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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:

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Among the best locally.

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Excellent and ambitious.

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Worth crossing town for.

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Recommended.

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Acceptable.

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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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Ristorante Carmelo

Northern Italian.
Mandeville: 1901 US Hwy 190. 985-624-4844. Map.
Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday.
Nice Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website

WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
You'll only get in trouble if you start using the word "authentic" about Italian food, especially in this country. But Carmelo Chirico claims to serve the real thing. In at least one sense it's true: few restaurants in New Orleans have ever served the food of Northern Italy, and Ristorante Carmelo does it better than any other. His new restaurant on the North Shore is more pleasant, spacious, and cooks a bigger menu than his old French Quarter place. All in all, it's distinct step up from what was already a very good restaurant.

WHY IT'S GOOD
Carmelo's enlarged menu reads like one you'd find in Rome, Venice, Florence, or Capri. Red sauces are well enough made, but they get no more emphasis than those made with olive oil, reduced stocks and wine, or cream. Carmelo goes to Italy several times a year to look for ingredients and to tune up his palate; by so doing he has avoided the trap of turning into another Creole-Italian restaurant. The sausages, pasta, breads, and antipasto are all made in house. The new brick pizza oven turns out a great pie. And here is the best Italian wine list in town, full of very unusual bottles.

BACKSTORY
Carmelo Chirico came to town in the 1970s to start a succession of New York-style pizzerias. They attracted enough attention that he sold them off and opened a first-class Italian restaurant in 1989 at the corner of Toulouse and Decatur. He had a second restaurant for a few years in the 1990s in Slidell. At the end of his lease on the French Quarter place, he closed it and moved to a new retail development in Mandeville in late 2009. There he picked up more or less where he left off, added the brick oven, and moved on.

DINING ROOM
In place of the cramped three-floor French Quarter environment, the new ristorante is all in one spreading, spacious room, divided into smaller spaces to avoid looking chain-like. The back wall is lined by a large open kitchen, fronted by display cases of antipasto, salumi, fish and vegetables--none of which are props. The bar is the most Italianate space here, inviting enough that you'll want to sit there and have a Negroni even if your table's ready.

Malfadine.

ESSENTIAL DISHES
Antipasto.
Bruschetta with tomatoes, fresh basil, and olive oil.
Prosciutto with melon.
Mussels in a peppery tomato and wine sauce.
Fried calamari.
Grilled oysters with spinach and Parmigiano.
Beef carpaccio.
Homemade Italian sausage with peppers and onions.
Pasta e fagioli soup.
Cacciucco (seafood soup, similar to cioppino).
Caprese salad (tomatoes and fresh mozzarella).
Penna arrabiata (spicy red sauce).
Spaghetti with shrimp and crabmeat.
Fettuccine with peas, prosciutto,and cream.
Rigatoni bolognese.
Malfadine (pasta dumplings) with mushrooms and truffles in a cream sauce (photo above).
Ravioli with crabmeat.
Chicken marsala.
Chicken Vesuvio (with sausage, peppers, onions).
New York strip steak.
Grilled veal chop.
Osso buco.
Pizza with anything.
Tiramisu.

Muffuletta pizza.

FOR BEST RESULTS
Start with pizza. Order it even before drinks. Then antipasto or a half-order of pasta for the next course. From there, go with your appetite. Spend some time with the wine list, and try something you never had before. Talk to Carmelo at some point. If he's not there, he's in Italy.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The bruschetta is not as good as it was in the French Quarter. Too many televisions. At some point, the city or the state must rename the stretch of US 190 where the restaurant is located to something meaningful to people.

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 4/21/2010.

A list of over 325 full, current reviews is here.