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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.

starstarstarstar
Excellent and ambitious.

starstarstar
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.

starstarstarstarstar
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Pelican Club

Contemporary Creole.
French Quarter: 615 Bienville. 504-523-1504. Map.
Dinner seven nights.
Dressy.
AE DC DS MC V
Website

WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
The Pelican Club is the finest undercover restaurant in the entire New Orleans restaurant scene. Chef-owner Richard Hughes buys beautiful food and cooks it with skill and originality. Unlike most restaurants of its caliber, however, it's never had an especially high profile. Its regulars treat it like a secret club. The restaurant itself is semi-hidden on Exchange Alley, which even among lifelong locals is a familiar name but a mysterious location. It's the place to go when excellence is needed but fame is not.

WHY IT'S GOOD
Local flavors and ingredients dominate the menu, but not to the point of exclusivity. The chef likes to mix Italian, French, and Asian flavors into his Creole and Cajun dishes, and he has the sense of taste to pull such things off with aplomb. What emerges from the mix is an unmistakably New Orleans restaurant with a menu and style different from any other.

BACKSTORY
Richard Hughes came to light as chef of Iler Pope's Dante By The River (Brigtsen's is there now). He left town for a stint in New York, running a New Orleans-style restarant called (oddly) Memphis. He returned to open the Pelican Club in 1990, originally with Chin Ling, a chef who brought the Asian flavors that still remain here and there. (Ling left after the hurricane.) The building has hosted a number of restaurants over the years. The first of them was Il Ristorante Tre Fontane, a grand Italian restaurant far ahead of its time in the late 1960s. Its owner, Goffredo Fraccaro, relocated to Metairie to open the excellent La Riviera.

DINING ROOM
The entrance is on Exchange Alley, and opens into a bar with a few tables for dining. These may be the best in the house, because the sound level is lower, and a pianist is in there playing most nights. The three dining rooms line up into a long hall, with marble floors and enough other hard surfaces to make the acoustics uncomfortably lively when the place is full.

ESSENTIAL DISHES
Baked oysters with bacon, red peppers, herb butter.
Crabmeat and wild mushroom ravioli.
Scallop stuffed artichoke.
Seafood martini (cold (lobster, crabmeat, and shrimp).
Escargots with mushrooms and tequila.
Claypot barbecue shrimp.
Creole Caesar salad.
Smoked duck and shrimp gumbo.
Panneed fish with crabmeat.
Whole fried flounder with citrus chili sauce, scallops and shrimp.
Trio of duck (confit leg, grilled breast, and Asian-style stir-fry).
Louisiana cioppino (served in a copper pot).
Seafood fricassee.
Filet mignon marchand de vin or bearnaise.
Veal chop with lobster and peppercorn cream sauce.
Rack of lamb with port-mint demi-glace.
Jambalaya.
Vanilla bean and brandy creme brulee.
Bourbon pecan pie.
Coconut cream pie.

FOR BEST RESULTS
Dine at a table in the bar. Keep the restaurant in mind during the holidays, when they have the city's best Reveillon menu, and during the summer, when they run an extraordinarily attractive special menu.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Especially when the place is busy, the service is something less than exacting. Parts of the restaurant are very noisy when full, too.

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

ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
It's rare that food good enough to make it to the top of the ratings comes in a restaurant that also offers table d'hote dinners with such attractive prices. Almost since the Pelican Club opened, it's offered seasonal tabled'hote dinners in the same range you'd find in some chains--but with incomparably better food. Something new: an early-evening special of three courses for under $30. All you have to do is get in during the first half hour they're open. Nobody does better cold seafood appetizers than this place. The crabmeat, shrimp, and even lobster in the seafood martini and could not be more attractive or delicious.

This review was updated with new information on 1/22/2010.

A list of over 300 full, current reviews is here.