Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 22, 2006 Click here for the current edition Crescent City Steakhouse Reopens, At Last The original New Orleans-style steakhouse, the Crescent City on North Broad at St. Philip, reopened last week. One of the most asked-about restaurants since the storm, the Crescent City stood in the center of one of the deeper and more persistent flooding zones after the storm. The entirety of North Broad is still mostly non-functional; the flagship restaurant of the Ruth's Chris Steak House chain, for example, is still closed and will probably not reopen (although lately I've heard rumblings to the contrary). It's still the Vojkovich family, and from what I've been able to learn (no point in my dining there right away; plenty of others will) the menu and style are unchanged. Anything else would be a major surprise. The family has never changed anything that their father, John Vojkovich, put into place when he opened in 1934. Vojkovich created what became the distinctive New Orleans style of serving steaks: in bubbling butter on a hot plate. He also set the standard by using Prime, dry-aged beef. The Crescent City has always been very informal and less expensive than its competitors; its tiled dining room has the feel of the neighborhood restaurant that it is. Know that if you've never been there: consistently, the steaks have been terrific (particularly the strip and the porterhouse), while the side dishes are extraorinary only in their ordinariness. The Crescent City is only serving lunch at the moment, Wednesday through Saturday. But that's only temporary, while they collect a staff. I'm hoping they will be there for the Eat Club's annual Mardi Gras Steak Dinner, which we've held most years for the last quarter-century. Crescent City Steak House. 1001 N. Broad. 821-3271. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com