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Shrimp remoulade.

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Restaurant Ratings

The ratings are based mostly on the degree to which the food excites us, and a little on environment, service, and other considerations. I rate restaurants relative to all other restaurants in the New Orleans area. Here's what the stars mean to me:

starstarstarstarstar
Among the best locally.

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Excellent and ambitious.

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Worth crossing town for.

starstar
Recommended.

*
Acceptable.

No star
Unacceptable.

Cost Ratings
Each dollar sign indicates a ten-dollar range, including a normal meal for the restaurant (dinner, if they serve other meals), not including drinks, or tips. So, for example. . .

1$--$5-15
2$--$15-25
3$--$25-35

. . . and so on, with no upper limit. While this scheme may suggest mathematical precision, know that perception of price varies from diner to diner as much as the star ratings do. So consider this an estimate.

All reviews are based entirely on meals I have personally taken at the restaurant and paid for from my own pocket. I don't take free review meals, nor am I reimbursed by anybody for my restaurant expenditures.

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Acme Oyster House

Seafood.
French Quarter: 724 Iberville., 504-522-5973. Map.
Metairie: 3000 Veterans Blvd., 504-309-4056. Map.
Covington: 1202 US 190 (Causeway Blvd.), 985-246-6155. Map.
All: Lunch and dinner continuously, seven days.
Very Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website

WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The original Acme Oyster House on Iberville celebrates it one hundredth anniversary in 2010. It has always been popular, but during the past decade it has become a must-visit eatery for visitors to New Orleans. It's so busy that many local Acme fans have forsaken it for the other Acme locations--the best of which is the one in Covington. The place can become habit-forming. It serves all the New Orleans neighborhood-cafe classics, from gumbo and seafood platters to red beans and roast beef poor boys.

WHY IT'S GOOD
Beyond the consistently excellent oysters (Acme is in deadly earnest about that part of its operation), all the seafood here is usually prepared to order and comes out hot and crisp. That's a good start. Much--perhaps most--of the rest of the menu is cooked elsewhere and brought in to be warmed up and served. Despite that, those dishes manage to be as good as any you'll find elsewhere. (The red beans are a notable example of that.) During the past few years, the menus have been expanded, modernized, and sent a shade upscale. All of this has made the place even better, without harming the culinary core. A very reliable place to eat.

BACKSTORY
The Acme on Iberville Street is the Antoine’s of oyster bars, its history stretching back a century to the days when oyster bars were a recent import. (As much as oyster bars feel distinctly New Orleans, they are duplicates of a much older New York tradition.) When the current owners took over about twenty years ago, they turned a sleepy but very fine little cafe into a phenomenon, just by jazzing it up a little. The satellite locations came in the 1990s, and have lately begun opening well outside of New Orleans, with Acmes in Baton Rouge, Destin, and even at the airport.

Waitress available.

DINING ROOM
All the locations are different, except for one common motif: neon signs everywhere, one proclaiming "Waitress Available Sometimes." (There's a joke in there somewhere.) The Iberville original is the roughest, most beat-up of the bunch (people love that about it; it's widely believed that a restaurant can't be real Nawlins without being funky.) The Metairie restaurant is a former CuCo's, not much renovated from that hegemony. The most pleasant is the Covington location, which has a separate room for the oyster bar and a clean, bustling environment in the television-surrounded main room.

Oysters on the grill.

ESSENTIAL DISHES
Oysters on the half shell.
Char-grilled oysters.
Onion rings.
Meat pies.
Boiled shrimp remoulade.
Fried oysters remoulade.
Soups of the day.
Gumbo (both seafood and chicken versions are good).
Oyster Rockefeller soup.
Wedge salad with blue cheese and bacon.
Red beans and rice.
Jambalaya.
Fried seafood platters, especially oysters and catfish.
Crawfish etouffee.
Stuffed crab.
Grilled fish specials.
Hamburger steak.
Roast beef poor boy.
Fried oyster poor boy.
Hot sausage poor boy.
Bread pudding.
Pecan cobbler.

FOR BEST RESULTS
Whether oysters are a main course or an appetizer, have them at the bar to get the biggest and best ones. Order twice as many of the grilled oysters as you think you'll eat. If there's a line in front on Iberville Street, go for oysters to the Bourbon House or the Red Fish Grill instead.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The catfish is too big to fry properly. The soft shell crabs are too inconsistent to order (where are those coming from, anyway?). In general, the Metairie location's act could tighten up a good bit.

FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics. Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.

SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES

This review was updated with new information on 3/18/2010.

A list of over 320 full, current reviews is here.