From The New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published April 18, 2006 Bon Ton Cafe Post-Storm Ratings: B, 3$ 401 Magazine, CBD. Reservations 524-3386. Lunch Mon.-Fri. Dinner Fri. only. Closed Sat & Sun. AE, DC, DS, MC, V. The Bon Ton changes little, and very slowly, even after a cataclysm. The menu is a bit shorter than it was before the storm, but with one exception everything for which they're celebrated is there. Largely because of that, it's a comfortable restaurant. Particularly if your reason for going there is to reconnect with something or somebody. The Bon Ton dates back to the 1920s, but became what it is today when Alvin and Alzina Pierce bought it in the early 1950s. Their style of cookery came from Bayou Lafourche country, the eastern edge of Acadiana. At the time, Cajun food was not held in much regard in New Orleans, and finding the likes of crawfish etouffee was nearly impossible. Apparently there was a hunger for that kind of food, because the Bon Ton became very popular, and stayed that way for years. It faded from public consciousness around 1980, when the contemporary Creole bistros took over. Lately it's made a comeback. Meanwhile, the food hardly changed at all. Start with some morsels of fried catfish and fried crawfish tails, served with a pink mayonnaise-based sauce. Pass that around the table while looking over the menu. The one famous Bon Ton dish you can't get right now is their turtle soup (it has to do with staffing and cooler space). But all the other standards are here. Most of those involve either crabmeat or crawfish. Depiste what you heard a few months ago about the state of the crawfish crop, the quality is good right now (we're entering the peak of the season), even though the price is higher than usual. The five-way crawfish dinner is a fine sampler of the mudbugs. It begins with a dark crawfish bisque so thick it can be eaten with a fork. Then the crawfish omelette, which doesn't look much like an omelette, really; the eggs just hold together a bunch of spicy crawfish tails. Next are crawfish etouffee and crawfish Newburg, continuing a trend of increasing richness. As good as the crawfish are, the Bon Ton's crabmeat dishes are its best. Redfish Bon-Ton, a broiled piece of fillet topped with crabmeat in butter sauce, is very nice and utterly consistent. Here also is the city's best crabmeat au gratin, topped with more cheese than I remember (I ask them to take it easy on the cheddar). Crabmeat Imperial is a great old dish hardly anybody makes anymore: big lumps of meat with a buttery sauce of bell peppers and mushrooms. Moving on, we find oysters Alvin, moistened with a lemony brown butter sort of like a meuniere, served with mushrooms and rice. This is very good, as is the soft-shell crab with the same sauce. The really spicy style we associate with Cajun food is of relatively recent coinage, and the Bon Ton's approach to it harkens back to the style of half a century ago. You taste that in a dish called bayou etouffee--half crawfish, half shrimp, made with two entirely different recipes. It's more buttery than it is spicy. You can be a meat-eater here. The filet mignon with Burgundy sauce is much better than you'd expect from a place where eighty percent of the menu (at least) is seafood. Also fine is the boiled beef brisket, which runs as a special on Tuesdays, sent out in a bowl of its broth with vegetables. It's almost a requirement to finish a meal at the Bon Ton with its bread pudding. It's on everybody's top-ten list, on the heavy side, with a very thick sauce that usually comes close to setting around the pudding after being brought out. It contains a very serious shot of whiskey, and that alcohol has not all evaporated. The service is like something out of another age, too. The waitresses are personal and informal, like those in a very good neighborhood restaurant. Which is kind of what the Bon Ton is, still, for the dwindling number of people who still work downtown. Or who fondly remember when they did. Click here to return to today's edition. Click here for an index of all restaurant reviews. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com.