Commander's Palace - New Orleans

Getting back to New Orleans restaurant reviews....

On Friday night of our trip we went to Commander's Palace.  We had been in January for the Championship Game but were with a big group and had a pre-set menu.  Even with a pre-set menu it was fantastic! If I remember correctly, I had the Turtle Soup, Filet, and Strawberry Shortcake then and they were all wonderful!

This time, we sat outdoors on the patio under twinkle lights and it was very romantic just to enjoy getting out just the two of us.  After ordering we were brought freshly made bread and our soups.

Soup du Jour - Crab Bisque

Gumbo du Jour

For dinner we got two rather traditional meals.  They were both good, although I'd say that my fish on the corn with the crab was the best.  It was exceptional!

Pecan Crusted Gulf Fish

Creole Spiced Cowgirl Ribeye

We put in an order for my bread pudding soufflé early since we didn't get to try that in January.  It was very good, but honestly, I've had better bread pudding.  I think it had too much other "stuff" in it that kind of took it away from "the best ever" for me.  Maybe too many raisins or something? I prefer cream drenched bread in my bread pudding.  It was still good though and Jason really enjoyed his Pecan Pie!

The Famous Bread Pudding Soufflé

Pecan Pie a la Mode

Overall, it was a great restaurant and we look forward to going back on our next visit to Nola!

*Disclaimer: The people at Commander's Palace have no idea who I am and I was not compensated in any way.  All opinions and pictures are my own.

Restaurant August - New Orleans

This is the first of my restaurant reviews from our trip to New Orleans.  We enjoyed wonderful meals while in town and I wanted to give them the blog space that they deserved!

On Friday for lunch we had our first of many very nice meals at Restaurant August.  Even though we had heard great things about the restaurant from one of Jason's co-workers who has a buddy who is one of the Sous Chef's, we still weren't prepared for how nice of a meal it would be.  On the way back from Nola we discussed it and we agreed that it probably wasn't our best meal in town that weekend but it was definitely the most refined meals that we've ever had!

We started our lunch with a nice walk to the restaurant.  Chef John Besh describes August as a "James Beard award-winning" restaurant that "highlights the finest of dining with the flair of local ingredients."  We were very impressed with the off the beaten path feel of August (across the street from the Windsor Court) but it's still close proximity to Canal and our hotel.

We made reservations for 11:30 and weren't the only people in the restaurant, although it wasn't overly crowded either.  The decor was very refined and classic with white tablecloths and beautiful light fixtures.  The near floor to ceiling windows allowed in a lot of light and gave the restaurant an airy feel that made you forget that you were in downtown New Orleans.

As soon as we were seated we were handed beautiful leather menu's.  We were able to choose our meal a la carte (which we did) or they also offer a Prix Fixe meal with some options.

After ordering, warm fresh made bread was brought out along with a crock of butter.  The baguettes were a lovely beginning to our meal.

We didn't order appetizers, but they brought this out for us "from the chef".  I can't find a description of it on the current online menu but it was some sort of cold custard in an egg shell with caviar on the top with a crouton.  Neither of us had ever had caviar before the the texture of it almost did me in.  I tried it but this was way too "refined" for my tastes.  It makes me a little worried about our trip to Paris!

Breaded Trout Pontchartrain

This was my lunch and it was fantastic.  Just looking at the picture again makes my mouth water.  Those are grits below the trout and with the wild mushrooms and hollandaise sauce on top of the fish it was fantastic!

Grilled Gulf jumbo Shrimp and Risotto

Jason had the shrimp and risotto and I tried some of it.  It was very good too, but ask you can see the portion was significantly smaller than mine.

Deconstructed Banana Pudding

Apparently the pastry chef came up with this new version of the classic banana pudding.  With freeze dried (I think?) peanut butter and "Nila Wafer" ice cream it was definitely a new experience.  It was a good dessert, but not the best of the weekend.

Overall we loved the ambiance of Restaurant August.  The staff was very attentive and we got great service.  It wasn't overly crowded at lunch, although we did make reservations ahead of time.  I think the bar area would be really neat to enjoy a pre-dinner drink!  The food was not the best that we had that weekend, but it still ranks pretty highly on my best meals of all-time list!

*Disclaimer: Chef Besh and the people at August have no idea who I am and I was not compensated in any way (other than the complimentary appetizer which I'm led to believe everyone gets).  All opinions and pictures are my own.

Callin' Baton Rouge

When Jason and I decided to postpone our belated 5 year anniversary trip to the spring, we decided that we would try and take advantage of our football game against LSU in Baton Rouge.  We decided to make a long weekend out of it and make the most of a little time by ourselves.

We started the weekend off with a stop in Jackson to see Kelly and Tripp.  We have been lucky enough to see them every couple of months since they moved and we enjoyed a relaxing evening with them and Caroline and Catherine.  It was so nice to get to spend some time catching up with them.  They were so kind to host us in their home (which is gorgeous!) and I'm sad to say that I didn't take any pictures while there.

Jason and I got up bright and early (too early!) on Friday morning to make the rest of the trek to New Orleans.  We made good time, despite the foggy drive, and pulled into town a little after 10am.

We had high hopes for finding some cool things for the house on our trip and after we dropped our bags at our hotel we headed first to The Bank Architectural Antiques.  We saw lots of gorgeous items and even ended up basing some doors in our house on what we saw but decided not to purchase anything there.  We weren't convinced that the time it would take to come back and pick them back up after they were refinished would be worth our trouble.  It was a neat place though and I highly recommend it if you're in the market for antique doors and someone who can return them to their glory days.

After our bust of a shopping trip we headed to our first of many very nice meals at Restaurant August.  A review and pictures of our meal will be forthcoming soon.

We spent the afternoon checking out some more antique shops with little success (Ricca's Architectural being the main place we shopped out of the Quarter).  We found some beautiful things but the things that I was most inclined to buy were a $11,000 true French antique dining table for the kitchen and a $7,500 ink and watercolor art piece of Paris.  Since neither of those were in our budget (haha) we just kept searching.

Friday evening we had reservations at the classic, Commander's Palace.  Again, a post about our meal will be coming soon.

We joyfully slept as late as possible on Saturday morning (9 am! what a blessing!) and then met Charlie for lunch at Nola.  Lunch was wonderful and it was good to get to hang out with Charlie a little bit.  The only downside to lunch was that I didn't realize until I was halfway to the restaurant that I was wearing gold.... as in, I looked like a LSU fan!  It was even worse when we were walking back to our hotel after lunch and I said "Roll Tide!" to a couple and they looked shocked and then said "Thank you" back to me.  I was distraught that they thought that I was a LSU fan!  What horror!

We left the hotel mid-afternoon to get to Baton Rouge.  The drive wasn't nearly as bad or as crowded as I expected it to be, but it was still incredibly nice not to have to be the one driving.  We made it to the stadium not long after the gates opened and Jason and I headed on in to find our seats.

We had great seats in the end zone and were treated to a view of sleeping Mike all during pre-game.  I guess he's supposed to be intimidating but when he just sleeps and has cheerleaders on top of his cage, he's not really scary.

As you know, the game was crazy.  It turns out that I am a fan of little hope once games go later than 8:30 pm and I sat down and checked my phone for some of the second half.  Thankfully I was up again and watching when Yeldon ran into the end zone to win the game.  We all went crazy and I'm not sure I'll ever forget when the guy in the row in front of me looked and asked me if I was going to be ok after that play was over because I was hyperventilating from all of the excitement.  What a win!

We didn't get back to the hotel until around 1 am and got up to be on the road and back to our babies by 7:30 but it was still a great trip.  We enjoyed lots of quality talk time in the car and had fun just being a couple again.  The LSU fans that we encountered were fairly nice before the game and totally quiet after so I never really feared for my life which I had expected to.  It was just a great long weekend to start out with seeing old friends and getting to bring home a win.  However, after two trips to New Orleans in one year, I don't want to head back again anytime soon!

The Big Easy

SEC football fans are a different breed.  Some say that they live for football during the fall, but in the South we pretty much live for football year round.  All Universities have fans that run the gamut from proper, classy gentlemen and ladies to the more....shall we say...fringe elements.  Alabama is no exception but one thing that we all are are optimistic.

We have been discussing whether we would take the kids to New Orleans for the Championship game basically since the last bowl game.  There was always a qualifier in the discussion but the fact that we were strong contenders to get to New Orleans was a given.  That, of course, wasn't always the case.  My parents won two national championships while they were in college.  But my college career?  Well, let's just say it wasn't pretty and leave it at that.  We were besieged by s-t-u-p-i-d coaches and boosters who tried their hardest to run our program into the ground.

And then Coach Saban came.  And the tides turned and the future started looking bright.  While the majority of the country, and definitely the SEC, dislike him I'm not sure that any can deny the difference that he has made in our program.  And from a household of Alabama fans, I will say that we believe that he is a great man on and off the field!

The pride that he returned to Alabama football is the reason that we had multiple conversations before the season even started as to whether or not the kids will accompany us to New Orleans.  My answer from the start was a resounding 'NO!'  Which meant that when every single domino fell giving us a chance to redeem our November loss, Jason and I were looking at a trip without the kids to New Orleans.  It turned out that a trip at this time couldn't have be better but it was very hard to leave James and Charlotte.

Our family before we left

We got to New Orleans around 2 on Sunday afternoon.  It was hard to not go until Sunday because we felt like everyone went down Friday after work or earlier but we couldn't get away for any longer so we took what we could.  Almost as soon as we got to the hotel we turned around and went shopping.  It was really our only chance to explore so we spent the afternoon wandering from store to store.

First time in Pat O's and first Hurricane.  The last two times I was in New Orleans I was 20 and then I was  pregnant so it was definitely a different experience to be able to drink.  But just for the record, that hurricane? HORRIBLE!  Tasted like cough syrup and didn't get better the longer I drank it!

We happened upon a book signing with Coach Stallings and some other Alabama players.  We chatted for a little while.  Ha!  In addition to Coach Stallings, I also saw John Lithgow walking through the French Quarter!

That night we went to Commander's Palace for a wonderful meal.  It was absolutely one of the best meals that I've ever had in my life.  And it was topped off by my favorite dessert: Strawberry shortcake!  It was a great night with great company and a wonderful way to celebrate our return to the National Championship game!

Since we have two kids we definitely needed to catch up on sleep so we didn't go out that night.  On Monday morning Jason got up and went out with Charlie to look at antique watches but I got a chance to sleep in so I took it! I finally got out of bed at 10:30 and barely got ready in time to make lunch at Emeril's!

It was a great lunch and made even more fun by Emeril himself walking in to the restaurant!  He came in wearing a New Orleans t-shirt and carrying his chef's jacket still in it's dry cleaners bag.  He went straight to his office (which we could see the door of) and stayed in there until someone set off the fire alarm.  He immediately went back to the kitchen.  Let's hope no one got fired for that!

After lunch we went back to the hotel and facetime'd with Charlotte and James and got ready to go to the game!  I was excited to put on my red Jimmy Choo's that Jason bought me when we went to New York.  No better football game for them than the National Championship game!

We headed out at 4 pm to the stadium and once we got there we headed in to the Pantheon Cafe for dinner.  It was fun to get to see some people that I rarely get to see so we enjoyed chatting before heading to our seats.

There was a candy bar filled with red and white candy.  It was adorable!

We were all tense when the game started but as it continued we got to enjoy it more and more.  After so much contention that we didn't deserve to be in the game, the national media crowning LSU as the champion over and over in the lead up to the game, and almost every ESPN analyst wearing purple to the game, there wasn't a better way to win than by shutting them out!  What a great way to win a National Championship!

After we got back to our hotel we decided to live large and go to Cafe du Monde.  It was 12:30 as we were leaving the hotel and we were so proud of ourselves for staying up so late and heading out again!

What a great trip!  We can only hope that we're headed to Miami next year!

Sugar Bowl

We had a really fun time in New Orleans over the weekend, except for the hours that we sat in the Superdome and watched our boys crumble. Other than that and the fact that I was getting sicker by the day we had a blast.

Jason and I went down to Tuscaloosa to stay at the condo on New Years Eve to try and cut my car trips into two smaller trips.  There are no pictures from New Years Eve because our evening was just too fun filled!  I mean, what else can you call dinner at Full Moon (which really was superb), a shopping trip to Target, and watching half of 21?!?!  I can only imagine what our New Years Eve's after having a child are going to look like! They can't get much more boring! :)

On Thursday we met Charlie and drove the rest of the way to New Orleans.  We stayed at the JW Marriott right on Canal which was so centrally located.  We were the only five of maybe ten Alabama fans staying at the hotel but thankfully they all left early Saturday and we didn't have to bother with them!  For dinner we walked down Bourbon to a restaurant called Embers.  It was good but my goodness, I'd forgotten how much I dislike Bourbon Street!  It just makes me sad walking down it!  Here are pictures from dinner:

On Friday we all slept late and then walked across the street to enjoy lunch at The Palace Cafe. It is really neat inside and had really good food!  We shopped some at Rubenstien's next door to the hotel.  It is such a nice men's store that they have a valet for the store!  Maybe it's just that we live in Alabama, but I can not think of another store that has a valet!  I made Jason try on some Rag and Bone jeans that were on sale because I read that they're Jon Hamm's (from Mad Men) favorite jeans but sadly, the ones on sale didn't fit.

After shopping we hung out in the hotel bar/restaurant (aptly it was a Shula's restaurant -- we should have known our game was going to go badly!) to watch Ole Miss annihilate Texas Tech.  That was a lot of fun!  And pretty much the football highlight of the weekend since we lost and then Charlie's Falcons lost.  Here we are at the table that became ours over the weekend.  

Luckily, our hotel was centrally located so it wasn't too much of a trek to the Superdome on Friday evening.  Also, we were very fortunate that all of the weathermen were wrong and it wasn't raining.  The walk home from the game would have been so much worse if had been raining!  Here's a full shot before the game with the belly so that everyone can see how huge I am!  I'm having a hard time believing that I'll be able to get bigger but I know that it will happen! :)

We'll skip over the game except to say that we, again, had fantastic seats.  We were just across the aisle from all of the player's families so that was fun.  

Saturday was our "shopping" day because Mom and I usually require one.  Sadly, with my growing stomach I think the guys found more stuff that they wanted in the autograph store and gun and coin store than we found!  Lunch at Red Fish Grille was great and then we proceeded to go out shopping on Royal and Decatur streets.  Thankfully it just drizzled off and on throughout the afternoon so we were able to stay (mostly) dry.

Saturday night we went to Emeril's restaurant Nola.  If you have not eaten there you have to go!  It was amazing!  We had plans to go to Cafe Du Monde after dinner but when it started raining sideways while we were eating we decided to stay and eat dinner at Nola.  I'm glad we did because that was when things got exciting!  Charlie is an international business major and so, conveniently enough, he had to go and study in Italy a few summers ago.  He apparently was introduced to a Scotch in Italy called Lagavulin that he has not been able to find since he left Italy.  Well, Emeril provided a great dessert menu that offered the beloved Lagavulin so Jason and Charlie both tried it!  Charlie almost disowned me when I told him I needed a picture of him and Jason with their Scotch but he was a good sport!  When they were ordering their scotch they talked Dad into getting some Cognac.  So there's a picture of him and Charlie and their drinks also!

We tried to get a cab to take us back to the hotel but couldn't flag one down and the street in front of the restaurant had been closed so they couldn't call us one.  That ended up being a great thing though because we ran across a wine store that had Lagavulin and the Remy Martin that Dad drank so the guys got those for the wine cellars as their souvenirs! :)

Overall, it was a great trip!  During the ride home yesterday my cough kept getting worse so I went to the doctor this morning.  I don't have strep or anything, just a horrible cold, so there's not much that they can do.  But the extra rest I got today while I took the day off of work has really helped me feel better.  I feel much better now than I did tomorrow.  Now all I have to do is count down the hours until my Wednesday appointment!

In case you made it all the way through that post, congratulations! :)  I got word from one of my favorite retailers, Doodle Bugs Paper, that she wants to do a giveaway on my blog.  I should be ready to put up the giveaway by the end of the week so be on the lookout for that post!  Have a great week!