The Restaurants We Can't Live Without By Tom Fitzmorris. . . Revised June 2009 #5 Stella! Eclectic. French Quarter: 1032 Chartres. 504-587-0091. Map. Dinner seven nights. Dressy. AE DC DS MC V www.restaurantstella.com   WHY IT'S ESSENTIAL   After the hurricane, most chefs in the city's most ambitious restaurants backed away from the cutting edge, favoring local flavors and dishes that at least reminded one of past experiences. Stella! went the other way instead. It has the city's most eclectic kitchen, in step with the restaurants you read about in food magazines--the ones, these days, that seem to be playing with food. The food here is as delicious as it is original. This is not, however, a good place for those with meat-and-potatoes (or gumbo-and-grilled redfish) appetites. This is a restaurant for culinary explorers.   WHY IT'S GOOD   With the exception of a handful of dishes enjoyed too much by the regulars to be removed from the menu, the food here is unique in an intensively studied way. The chef orders his ingredients from far-flung sources--salmon from Tasmania, for example, and real Japanese Kobe beef. He applies preparations and garnishes just as unusual. A dinner of the tasting menu here will be among the best dinners you ever had in New Orleans--even though it seems like the work of a restaurant very far from here.   BACKSTORY   Chef-owner Scott Boswell is one of a crop of brilliant, original chefs (John Besh and Bingo Starr among them) who worked together at the Windsor Court in the 1990s. Like the others, Boswell left to open his own eclectic restaurant in 2001. Stella's stature has grown with each year, while Boswell has taken time out to work with a number of Japanese and French chefs at the highest level of the business--including a couple of original Iron Chefs. During an extended closure of the restaurant following Katrina, Boswell opened a second, much more casual and traditional restaurant called Stanley!, now a block away in the Pontalba. The building goes back almost two hundred years.   DINING ROOM   Enclosed by but not part of the Provincial Hotel, Stella!'s two dining rooms flank the carriageway and courtyard of a very old French Quarter mansion. The dining room nearer the street is smaller and isolated, but overlooks the street and a row of townhouses. Missing: a guy yelling “Stella!”   ESSENTIAL DISHES   Roasted squash puree with bacon and chocolate. Lobster, Araucana egg and truffles. Risotto of the day. Veal and shrimp dumplings. Trio of oysters with three caviars, granitas, and vodkas. Asian chili shrimp (a take on New Orleans barbecue shrimp). Bouillabaisse. Fish and chips (tempura skate wing and taro root chips). Tandoori-roasted king salmon. Scallops and shrimp with truffled potato hash. Duck five ways (seared breast, lacquered leg, moo-shu, duck in miso broth, foie gras wontons). Porcini mushroom crusted rack of lamb. Beef tenderloin glazed with Japanese eel sauce and soy-sake butter. Bananas Foster French toast. Trio of cremes brulee. Chocolate cake with hot pink lemonade.   FOR BEST RESULTS   The tasting menu is expensive ($95, $180 with paired wines), but it's worth every nickel if you're up for a rare landmark in your dining history. Some of the waiters' descriptions of the food sound preposterous, but have faith in the ability of the kitchen to make it all good.   OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT   Scott Boswell's fascination with Asian cuisines has overloaded his menu with those flavors. In the restaurant's earlier years, there was more contrast, and there's a need for that now. The chef and his staff are a bit too impressed with their restaurant, to the degree that the preferences of diners sometimes come second. I still think they ought to answer the phone with a Stanley Kowalski-style screamed "Stella!"   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 +2 Value Attitude +1 Wine and Bar +2 Hipness +3 Local Color +2   SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES    Romantic Windows with a view Good for business meetings Private dining room (fewer than 25) Private dining room (more than 25) Open Sunday Open Monday Well-known chef Vegetarian dishes Valet parking free Reservations accepted Reservations honored promptly Click here for an index to all 200 Essential Restaurant reviews. © 2009 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com