The Gott Gourmet: Best Damn Lunch on Magazine Street? Likely!

Gott Gourmet Cafe
3100 Magazine Street
New Orleans, LA 70115-2351
(504) 373-6579

The Gott Gourmet is located on Magazine Street's restaurant row, promoting itself as a casual spot for more interesting then average breakfasts and lunches. That's not exactly a rare gambit, but the marvelous thing about the Gott Gourmet is that it actually pulls this off. Seriously - how many casual lunch places claim to be vaguely different from one another, when in actuality this means attiring waiters in ill-fitting "tropical" garb and putting incongruous mango chunks on endless, endless Chicken Ceasar salads? You know that of which I speak.

That is not the Gott Gourmet, which really does feature interesting riffs on typical lunch-time fare. Sandwiches, wraps, salads, burgers, and a couple of soup options are all on the menu - observe the coronary inducing St. Patty's Day Massacre reuben-esque (haha i made a funny) sandwich, the real-deal Chicago hot-dog, or the cochon de lait Cuban panini. Loverly.



We tried the loaded gumbo which comes with an extremely untraditional dollop of potato salad in lieu of rice. It's an all right gumbo that does boast a large amount of "stuff" but very little in the way of soulful, smack yo-mama flavor: the kitchen needs to add a little more oomph to this stuff to really wake up the ingredients. A healthy amount of Crystal helps. Like the toast points served on the side.



The shrimp BLT wrap with tabasco buttered sauteed shrimp, mozzarella, bacon, roast peppers, avocado, roast tomatoes, chili aoili, and chipotle cream cheese was a total knockout - a combination of crunchy shrimp, smoky bacon, and creamy avocado, working in tandem with the spicy flavor of the roast peppers. The thing dripped everywhere and got on one's hands, which just added to the experiential deliciousness of the thing. Devourable.



This is the grilled vegetable salad with chicken. God speed to Gott for figuring out how to produce a grilled chicken lunch salad that won't induce narcolepsy, will indeed make the dutifully healthful orderer happy. The perfectly cooked chicken was served on top of fresh wild greens with a flavorful assortment of roasted portobellos, peppers, onions, squash, zucchini, carrots, and other stuff, accompanied by feta and honey-sherry salad dressing. An excellent flavor combination and a damn fine salad. Salud.

Tried the St. Patty's Day reuben-thing - featuring corned beef, horseradish cheddar, french fries, cole slaw, 1000 island and creole mustard on pumpernickel on another visit. This was good but really pushed the boundaries of richness. Sort of like standing in front of your arteries and daring them, just daring them, to clog up and kill you, just try something, vascular system, make my day. Maybe I just miss my sauerkraut. The fries are made in house here, double-fried, and are excellent.

The dining room is utilitarian but clean and fairly open inside. Service is conducted by somewhat surly hipsters with ironic facial hair. This doesn't bother me too much (that after all does describe the vast majority of my friends) but your mileage may vary. Perhaps avoid discussing your fondness for Nickleback and day time television at the table. You never know.

Conclusion: The Gott Gourmet is one of the best lunch picks on Magazine Street, and an absolute winner for excellent food that won't bankrupt you or your company expense account when 12:00 PM rolls around. I am most sad that I am leaving the city and will not get a chance to work through the menu. Pick up the slack in my absence, New Orleans.

The Chill Out Cafe, Round Two

Chill Out Cafe
729 Burdette St
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 872-9628

The Chill Out Cafe is an oddity. The pleasant little joint's menu features American breakfast specialities co-existing with a selection of Thai and Chinese dishes, allowing guests to (theoretically) enjoy an omelet and a cup of gumbo with their Pad Thai. Even more remarkably, the Thai side of the menu - the only stuff I've tried here - is surprisingly good, which is a real wonderful thing in this Asian food challenged city. It's a family place with cheap prices and a laid-back vibe. Don't come here expecting either your food or yourself to get hustled out. Hanging out here on a lovely spring evening watching foot traffic go by? Ideal.

Yes, these are Iphone photos. Yes, I am going to hell.



My friend had the red seafood curry, which was very nice: fresh tasting variety seafood without that Look at Me I Was Once Frozen flavor, and a really rich, thick coconut milk sauce. Some places really half-ass red curry since people are foolish and don't know any better, but the Chill Out Cafe nailed this one.



I had the hot basil seafood, which featured the same fresh n' tasty seafood combination in a spicy chili sauce with basil stir-fried into it. This was pretty good, if not the best version of this dish I've ever had. There's this specific smoky flavor that comes from roasted chili paste that wasn't quite smacking me in the mouth here. Still, very tasty and the price was right at 12 bucks.



We also tried the garlic shrimp with broccoli. It's a pretty simple Chinese dish but was done well, with perfectly cooked shrimp in a mildly spicy (and a little cornstarchy) garlic sauce, as well as some steamed broccoli.

Portion sizes at the Chill Out Cafe are on the small side. It's probably a price slashing effort, but be aware if you happen to be dining with some strapping young college guys: order more then you might otherwise expect to. Try the seafood salad with fresh lime if it's a hot day - you won't regret it.

The Chill Out Cafe offers authentic, cheap, and rather under-appreciated Asian food on Maple Street, providing a pleasant alternative to the horrors of pizza at the Doors Pub or some sort of deep fried thing at one of the blocks many high quality and incredibly classy bars. Tulane kids, take note.

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa: Make Your Own Springrolls! In a Boat!

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa
6450 Stockton Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95823
(916) 428-3748



Quan Nem Ninh Hoa is one of Stockton Boulevard's small army of Vietnamese restaurants. This neat, simple little place specializes in regional menu items ranging beyond the standard chicken pho-and-noodle-bowl selections of most area restaurants and to excellent effect. The restaurant specializes in food from Ninh Hoa, a district in Southern Vietnam's Khanh Hoa province, and it's a delight to see regional Vietnamese cooking transmuted to Sacramento's neighborhoods. And tasty, did I mention that?

We ordered what everyone orders here: the Dac Biet Nem Nuong or the make-your-own-spring-rolls with ground pork skewers. This dish is usually massive and usually delicious, and Quan Nem Ninh Hoa's presentation definitely didn't disappoint. A variety of tasty things are brought out in a large boat-shaped bowl, and one order was more then enough to happily satiate my mother and I.



You take the hard spring-roll wrappers, dip them in warm water, then spread them out on a plate to fill with the ingredients - this requires entirely more expertise then I possess, and I glanced with envy at the Vietnamese folks the next table over who appeared to have been executing the maneuver since birth. There's a variety of different ways to combine the sweet, slightly smoke pork skewers, crispy shrimp rolls (great for texture), vegetables and sweet, slightly gelatinous peanut-chili sauce. Interactive food never really gets old. The very lazy can of course order pre-assembled spring rolls, but really, now?

For dessert, there's a foil-wrapped nugget of pickled pork with a nice, astringent little hit of jalapeno: very nice, in my estimation.

Besides the spring roll special, the restaurant also offers banh beo - tiny rice cakes with shredded shrimp and onion ont op - and a distinctive seafood noodle soup with pork, poached shrimp, sauteed ground pork, a quail egg, rice noodles, calamari strips, and a small crab claw. There are also bun (noodle) bowls with various toppings if you're not feeling inclined to branch out.

There ain't no pho here. Be warned. Man up.

Coop's Gumbo Revisited, Phone Operators

Coop's Place
1109 Decatur St
New Orleans, LA 70116-2605
(504) 525-9053



Coops Place is renowned as one of NOLA's best places to get fried chicken. The kitchen churns out huge quantities of spicy batter-fried bird at regular intervals, feeding a mixture of big-eyed tourists and pissed off looking, mildly soused locals. It's a fine place to down a couple of drinks and eat some interesting, if not always successful, bar food. Specialties include rabbit jambalaya, marinated crab claws, lamb ribs, and whatever the chef is in the mood to scrawl up on the blackboard. Good conversation too, and jars of pickled okra.

Met a guy at Coops the other day, who used to work the switchboards for a major phone company, I'm not going to tell you which one. He told me about how he'd listen in on Christmas Eve, to parties all over the world. One night he heard the oompah band and the click of beer steins from Hamburg, in his Metarie office. Saudi Arabian men would always call him "Dear," in gentle voices, regardless of the date or holiday. O Holy Night. Someone's got to keep the phones working.



Regardless. I came in for Coop's to grab a bowl of gumbo and chat, and that's what I got. Coop's gumbo wasn't that great this go-round. I had it before and it was really tasty, some of the nicer seafood and okra gumbo I've had in the quarter. This was a bit lukewarm and didn't have too much of that unctuous voodoo flavor. Asked the lady for extra seafood, which you can do for a buck extra, and I guess she didn't hear me. No Crystal hot sauce on the table either. When you're forced to use Tabasco, it's kind of a cognitive shift. But I made it on through.

The search for the gumbo that will break my heart/and or end my life/some combination therein continues. I suspect the end of the quest resides in a shack somewhere in a dark swamp, a shack that can only be reached by charming a five legged albino alligator.

I think I'm too lazy.

frankie and johnny's new orleans

Franky and Johnny's
Neighborhood Restaurant & Lounge
321 Arabella Street
New Orleans, LA. 70115
(504) 899-9146


Frankie and Johnny's is pretty much the base definition of a New Orleans neighborhood restaurant. Off the tourist beaten track and a popular destination for boozing locals and those who really very much enjoy large pitchers of beer, it's a good spot to hit up for some no-pretensions seafood. Don't expect any fancy BS here: that's just the way folks around here like it.

(If you ate at Commanders or Galatoire's every single day, you would develop hardened arteries and an enlarged heart and poor vision and all sorts of deleterious maladies, you would sicken and become ill. Man must not subsist on butter and lard alone).



We tried out one of their stuffed crabs. If you are some sort of infidel and did not know, a New Orleans stuffed crab involves bread crumbs, herbs, and crabmeat, baked in the crab's original shell. They are exceeding tasty. This was a nice version with lots of plump crabmeat, though coulda been a bit warmer.



Frankie and Johnnie's does a real fine boiled shrimp by my estimation, and I am very particular about boiled shrimps. These are 1. very large and 2. come complete with shells and delicious, flavorful heads and 3. are boiled in some sort of tasty spiced substance and thus satisfy all my parameters.



I also tried out a Muffaletta salad. Okay, but could have used more olive salad on top - the key to a Muffaletta salad is excess amounts of olive salad. I am told Frankie and Johnnie's does reputable muffalettas so you should try one and report back post haste. I saw one once and I think I had a bite but there may have been some Drunk Memory involved there. I could not confirm or deny.



We also tried out the fried oysters. These guys do a very fine rendition of this New Orleans treat: not too heavily breaded, big fat fresh specimens, simple and good. Not the airy perfection of say, Casamento's, but still mighty fine. The fries weren't half bad either.



Last up: crawfish etouffee. Simple stuff but pretty tasty: nice tomato and spice flavor, decent roux, good quantity of crawfish meat. It's pretty much what F and J is up to: simple and good New Orleans food, unpretentious setting and service, acceptable cleanliness levels, a jukebox, and large quantities of inexpensive booze. I recommend it.

casamentos: fried seafood perfection

Casamentos
4330 Magazine St.
New Orleans, Louisiana 70115
504-895-9761



Oysters are everything in this town, and Casamento's happens to be an insution. Super clean and highly hygenic inside (it puts me in mind of an easy clean icebox), this restaurant nevertheless serves up highly evolved seafood. Staffed by a variety of New Orleans Characters (including, according to a friend of mine, a good looking pair of twins who insist they are not identical,) Casamento's is a damn fine place to have in the neighborhood.

The menu is classic and does not change with the times, although it may change with the seasons: raw oysters and fried seafood are your options, although gumbo, oyster stew, and an incongruous spaghetti and meatballs lurk on the menu as well. This is an old school place: it shuts down during the summer when the oysters ain't good. To reach the bathrooms, you must walk through the kitchen and past the deep friers to the back area, which is populated by a couple of friendly cats. That's the kind of place this is.



Of course you must begin with oysters: oysters are why Casamento's exists, sourcing fresh and saline-packed lil' beauties once the season begins to roll in. We plowed merrily through three dozen and I wanted more. They are extra delicious when consumed on a saltine cracker with tons of spicy as hell cocktail sauce.



These crab claws are just sublime. For some reason, they remind me of my dad's fried grouper, which fills me with warm fuzzy memories and also happens to be delicious. Casamento's has an amazingly light hand with the frier and these guys preserve their succulent, delicate sweetness.



Calamari was only okay here: good fry job but sad little squid bits. They need to use meatier rings and tentacle bits if they want to knock this out of the park.



A fine cup of gumbo: rich and seafood infused and containing plenty of okra and no goddamn sausage. Maybe I'm biased due to my upbringing but I just don't like sausage in my gumbo but I DO require okra. I also detected oysters which I deeply appreciated. Extra swell with lots of hot sauce. I mean lots.

I also tried some truly sublime fried shrimp - like eating lemony seafood flavored air lord have mercy - and some nice, lightly fried trout. Needless to say I am very pleased that I live within spitting distance of this place. Not literally.

Crawdad Pizza: Well Okay I Guess

Rocky's Gourmet Pizza
3222 Magazine St
New Orleans, LA 70115
(504) 891-5152




Rocky's Gourmet Pizza is one of many pizza joints on Magazine. Far as I can tell, they owe their continuing existence to the seemingly insatiable appetites of my fellow college students, who naturally require pizza, cheap beer, and a plentiful supply of illegal drugs to survive.

And so we have Rocky's. It's your typical pizza joint on the inside: a bit smoky and dark, with a big old pizza oven heating up the interior and amusing 50's adverts plastered all over the bathrooms.



How's the food? Decent, but nothing special. I went with a crawfish salad with artichoke hearts, roma tomatoes, feta cheese and balsamic dressing for around ten bucks. The crawfish were plentiful, but cooked in way too much salt for my taste - though I did appreciate the freshness of the vegetables. My dad went with the very NOLA craw-dad and tasso pizza, which arrived with a thin and crispy crust, plenty of crawfish, and not quite enough tasso for my pork-loving tastes.

Take note: a "small" here translates into "ginormous," which is great if you're in college and not so great if you are not. Leftover pizza is always awesome, but I am not sure how good crawfish pizza would taste cold.

Felix's Oyster Bar: Bivalves And Abita Sustain The Soul Once Again

Felix's Oyster House
739 Iberville St
New Orleans, LA 70130
(504) 522-4440



Felix's is one of the standby oyster joints off Bourbon Street, prone to filling up at all hours with people who want nothing more then to slam Abita beer and eat startling quantities of oysters. In these two respects, Felix's has got things under control.

Oysters are a holy food in New Orleans and must always be consumed with beer, saltines and mix it yerself cocktail sauce - the holy trinity of shellfish consumption. Oyster bars are about as New Orleans as it gets, attracting a cross-section of people from all over the place who enjoy the funky little guys whenever they get their drink on (and in New Orleans, everyone is always getting their drink on.) According to traditionalists, oysters are only consumable in months with an R in them and are DEADLY FOUNTS OF DESPAIR when consumed otherwise, but I had oysters in August and they were quite tasty and did not even kill me. And the head waiter at Luke said they were quite good. So get over it.

Felix's, much like Acme, employs a full time oyster shucker who will flip those puppies open upon request and slide them to you over the bar - usually as fast as you can eat them. Extra points are awarded if there is a Saint's game on. We enjoyed slurping them down in between gulps of beer, watching the usual Bourbon Street zoo parade past the windows. I also enjoyed creating my own cocktail sauce in various intensities and lemon concentrations, which is definitely side entertainment if you're into cooking.



Felix's also serves up decent Oysters Rockefeller, that spinach and butter and god knows what else concotion pioneered by Antoines millions of years ago. I love those little guys and will happily eat many of them.



Unlike Acme, Felix's non-oyster related food is only okay. The boiled shrimp were edible but 1. served cold (they are mo' betta' warm) and 2. way too small. We were perhaps a spot drunk and decided to try the fried alligator, which was a lousy idea: tiny greasy pieces of reptile are not something I enjoy eating. (Alligator admittedly never really rises above the flavor of chewy, fishy chicken, but still.)

Felix's is a good spot to get your oysters and beer fix in less-wacko environs then Acme, but do yourself a favor and stick to the slimy little suckers.

Three Monkeys: Kitchen-Sink Menu, Tasty Sushi

Three Monkeys
723 K St
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 441-4860


Three Monkeys, yet another attempt to make K Street Mall slightly less gungy, was all the rage a few months ago, attracting big old crowds to indulge in a highly eclectic menu. The crowds are gone months onward, but does the food hold up?

Set in a rather conventional (but pleasant) space, Three Monkeys reminds me of your standard Western brewpub space, with a big open bar and whismical paintings of the Sacramento Delta on the wall. Unlike your average brewpub, Three Monkeys features an inconogorous sushi bar smack dab in the middle of it with sake signs plastered all over it. Therein we find Three Monkeys gimmick: Brew-pub American food (pulled pork slides, fried chicken tenders, burgers, salads) juxtaposed with freshly cut sushi and other Asian and Mexican specialties all one one rather thick menu.

Since me and my dining companions (hi kevin!!) were experincing a dangerous sushi jones, we stuck to that portion of the menu. The sliders looked good from a distance if that's worth anything to you.



We began with the tuna poke salad, served with sweet onions and fried lotus chips. This was a tasty version, and I was impressd with the freshness of the fish - the lotus chips were an interesting and crunchy alternate to potato chips. (I also like how they knid of look like alien life forms.)



We also sampled the tropical salmon - raw salmon stuffed with crab and served with tropical salsa. This sounds foofoo but was actually rather delicous, again featuring commendably fresh fish - even the martini glass presentation was rather adorable.



We moved on to unagi nigiri and the chef's special salmon belly. The unagi was as tasty a version as I've had other places, but the salmon belly stood out: quickly seared and topped with a bit of vinegared onion, it was a delicious and fatty little tidbit.

Next up was the K Street Roll - filled with fried soft shell crab, avocado, crab salad, and wrapped with salmon. This was not exactly revolutionary sushi but it was fresh, skillfully made and quite tasty, and I deeply appreciated that the crab was freshly fried instead of fished out of some box after being fried roughly 2.5 years ago. Props.



Round four: Asian lettuce wraps (hello, P.F Changs) with ground chicken and mushroom, along with a Korean-ish dipping sauce, served over cellophane noodles. This was a perfectly serviceable version of that Chinese Food For Frightened White People genre, and I did enjoy it, especiallly the pickled vegetables on the side.

We ended with hamachi kama, that delicious dish composed of grilled fish collar with ponzu, broiled under a very hot flame. Three Monkeys seems to be sourcing some rather tasty fish, and this took a while to cook but came out excellent: lots of fresh and flavorful meat with a nice crispy fish-skin crust. (Do not order hamachi kama if you averse to picking around bones and kind of looking like a horrible animal.)

Three Monkeys is doing a surprisingly good job on its sushi component, although the non-Japanese aspects of the menu have yet to be tested - at least by me. Certainly it's a good option to keep in mind if you're in downtown Sacramento and find yourself in the midst of one of those annoying ass social groups where everyone wants something different because they are just that special.

Rey Azteca: Mmm, Camarones

Rey Azteca Taqueria & Catering
6140 Fair Oaks Blvd
Carmichael CA, 95608
916-481-4995

Rey Azteca has been a wonderful find for us - a tasty and friendly little enclave of Mexican food in our Carmichael neighborhood. I seem to find myself stopping in there almost every week, plopping myself down in one of the gaudy but comfortable booths and stocking up on huge amounts of incendiary salsa.



We always begin with a big basket of the excellent house-made tortilla chips, still hot from their immersion in the frier - a world away from the bagged junk most places serve. Don't miss the excellent tomatillo salsa. The guacamole ordered separately and thus freshly made is also unusually good here, although the guacamole that automatically comes with entrees isn't as delicious - I suppose that's pre-made stuff.


(Image from the Rey Azteca website. Note cerveza.)

My favorite starter is the shrimp cocktail ($11.99), a big glass tub full of tomato juice, avocado, cucumber, tomato and lime juice, filled with plump and perfectly cooked shrimp. Crumble in the accompanying saltine crackers and it's rather like a Mexican variant on gazpacho...especially delicious if you add lots and lots of hot sauce and salsa.



The menu is impressively long, but I do have a few favorites - the camarones endiablados ($12.99) comes to mind, a huge plate full of shrimp simmered in a spicy and chunky tomato sauce. It's not as hot as some versions I've had, but I love the silky smoothness of the tomato and green peppers juxtaposed with the slow burn of the chilis...it's a truly excellent dish, and I find it hard to order anything else. I usually substitute salad for rice and beans, but I fully admit that is heretical and you do not have to do so.



Rey Azteca shines as well when it comes to delicious, delicious meat. Pictured in this wonderfully blurry photo is the steak a la del rey ($11.50), chunks of steak sauteed with onion and red and green bell peppers. The carne asada ($11.50) is tasty and generously portioned here as well.

Of course, this is a taqueria, and the tacos are very good and by all means the real deal, garnished with onions and cilantro (though you can have a good ol' American style taco in a fried shell with cheese and sour cream if you want.) The choice of meats is considerable, but standouts include the spicy, smoky, and decadent chorizo ($1.99) and the expertly grilled and tender fish taco ($3.50.)

Burritos are ginormous and can be ordered covered in sauce and cheese, though that may very well kill you (happily.) I tried the chile relleno burrito ($5.95), which was a truly impressive hulk filled with a generously sized cheese stuffed chile relleno, rice, beans, and guacamole. Damn, son.

One final word: if you're looking for a tamales supplier for Christmas Eve festivities (and we always are), Rey Azteca is a good place to go. The tamales are large and have the right ratio of masa to filling - although only chicken and beef are on offer, both are flavorful and will surely bring much joy and calories to your holiday fun.



The space is small and, uh, intimate, but I think that's just about perfect for a casual Mexican joint such as this one. The clientele tend to be local blue collar types chowing down on huevos rancheros or plump, juicy tamales, as they watch football, soccer or boxing on one of the taqueria's many and large TVs.

Order a cerveza, watch the game, and enjoy some tasty Mexican food: the perfect recipe for a slow weekend.