New Orleans Roadfood Festival, Mar-24-2011: Tujague's

After finally arriving in New Orleans Thursday evening, we went in search of a late dinner to the Roadfood-recommended Tujague's (pronounced Two-jacks), New Orleans' second oldest restaurant.


Tujague's offers a five-course meal with a single choice, that of main course. There are four choices given, and chicken bon femme is always available if you know to ask for it.

The first course was shrimp remoulade. This is not the mayonnaise-based sauce that I've encountered under the name of remoulade elsewhere; this was a complex, brownish-red mixture of I-don't-know-what. It was spicy enough to be too spicy for Lori; I think I tasted cayenne and mustard in it, but those were only a small fraction of the whole flavor profile.


The second course was seafood gumbo. It was a very thin gumbo, unlike most gumbos I've encountered that it wasn't served with rice; it was mostly just broth with a few discs of spicy sausage and a crab body that I didn't extract the meat from. It too was too spicy for Lori, and I wasn't very pleased with it myself.


Things improved with the third course, beef brisket with creole sauce. The brisket was splendidly tender, falling into shreds at the touch of a fork. The sauce was much like a cocktail sauce.


For the main course, I ordered the chicken bon femme. "Chicken bon femme" translates as "good woman chicken", but what was not clear to me from the reviews I've read was that the good woman has an interest in a garlic farm. It was a layered dish. Layer one on the plate was a layer of salad greens. That was topped with four pieces of fried chicken. The chicken was almost hidden from view by a layer of housemade potato chips. Then the whole thing was topped with a double handful of chopped raw garlic and parsley - mostly garlic. I've had platters of nachos with less cheese than there was garlic atop these potato chips. I tried to keep the garlic on the chips and chicken as I ate them, but despite my attempts, enough garlic spilled off to pile up in drifts on the table. I was very conscious that Lori and I might be risking an unfortunate garlic imbalance, like the imprudent Stinking Rose incident on our honeymoon.
The chips didn't thrill me; they were decent, but a bit too greasy for me to enjoy eating them for long.
The fried chicken, however, was excellent: very juicy and flavorful, with an exceptional herby crispy skin. I really enjoyed it a lot.
By the end of the course, I could feel the garlic emanating from my whole body. But on the plus side, I felt totally proof against vampires.


Lori got a filet mignon, served with mashed potatoes and cabbage sauteed with onions. The filet was cooked with a sauce of butter and (cooked) garlic. I was surprised to find that I could clearly taste the garlic in the sauce even though I had eaten so much raw garlic from my plate; it gave me hope that we might avoid garlic imbalance catastrophe.


Dessert was banana bread pudding with caramel sauce. It was very good.


One last remark about Tujague's: the bar area has a huge mirror, probably 8'x16'. The history of Tujague's we read said that the mirror was brought from a restaurant in France. The thought of transporting such a huge mirror safely with 19th-century technology daunts me.

New Orleans Roadfood Festival, Mar-25-2011: K-Joe's

On Friday morning, we got out of the hotel at about 11am. We considered going to Brennan's for breakfast, because we had had a splendid three-course breakfast there in 2011. We knew that this was our best chance for a big ornate breakfast like that, because we'd want to save our appetite for the Roadfood festival on Saturday and Sunday. But as splendid as the prospect was, it just did not call to us, and so we searched elsewhere. We looked in the window of Antoine's, but they didn't serve brunch on Friday, and Lori likes to start her day with breakfast. So we drifted across the street to K-Joe's, which is not listed on the Roadfood site, but which had provided outstanding red beans and rice at the 2010 festival. Lori asked if they were still serving breakfast, and the server replied, "until 2pm." Lori's kind of place!


I ordered the cajun omelet, which the menu describes thus: "CAJUN OMELLETTE, a true New Orleans breakfast; ham, smoke sausage, bell pepper and onions. Topped with Creole sauce." The omelette was very good, with strong flavors from the ham and sausage. The grits were unusual in that they tasted of fresh corn; I believe that they had a smattering of corn kernels mixed in. The biscuit was buttered and lightly toasted, which made it quite nice indeed.


Lori ordered the eggs Benedict with hash browns. The eggs Benedict were good, but Lori would have preferred a creamier hollandaise and less of the paprika-based seasoning on top.


I had hoped that I'd be delighted beyond compare by K-Joe's, such that I could claim it as a hitherto-undocumented Roadfood gem. But this meal leaves it still in limbo, because it's not uncommon to have meals this good; I'd like to have a few more extraordinary meals or several more very good meals at K-Joe's before I felt I could claim "you should turn aside from the other splendid restaurants in the French Quarter to make time for K-Joe's". But I'm certainly cheerful about breakfasting there. And on Saturday, I got to meet and chat with Joseph Faroldi, proprietor of K-Joe's, and I was very glad to chat with him. (More on that later.)