From The New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 7, 2007 Cannon’s 3$ Uptown: 4141 St. Charles Ave. 891-3200 Lunch and dinner continuously, seven days. AE DC DS MC V Cannon's stands on important ground. The corner of St. Charles Avenue at Milan (pronounced, I'm sure you know, "MY-lan") has been a significant meeting place for a very long time. From the 1940s until the mid-1970s, a bar named Ched's was on the corner. A restaurant called Stephen and Martin's stood behind it, with food along the lines of Mandina's, and just as popular. In 1976, the two institutions were renovated with a bit of glitz, and combined. Stephen and Martin's new menu was well upmarket from what it had been, approaching in sophistication those of the fanciest restaurants of those days. However, its style was decidedly casual. Without realizing it, the owners had created the first gourmet Creole bistro. In a few years, Uptown would be full of restaurants like it. The bar became Forty-One Forty-One, probably the most famous and successful singles bar in New Orleans history. It had style, and stylish people hung out there, drinking big dollars. I'm not claiming to have style, but I remember one evening there with a well-known female restaurateur and her priest friend. We went through three bottles of Dom Perignon without the waiter's batting an eye. Just another night at Forty-One. A major addition to Stephen and Martin's went up a few years later, with windows giving onto St. Charles Avenue. That grabbed some attention, but the trend was away from the places, as the hipness slowly drained away and the cooking became unexciting by standing still. One day, a restaurant in the Oakwood Shopping Mall in Gretna called Cannon's bought Stephen and Martin's, and made it their second location. It figured. Although Cannon's was locally owned, its menu and style felt as if it was the work of a national chain. Now here we are. The Gretna Cannon's is long gone. The Uptown Cannon's has new owners (for the past few years), and they've done some nice things to the building. The location can't be beat. They even have two substantial parking lots behind the place. The food is good enough for the price, the service staff helpful and pleasant, and Forty-On Forty-One (they've kept that resonant name on the bar) still has its partisans. But every time I come here I can't help but wonder. Why does a place like this serve such an unambitious menu? It still has a chain-restaurant quality, what with the artichoke-spinach dip appetizer, the large section of burgers, another large section of salads topped with grilled chicken or shrimp, and unbarbecue ribs. With a minimum of tweaks, this place could move up to the level of Clancy's, Upperline, La Crepe Nanou, or Mr. B's. The customers are certainly in the neighborhood. And there's that history. Maybe it's my problem that I can't forget that. All that said, the food here is better than the menu and prices lead you to believe. Start with a soup, for example, and you find an excellent version of turtle soup, a fine dark-roux duck and andouille gumbo, and a light crab and corn bisque. Those are better than the standard appetizers, which besides the spin-dip include mediocre crabcakes (they'd make passable stuffed crabs, but when you say the word "crabcake" the expectation of near-solid jumbo lump is conjured up, and these ain't that), fried eggplant sticks and fried calamari (both good), and coconut-crusted shrimp with a marmalade dip. The salads are well assembled, particularly the shrimp remoulade salad, whose sauce leans more in the direction of rich than tangy--but that works. But they have that irritating habit chains have of bringing a bowl of salad with the dressing in a plastic cup on the side. Why not toss it in the kitchen, and make it twice as good? Because it's easier to do it this way. The little bit of everything among the entrees begins with a few fish dishes. Don't get grilled fish here--they have an odd way of doing it that makes it seem almost to have been poached. No crust, little seasoning. On the other hand, the blackened redfish (I'd call it bronzed) is nicely peppery and crunchy at the outside, and can be had with a good New Orleans bordelaise sauce (garlic butter, in other words). The salmon gets the same shy grilling, but that works, especially when had with hollandaise. Or you can have fried seafood. Cannon's offers all the usual platters, fried to order as near as I can tell, and more than decent. The two chicken dishes are throwbacks to another time, with super-rich sauces coming near to overwhelming the chicken. One is artichokes (a good match for chicken) with hollandaise, the other made of creamed spinach which, now that I think of it, may have been the same stuff my kids had with the tortilla chips back in the appetizers. The best entree I've come across is a seasonal special on a thick pork chop, well seasoned and juicy. One of the sides you can get with this or any entree is cinnamon apples (someone must have enjoyed this at Houston's). That doesn't make much sense with most of the entrees, but it does work with the pork chop. Also from the pig department come whole racks of not-so-barbecued ribs; if these saw any major smoke, it was lost on me. You can get a lot of what we've talked about so far in a sandwich. Or have a hamburger. My fifteen-year-old daughter, the hamburger expert on my staff, says that these more than pass muster, and that she was pleased by the blue cheese burger's dressings. The dessert list is short, but includes a good creme brulee. Throughout the meal, the servers are willing to work anything out your way. But, doggone it, this place could be so much more than it is. If they played on the distinguished past, they could come up with all sorts of revival food that could really grab the attention of local diners, even tourists. On the other hand, Copeland's and Houston's make a lot of money selling this kind of stuff. And they don't even have the most advantageous spot for Carnival parade-watching that Cannon's does. Click here for an index of all restaurant reviews. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com.