Emeril's New Orleans

Emeril's New Orleans was our first dinner in town.   He has several restaurants in town and I was told that this was a good exemplar of the food he became known for.  We started with the Rabbit on fried green tomatoes this was probably our favorite dish of the night. Delicious rabbit tender and flavorful, not the least bit gamey, on top of crispy fried green tomtoes. Just a beautifully balanced dish.

Our second starter was the smoked exotic mushrooms on angel hair pasta with tasso sauce. The smokey mushrooms paired perfectly with the creamy tasso sauce which had a paprika and smoked ham flavor. Sometimes I find smokey dishes over smoked and so that the smokey taste overwhelms the rest of the components. The smokiness here was pitch perfect, though I think the noodles and the sauce could've been tossed together a bit more.  Some ended up stuck together as a chunk, but the noodles that were well coated in the sauce were great. 

We went on to the seafood gumbo, which was a very good version of gumbo, not very spicy but really well balanced a lot of different flavors melded together, but not a soft of muddied overcooked taste that you sometimes get with gumbo.  By the end of the week, I had sampled many gumbos and this one ranked among the best.

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Tet, Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras and Valentine's Weekend

With Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras and Valentine's Day falling on the same weekend what else was there to do but have a three day festival of food and nature in Yosemite.  The first day we celebrated Tet and Chinese New Year, the second Mardi Gras, and on the third day we celebrated Valentine's Day with a snowball fight.

Tet & Chinese New Year Menu
Bang Chung w/ pickled veg
Xiao Long Bao
Seafood Noodles
Braised Pork Belly w/ Egg
Mangosteens
Nian Gaw

Tet was kicked off by Bang Chung a traditional Vietnamese dish of mung bean paste wrapped in glutinous rice wrapped in banana leaves and boiled for a long while, then toasted in a pan.  HM made them from scratch using a family recipe.  When it was described to me, I thought it was going to be a starch bomb, in fact it was a beautiful study in textures.  Toasted exterior crunch with a sticky and somewhat chewy glutinous rice interior and then a soft earthy bean paste.  Nothing like what I imagined.  HM pickled some vegetables to go with it and accompanied the whole thing with a side of steamed pork ("fancy pork").

Next came a dumpling course, which was originally sway jiao ("water dumplings"), but we decided to challenge ourselves to make xiao long bao (XLB).  C dutifully made the soup aspic the day before then prepared the filling that evening.  All of us then got to work in our little dumpling sweatshop making the xlb and placing them in steamers.  It was fun playing around with the amount of soup that would be in each dumpling.  We went for some super soupy ones.  They looked great.  After some complications with steaming them, including scorching my lip with some soup from a sample dumpling, we realized that the wrappers were the source of the difficulty.  Next time we'll need to adjust the wrappers, but the flavor was good and the dumplings were full of soup!  We also had a seafood noodle interlude, a recipe from R's mother.  A good balance of seafood flavor and fresh noodles.

BRENDA'S**'

Upon the invitation of some food loving friends, I headed to Polk Gulch for brunch. There in the mix with all the Polk Street bars, was Brenda's, a small 'French Soul Food' restaurant. Brenda, the former executive chef at Oritalia grew up in a Filipino-Creole household and started her cooking career in New Orleans. Her menu had plenty of New Orleans favorites such as beignets, gumbo, grits, andouille sausage. And some French items such as a croque and a tartine. The specials board included jambalaya and catfish. We sampled a flight of Beignets, Granola Pancakes, Catfish Sandwich, Creole Veggie Omelet, Hangtown Fry, Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast. The beignets were a good way to start the meal. Out of the four types, I preferred the crawfish, which were savory and spiced with cayenne. The others were fine, but not as good as the plain ones at Cafe du Monde. Our other starter was the granola pancakes, two giant ones, moist and with granola mixed into the batter. It had the right amount of granola, enough to taste, but no so much as to dry up or take over the pancake. There were a few creamy spots in the pancakes that tasted like vanilla cream, we were not sure whether it was cream or just a slightly less cooked part of the pancake. The catfish sandwich was reported to be good and the accompanying fries were cut McD's style.



Another friend liked the creole veggie omelet and said that the corn inside was well seasoned, so much so that she didn't need to add the hot sauce she usually uses on egg dishes. The Hangtown Fry, an egg scramble with bacon, fried oysters and mushrooms was the best of the entrees. The oysters were coated with cornmeal and fried to add a nice crunch to the omelet. Each breakfast entree came with a good biscuit, salty and crunchy on the outside with a soft buttery moist interior. The pot of grits was a little less exciting, very creamy but far too thick for my taste.



The only failed dish was the Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast which was from the specials board. The main complaint was that the plain white bread (wonder bread style) was too thin and flimsy to be topped with cream cheese and then doused with berry sauce. The dining companion that had grown up with Southern food said that using plain white bread was how it would be cooked in the South. So, I guess it was authentic, though not to my taste.

As far as the atmosphere of the restaurant, it is casual and cute, but very small. There are about six or seven tables and a counter along the wall for seating. It was full on a Saturday morning and the service was rather slow. It took a while to get coffee on the table, though refills were prompt. I've heard that people line up for the breakfast at Dottie's, this is much better than that, so I can imagine that soon enough there will be a wait on weekends.

Overall, I liked the menu and felt the food was of a good quality. I will return again for the food, but wouldn't wait in a long line for a table. Next time I'll try their oyster po'boy or some jambalaya.