Cajun.
CBD: 401 Magazine. 504-524-3386. Map.
Lunch and dinner Monday-Friday.
Nice Casual.
AE DC MC V
Website
WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
It's hard to believe now, but there was a time when crawfish was almost entirely unavailable in New Orleans restaurants. The Bon Ton--long a good place for eating all the dishes made with the mudbugs--was the first restaurant in town to serve unambiguously Cajun food, instead of the related but subtly different Creole cooking in every other local restaurant. After over a half-century, the same old-fashioned style of Cajun cooking is still in place, changeless and good.
WHY IT'S GOOD
The style is one you don't even see in Cajun country much anymore. It's not as highly seasoned as current Cajun cooking usually is, for example. But the recipes are honest and good, and the signature dishes are among the best of their kind. Here is the finest crabmeat au gratin around. The etouffee and other parts of the four-way crawfish dinner are always there for a crawfish fix.
BACKSTORY
The Bon Ton opened in the mid-1920s, across the street from where it is now. It was a standard French-Creole restaurant until the 1950s, when Raceland citizens Alvin and Alzina Pierce bought the restaurant. With Alzina and her recipes in the kitchen, the menu shifted almost entirely to the cooking of Acadiana. This won the restaurant tremendous national acclaim, keeping it packed lunch and dinner, and popular enough that the Bon Ton could remain closed on Saturdays (as it still is).
DINING ROOM
Taking up the entire bottom floor of an 1840s building, the dining room is a tall, bright space, with bog windows on two sides and brick walls on the other. The red-checked tablecloths and the homey style of the waitresses--many of whom have worked her for decades--gives the place a decided informality. Despite that, many of the lunch customers are in jacket and tie.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Rum Ramsey cocktail.
Turtle soup.
Shrimp and crab okra gumbo.
Crawfish bisque.
Fried catfish fingers.
Shrimp remoulade.
Cajun Caesar salad.
Crawfish dinner (crawfish four ways).
Crabmeat au gratin.
Crabmeat imperial.
Redfish Bon Ton (with crabmeat).
Grilled fish with grilled oysters or shrimp.
Oysters or soft shell crab Alvin (fried, with a brown butter sauce).
Pan-broiled oysters or shrimp.
Bayou etouffee (half shrimp, half crawfish).
Filet mignon.
Sirloin strip.
Bread pudding.
FOR BEST RESULTS
Make a reservation for lunch, which gets crowded by noon and usually stays that way. Be aware that in many ways this restaurant is a throwback to a time of simpler cooking and service, and that some practices are long out of vogue.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
I have never been comfortable with the practice here of serving crawfish out of season. (It's frozen.) Many of the recipes use margarine. This restaurant should be above the practice of serving foil-wrapped pats of butter, but there they are.
FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics. Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.
- Dining Environment +1
- Consistency +2
- Service +1
- Value +1
- Attitude
- Wine and Bar
- Hipness -2
- Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Romantic
- Good for business meetings
- Open Monday lunch and dinner
- Historic
- Good for children
- Reservations recommended
This review was updated with new information on 4/1/2010.
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