Emeril's
The same day we dined at NOLA, we had a 9PM dinner reservation at Emeril's eponymous restaurant in the Warehouse District of New Orleans. We arrived a bit early and faced a wait in the crowded bar, along with several dozen other people. We were soon ushered to seats with the best view in the house - the food bar. This area seats ten people around a semicircular concrete bar, behind which stands two very hard-working cooks slaving over twelve burners and a double door oven. That night, Mary Beth and Tim entertained us for several hours as they sweated and toiled to produce dozens of orders of redfish, quail, salmon, and steak. They worked together like a well-oiled machine, never getting into the other's way, and not missing an order. I was very impressed, and thought this was very much akin to dinner theatre, but more entertaining :)

Because we had an in with the manager, we were comped an amuse bouche of duck with shredded greens - just a mouthful, as the name implies. After ordering drinks, we were allowed to peruse the menu. As with that of NOLA, choosing a meal was a difficult decision. I decided to go with the duck dish, which unfortunately wasn't the much-loved "study of duck" that is currently listed on the Web site's version of the menu. I started off the meal with an Emeril's salad. Neal had the baby spinach/goat cheese/andouille dressing salad and because we saw so many of them being prepared before our eyes, the redfish.

I must say that the meal was a disappointment. The Emeril's salad - baby greens, sundried tomatoes, jack cheese, croutons, and a balsamic vinaigrette - was a bore. The overly-salty tomatoes and cheese were hidden on the bottom of the plate, under the lettuce. The dressing tasted only of salt. At least the greens were fresh. Neal seemed to enjoy his salad, but when asked, he admitted that my version of it is much tastier (and that made me happy!) The entrees were better: my half duck was cooked so that the fat had melted away, but left lots of tender meat behind. The skin was tastily glazed. But the baby carrots were so salty, they tasted as if they had been brined. And the "duck cracklin' bread pudding" was dry and tasteless. I was expecting something as delicious as the wild mushroom version I had in Orlando last year, but was sorely disappointed. Neal's fish was a large fillet, with a breadcrumb and pecan topping, served over a pile of shoestring potatoes, an afterthought of vegetables, and some meuniere sauce. My taste of his meal was of overly-salted and too-dry topping on nicely-cooked fish. The shoestring potatoes were good, but the sauce was again too salty and the vegetable portion was so minute as to be practically nonexistent. The dish needed less salt and more sauce.

Dessert was Hawaiian Vintage Chocolate peanutbutter pie for Neal and coconut cream pie with pineapple ice cream and caramel sauce for me. The chocolate pie was not a standard peanutbutter pie - it was more like chocolate mousse, delicately flavored with peanutbutter. Neal says not enough of it either. I thought it was nice. My pie, however, was a big failure. It was so sweet, the coconut flavor was nigh undetectable. The caramel sauce looked nice, but had a very bitter burnt taste - inexcusable that the person in charge of preparing that sauce didn't taste it before bottling it or was too lazy to make a new batch. The pineapple ice cream was good though, not too sweet (or maybe it was just right and my taste buds were dull from all the preceding salt).

For the amount of money that our meal cost, I expected nothing short of deliciousness. The meal would have been great at half the price, however. It seems now that Emeril is spending less and less time in his kitchens and more time being a celebrity/corporation, his restaurants are suffering. Perhaps our meal at NOLA was a fluke, as has been suggested, perhaps not. Only time will tell. Let's hope the meal at Emeril's was the one to be the exception.


Emeril's Orlando || NOLA

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