as any other I've had. #73 Rotisserie Chicken With Roasted Corn Grits Zea Harahan: 1655 Hickory Ave. 738-0799. Kenner: 1401 W. Esplanade Ave. (Esplanade Mall). 468-7733. Lee Circle Area: 1525 St. Charles Ave. 520-8100. Metairie: 4450 Veterans Blvd. (Clearview Mall). 780-9090. Zea is a locally-based chain operated by the Taste Buds--Gary Darling, Hans Limburg, and Greg Reggio, all chefs. The menu is eclectic, but the finest work on it is very basic. Rotisserie-roasted chicken is not only simple, but certainly the best way to cook a chicken. It stays moist, as the juices that would otherwise break loose stay on the surface of the chicken, and intensify the flavors. They make three versions: one a French-style garlic-scented bird, another Italian-style pesto-coated, and a relatively simpler barbecue-seasoned job. All are excellent. They come with a choice of eight or so side dishes, of which the most notable is the stone-ground yellow grits, rich with cream and cheese, studded with corn kernels stripped off cobs roasted on the grill first. The prices are very low. The only problem is getting a table, which is especially challenging in the Zea in the Clearview Mall. #74 Sea Scallops Du Jour Peristyle French Quarter: 1041 Dumaine, 593-9535. Lots of restaurants sell scallops around New Orleans, even though those bivalves come from far away (around the same distance lobsters do). No other restaurant buys better quality scallops or prepares them with the elan that Tom Wolfe lends them at Peristyle. He limits himself strictly to big diver scallops, sears them just to the point of bulging, and sends them out with sauces and garnishes that change with the chef's mood. The most recent sampling involved a light drizzle of truffle butter, which was all these needed. The scallops are briny and taste of the sea, which is the ultimate compliment. #75 Ham Poor Boy with Debris Mother's CBD: 401 Poydras, 523-9656 The finest ham sandwich in town (an understatement as far as Mother's is concerned; they claim it's the world's best) starts with a Chisesi ham, baked on site with the secret glaze. The recipe for that may have been worth as much to owner Jerry Amato when he bought the place from the Landry brothers as the building. It's sliced on the thick side and laid down on fresh French bread with Mother's unique dressing of shredded cabbage, pickles, mayonnaise, and both yellow and brown mustard. And then comes the roast beef gravy, studded with the "debris" left over when they slice the beef. Its flavor is completely different from the roast beef gravies at other poor boy shops around town, and it's delicious in its own way. It also warms up the sandwich. Jerry tells me that what I am eating is, in fact, the original Ferdi, but if you ask for a Ferdi they substitute some of the ham with sliced roast beef. And that's not quite as good. #76 Escargots Bordelaise Antoine's French Quarter: 713 St. Louis. 581-4422. Escargots' reputation as a gourmet dish largely faded it in the last decade. It's nearly impossible for restaurants to buy them fresh, so many chefs disdain them. But snails don't really have a powerful flavor of their own. What makes the good ones great is the sauce. The best version of escargots around is one of the two at Antoine's. Under the name "escargots bourguignonne" they serve the standard version with garlic, parsley and butter, which are okay. But the Bordelaise version is better--and pure Antoine's. A dark brown sauce with a good deal of garlic and sherry floats the snails in one of those six-pocket dishes that keep the sauce bubbling. Before it goes into the oven, it's sprinkled with a blend of cheeses--just a little, not enough to form a solid layer. Odd, but innocuous. The flavor is spectacular, especially once you get the slugs out of the way and start in on a whole loaf of French bread with that marvelous, very Creole sauce. #77 Green Curry With Seafood And Eggplant Sukhothai Marigny: 1913 Royal. 948-9309. Thai green curry is the most interesting of the many colors and varieties of those saucy dishes. (Which, I hasten to point out, do not taste like Indian curry.) This seafood version is as fine an interpretation of that as I've encountered. It includes big, meaty shrimp, scallops, mussels, and grilled fish, along with pink-purple eggpants, zucchini, and fresh basil. The grilled fish is a different touch--I can't remember running into that before--and especially if you get it with the high pepper levels that go so well with green curry, it's a plate of food that's not easy to forget. #78 Roast Duck Poor Boy Crabby Jack's Old Jefferson: 428 Jefferson Hwy., 833-2722. A brilliant original. They slow-roast ducks until the meat is falling off the bones. With those bones, they make a stock, and from that a thickened brown gravy. From that point on, everything is like a roast beef poor boy: fresh French bread, lettuce and tomatoes, tender meat that pulls apart into shreds, enough gravy to keep the whole thing on the sloppy side. Except that instead of a beef taste, it's a duck taste. It's such a natural that it's a wonder nobody ever thought of it before. It would be even more popular were there not so many other good poor boys at this, the ultra-casual satellite of the very casual Jacques-Imo's on Oak Street. #79 Stuffed Shrimp In Phyllo Maple Street Cafe Riverbend: 7623 Maple Street, 314-9003. Big, peeled, butterflied shrimp, broiled to near-sizzling and served with a butter sauce--that's a familiar appetizer on menus around town. Some of those involve some kind of stuffing. The version they do at this pleasant little café in the Maple Street commercial district is the best I've had. The crabmeat stuffing is light and moist, and kept that way by being wrapped with a few layers of phyllo--the flaky pastry widely used in Middle Eastern cooking. The creamy-looking lemon butter finishes off a very good dish. Match a few of those up with the restaurant's excellent oysters amandine and eggplant cakes with crabmeat, and you have a unique and different seafood platter for an entree. #80 Fried Green Tomatoes With Shrimp Remoulade Upperline Uptown: 1413 Upperline. 891-9822. So many restaurants serve this appetizer so well that its origin is forgotten. Chef Tom Cowman, the chef of the Upperline for many years, conceived it. In the 1980s, owner JoAnn Clevenger wanted to serve fried green tomatoes, which were becoming popular because of the movie of the same name. Neither Chef Tom nor JoAnn were happy with them. "There's seemed to be something missing," JoAnn says. Chef Tom topped the tomatoes with the Upperline's excellent shrimp remoulade--the red style, although Upperline also makes the white kind--and knew immediately the problem was solved. The zingy qualities of the tomato and the sauce compliment each other perfectly, and the coolness of the shrimp and the warmth of the tomato make a nice contrast. #81 Boiled Shrimp, Crabs, And Crawfish Galley Seafood Restaurant Old Metairie: 2535 Metairie Rd., 832-0955. Boiled seafood is a tremendous pleasure--but only when you can eat it hot, and when the crustacean in question is in season. There's certainly nothing like crawfish in May or crabs in July. The Galley is my favorite place for boiled seafood, because every time I've ordered any boiled seafood here, it came out steaming. Somehow, the Galley seems to have boiled crabs to sell not only during the standard summer season, but often well out of season. (Like now.) The only problem with trying to eat here is that it's become overwhelmingly popular. Nor will they arrange take-outs of their boiled seafood. But that's what happens when a restaurant stands out in its field. #82 Fettuccine Alfredo/Pasta Asciutta Combination Impastato's Metairie: 3400 16th. 455-1545. Sal & Judy's Lacombe: 27491 Highway 190 , 985-882-9443. The finest example of fettuccine Alfredo I ever tasted (and I've also had it at Alfredo's in Rome) came from Moran's Riverside in the French Market--the original occupant of the space that was later Bella Luna. Jimmy Moran made his own paper-thin pasta in house. He prepared the sauce and tossed it with the pasta and parmesan cheese right at the table. The sauce was rich but light at the same time, barely but completely coating the noodles. Joe and Sal Impastato worked for Moran before they opened their own restaurants in the late 1970s. They each brought Moran's fettuccine routine with them, along with its red-sauce equivalent, pasta asciutta. ("Asciutta" means "dry," implying that the pasta is tossed with the sauce, but not afloat in it.) Joe Impastato makes the pasta for both restaurants at his place in Metairie, with the same thinness that increases the flavor release. It makes for a dish that seems far too delicious for its simplicity. It's a must order at both Impastato's and Sal & Judy's, who continue the tradition started at the now-extinct Moran's. #83 Crabmeat Cheesecake With Pecan Crust Palace Cafe CBD: 605 Canal, 523-1661 This first time I encountered a savory cheesecake was at Commander's Palace, during Emeril Lagasse's chefdom. Interesting idea: you combine all the standard ingredients for a cheesecake, except the sweet ones, with something interesting. When the Palace Café opened, a bunch of dishes that only ran as specials at the main shop showed up on the menu. This was one of those, and it has remained one of the most popular and best first courses at the P.C. The core of the dish is certainly good enough, and the pecan crust adds textural contrast. Wild mushrooms in an old-style brown meuniere sauce completes a delicious little plate of local flavor. #84 Veal Cannelloni With Two Sauces Vincent's Metairie: 4411 Chastant St. 885-2984. Riverbend: 7839 St. Charles Ave. 866-9313. Cannelloni is not a big deal as Italian cooking goes. But this one manages to be memorable. It's certainly the best of its kind. The interior is made with ground veal, onions, spinach, and parmesan cheese. It's stuffed into a crepe made in house. (You could make this with pasta, but the crepe is equally authentic, and pretty close to pasta, anyway.) That's napped both with a cream sauce and a tomato sauce, then run under the broiler until everything bubbles and the edges of the crepe brown a bit. Missing, and not missed: the lavalike soup of sauce and meted cheese one usually finds. One of these makes a great appetizer; two, a nice light lunch or dinner. #85 Seafood Platter Bourbon House French Quarter: 144 Bourbon, 522-0111. Seven days. Most of the menu at Dickie Brennan's seafood house flies higher than fried seafood. The classic West End-style fried seafood platter here is the finest around. The oysters, shrimp, and catfish are large, golden brown, hot, fresh, fried to order, and seasoned nicely. Also here are fried crab fingers. The stuffed crab here is the best of its kind; it doesn't come with the platter, but I always ask to have it added. You could do the same with a soft shell crab, too, if you're splitting. My wife, who believes that fried seafood platters are peak New Orleans dining, says that this one sets the standard. #86 Jambalaya Omelette Li'l Dizzy's Esplanade Ridge: 1500 Esplanade Ave. 569-8997. CBD: 610 Poydras, 212-5656. "I was talking with my cooks about something new for our brunch," says Wayne Baquet, owner and tastemaker of Li'l Dizzy's. "Like what, she said. Like. . . a jambalaya omelette, I said. And I said, hey. Let's try that. There's no rice in there, but almost everything else you find in jambalaya: shrimp, tomatoes, onions, ham, and hot sausage. The last item is what makes the dish take off. Wayne makes it in-house, and it is seriously hot. Got to be great with red beans. The omelette itself is fluffy and greaseless--two qualities I consider essential in an omelette, and rarely seen. It's on the brunch menu at the CBD Li'l Dizzy's, and on the breakfast at both. #87 Breathtaking Roast Beef Poor Boy Liuzza's By The Track Mid-City: 1518 N. Lopez, 218-7888. This dumpy neighborhood joint makes a name for itself by adding a brilliant new wrinkle to almost every New Orleans classic it cooks. This simple enhancement of the roast beef poor boy is beyond compare. It starts with a first-class standard roast beef sandwich, with good sliced beef, wel-made gravy (all made in house) and fresh New Orleans French bread. The magic touch is that the mayonnaise has a substantial horseradish component. This is so good and so obvious that it's amazing nobody thought of it before. It results in the best roast beef poor boy in New Orleans. #88 Oyster Soup Brigtsen's Riverbend: 723 Dante, 861-7610. Frank Brigtsen cooks a range of oyster soups in his delicious little restaurant. They range from the rich oyster Rockefeller soup to a simple oyster stew. They have in common a starting point: gallons of oyster water, fresh from the oyster house, reduced down to concentrate the flavors. The result is a briny, maritime intensity that I'm nuts about. Never, ever pass up any oyster soup here. Unless you don't like oysters. #89 Bread Pudding Fitzmorris Arnaud's French Quarter: 813 Bienville. 523-5433. Full disclosure (and you have every reason to be suspicious): it's named for me. I praised this unusual version of New Orleans's favorite dessert so many times in so many places that Arnaud's proprietor Archie Casbarian finally stuck my name on it about fifteen years ago. It's not my recipe, although I wish I could claim it. The bread is layered, with thick strata of custard running through it, and thinner stripes of cinnamon. The sauce is just sweet and alcoholic enough to work, and the cube they bring you is just slightly too large to finish. I get it every time I go to Arnaud's, and not for the ego imperative. #90 Shuckee Duckee Drago's Metairie: 3232 N. Arnoult Rd. 888-9254. CBD: Hilton Riverside, 2 Poydras. 584-3911. Number One among the dishes on this list in the Absurd Names department, Shuckee Duckee is one of the best dishes at Drago's. And that's saying something. The two halves of the dish don't sound like they'd go together. But they do. The "shuckee" is a pile of pasta with oysters in a very good seafood cream sauce. The "duckee" is a Cajun-seasoned, grilled duck breast, crusty and spicy on the outside, juicy in the center. The two elements come together in a unique dish. Besides that, if you order either part of the dish on its own, it works. You ask for "shuckee shuckee" or "duckee duckee," I guess. #91 Chicken Shawarma With Hummus Byblos Market Metairie: 2020 Veterans Blvd., 837-9777. The Byblos Market is a grocery store operated by the owners of the two Byblos restaurants, the class acts in the Lebanese category. However, even at the restaurants (and most Lebanese restaurants), chicken shawarma is not prepared in the classic way. Which is to roast chickens, cut them into slices of maximum size, and stack the slices on a vertical rotisserie. The chef slices downward, getting crescent-shaped pieces about two or three inches long and an inch or so wide, each with a crusty edge. They serve up a platter of this with hummus, a salad and a beguiling, fluffy garlic sauce. On a plastic plate, I'm afraid, with plastic utensils. No matter. This is scrumptious food, and my nominee for best fast food in New Orleans. (You can be in an out of the place in fifteen minutes.) Warning: even though this is well below ten dollars, it will fill you up. #92 Red Beans And Rice with Chicken Drummettes Fury's Metairie: 724 Martin Behrman Ave., 834-5646. Fury's is a small, old-style neighborhood restaurant that never got away from the slow-service, cooked-to-order style of such restaurants in the past. That slows the service down, but makes the food delicious. Their Monday red beans and rice special comes with a choice of more meats than one usually finds. You can get hot sausage, a panneed veal cutlet, or even fried oysters. But the best of all are the fried chicken drummettes (that's the meatiest part of the chicken wing). Fried chicken and red beans are a natural combination. Fury's regular fried chicken platters ("that'll take twenty-five minutes, honey!") are terrific in their own right, but here's an even better way to enjoy them. The beans are good, too. #93 Antipasto Cafe Giovanni French Quarter: 117 Decatur, 529-2154. Before Andrea's opened, if you ordered antipasto in New Orleans you got an ice-cold plate of ham, salami, cheese, olives, and maybe a few slices of tomato. All you need do is make one trip to Italy to know a) that this is nothing like real antipasto and b) real antipasto is wonderful. The best of it is vegetables and seafood, all marinated for days or perhaps even weeks, served not cold but at room temperature, in a great assortment of textures, flavors, and colors. You can stuff yourself on it, so delicious is a well-made antipasto. Although Andrea's set the standard, at this time I'd say Chef Duke LoCicero at Cafe Giovanni has the more impressive antipasto presentation. The full monte on this doesn't really fit well onto one platter. Order it for the whole table to get the maximum pleasure. #94 Stuffed Crab With Angel Hair Bordelaise Peppermill Metairie: 3524 Severn Ave., 455-2266. The rise of the crab cake--a dish almost unknown in New Orleans fifteen years ago--had a terrible effect on the traditional West End-style stuffed crab. Only a handful of restaurants still offer this great old dish, whose flavor and texture are different from those of the Maryland crab cakes we now seem to prefer. The Peppermill's version is unusual in being made with cubes of bread soaked in crab stock (sort of how you'd start a turkey stuffing), plus the usual herbs and spices. The crabmeat goes in last, and it's beautiful: jumbo lump, looking like miniature marshmallows stuck in the stuffing. They serve a couple of these with angel hair pasta bordelaise. That is a wonderful lunch. #95 Muffuletta Bosco's Mandeville: 1770 La. Hwy. 59, 985-624-5066. My definition of the perfect muffuletta is one that layers in the maximum possible quantity of thin-sliced Chisesi ham, Genoa salami, mortadella, mozzarella an provolone, all sliced fresh on the premises. On that sandwich will be a homemade olive salad with many nearly-whole alives and other vegetables, with good olive oil and lots of garlic and herbs. That describes the muffuletta in this great little North Shore Italian place. Until the hurricane put the United Bakery out of business (not for good, I hope), Bosco's also had that definitive muffuletta bread. Bosco's will be moving up the highway a bit in a few months, but the muffuletta will continue to be on the menu and a main attraction. #96 Hot and Sour Soup Trey Yuen Mandeville: 600 Causeway Blvd. 985-626-4476. This is the soup that made it worth ordering soup in a Chinese restaurant. Trey Yuen was not the first restaurant in town to serve it, but theirs is the best locally. It is not ladled out of a simmering pot, as it is in most places, but made to order, using fresh mushrooms (a real distinction), strips of pork and bamboo shoots, and an admixture of pepper oil that I find a touch on the low side--but that's easily remedied. (All you have to do is ask that it be made a little spicier than usual.) Perhaps no other dish shows the excellence of Trey Yuen's kitchen so well. #97 Boiled Beef Brisket with Vegetables Bon-Ton Café 401 Magazine, 524-3386 Boiled brisket, once an almost universal lunch special in New Orleans white-tablecloth restaurants, has become a rarity. Only the old-time places have it anymore--notably Tujague's. As good as theirs is, the way they serve brisket at the Bon Ton Cafe--where it's the Tuesday lunch special--is ideal. It comes to the table as a couple of large cubes in a bowl of broth, with potatoes, carrots, and a whole onion in there. Extraordinarily tender and flavorful. Horseradish sauce on the side, of course. #98 Fried Chicken Mr. Ed's Metairie (Bucktown): 1001 Live Oak, 838-0022. In the days before the fast-food places took over so many parts of our menu, fried chicken was considered a gourmet dish. It still is, really--if you can find a restaurant that still fries the chicken to order, seasons and coats it artfully, and serves it hot out of the fryer. Mr. Ed's is a big neighborhood restaurant of the old school, and they fry chicken the old way, not so much as coating it until it's ready to go into the fryer. Do not come in a hurry for this--it takes as much as a half-hour. Have one of their excellent soups while waiting. #99 Mussels With Wine Sauce Clementine's Belgian Bistro Gretna: 2505 Whitney Ave. 366-3995. Mussels, when they're well made, can be incredible. The only other place I've encountered a recipe like this one for the bivalves was in Ghent, Belgium--a place where they're crazy about mussels. Clementine and Chef Laurent here are from Belgium, so they understand. This wine sauce is a misnomer, really. There's wine in it, all right, along with the juices of the mussels, but also a bit of cream. The latter ingredient is what makes them so good, along the lines of the old-style oyster-and-milk stews we used to eat widely around New Orleans. They serve you a big bowlful for an entree. All that's needed are some of the excellent Belgian-style fries for this to be a memorable meal. #100 Charcoal-Grilled Lamb Chops Lebanon's Café. 1500 S. Carrollton Ave., 862-6200. These are small New Zealand racks of lamb, marinated in something with an herbal, smoky-spicy flavor that makes them exceedingly tender. The rack is cut into chops and then seared on an open charcoal grill, giving the same smoky deliciousness you get from a Bud's Broiler hamburger, but with a much better subject. The six or seven chops come out with hummus (which makes an odd but excellent sauce) and a salad for right around $20--a major bargain. © 2008 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com