Saint-Germain — Restaurant in New Orleans

Overall, fairly disappointing experience.

Pros: They were happy to accommodate me as a solo diner, and even showing up an hour before my res, again, were very courteous to seat me an hour early.

Meal started off well with a tasty mini cocktail with some lovely bitter green tea to balance the St. Germain and other sweet components. Nice amuse bite of a little piece of fried cheese (excellent) and a green chili pepper (I believe) purée that wasn't remarkable and under seasoned. Excellent bread course of naturally leavened corn cakes. Probably the best bite of the meal.

Then things started to go downhill. With some questionable combinations of ingredients in the dishes.

First course "Hokkaido Scallop". The most delicate and sweet of all the delights of the sea. It was chopped up / cubed (like it was put through a meat grinder) into such small pieces its place as the supposed star of the dish was lost. Such a delicate seafood drenched in a parmesan soup rendered the scallop practically unnoticeable. Not to mention the bacon in the dish. Using such heavy ingredients does nothing to highlight the scallop which was billed as the centerpiece of the dish. To make matters worse, I opted for the truffle addition ($30) to this dish. Surprisingly, the truffle too was drowned out by the heavy and rich parmesan cream and bacon. There was a fair amount of truffle, but I have never tasted a dish where truffle failed to come through as it did here. Again, the scallop bits were almost indistinguishable in the "soup".

Second course: Caviar with bone marrow and chorizo. Again, such questionable combo of ingredients. Using bone marrow and chorizo, two incredibly rich and heavy ingredients and then laying some caviar on top? It didn't make much sense. The caviar is completely overpowered by the marrow and chorizo (which were fine on their own) and didn't offer much texturally. The caviar gives the veneer of elegance but nothing to the dish except adding to price of the meal. In addition, another small complaint, I asked the server how the chorizo was incorporated into the dish before service out of curiosity and he replied with a very casual and uninspiring "you'll see..." Yeah, I did.

Third course: Ravioli with white asparagus and prawn (singular). Yes, I know it is a tasting menu but one small prawn in the dish is disappointing, but it was a tasty little prawn. Wish they'd left the caviar off the previous dish and thrown a few more prawns over here. The asparagus was nice and the pasta amounted to three nice bites. Again, with a different server I inquired about the spice used for the base of the sauce, I received another aloof answer something along the lines of "It's an English curry it's so good!" Not exactly the info I was looking for as she had already turned her back on me. Fine enough dish, this is where caviar could have really shined, or another prawn or two.

Fourth course: Meat course with a small piece of foie gras on top (that was charred perfectly, best bite of the meal). Don't remember what the cut was (flank or skirt possibly, surely a "Wagyu"...not that that means much these days, necessarily). Again, taking what you are assuming is the highest grade cut of meat you can find then cooking it to a medium / medium well, then drenching it a sweet sauce of some sort...you just totally lost the natural essence of the main ingredient again, a la the scallop. The sauce was so overly rich and sweet, probably a veal stock of some sort reduced to a syrupy sweet glaze. I was able to have a few bites of the meat without the sauce and it was fine enough.

Wine pairings were out of the box and on point sans the now ubiquitous orange. Still left a lot to be desired for nearly...

Where do I begin? Perhaps the day we went here on October 26th, just before the the halloween festivities were to begin in a bustling new orleans city. My girl got a reservation for the two of us at this james beard award winning restaurant from 2 chefs, whom I never had the pleasure of seeing. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to try this 10 course menu in a city that, since our time there, honestly was lacking in anything remarkable. To preface, I am from Minnesota, and own two restaurants, and know great food at the tip of my tongue. Not only that, because let’s be honest, Minnesota doesn’t spark an any rendition of “I must go there and try the food” scene, but I promise you that we hold our ground when compared to NOLA. Onwards I say! We get to the restaurant exterior confused until we see the sign in what looks like a house. Enter St. Germain, a house that has been transformed into a classy restaurant int the middle of nowhere. Fantastic, chic, and has all the capabilities of a fine dining experience. The little chef coats donning the inside wall, to say we have not one, but two chefs here that have beard award greatness! Onwards I say. Everyone is sat at the bar, some are late, some have dietary restrictions that the host or server then tells them to go down the street to get a pill to cure them of their dairy restriction, to which they oblige after a little confusion. Great! They do it, because damn if they spent 300 for a meal of their lifetime. We get seated, as do the rest of our dining companions. We have some decent courses that 3 servers explain each dish down the bar line to all the guests. The small courses are good, might even be great, but fall short like a full plate of food to be dumbed down to a single bite, plated with excellency. This place loses me because if that simple fact. A tasting menu should excite and make you wonder how they did it. I dont want to hear about how some white chef fell in love with rice and learned how to cook it proper by three different servers all 5 seconds apart down the line of the bar like a reverb of an echo of a mic. Confusing as hell. Give me the chef and let him explain it to all of us a little louder so all of us are on the same page, or ear- rather. After the 4th course everyone at the bar all the sudden leaves to go into a room, except for us. apparently we made our reservation to exist only at the bar while everyone else chose the ladder. While this happens they not only let random walk ins, but also the next seating arrangement in at the bar. So, imagine this. Now we get to hear all the same courses again while we are half way through our meal, with three different people talking at the same time. We are almost through course 5, and the server says they have something special for only 80 dolllars a person, we can get shaved white truffle on a mystery dish. We opt in, but also can’t stop to ask why we should have to pay more to get what is already special menu. Upsale in a very unexpected way? The dish comes out and it’s a pasta Cream dish…ok cool. Thanks for that. Real creative guys. Try again, and do better. We left after two hours of waiting and more waiting. Add the drinks to that and we’re done at course 8, no thank you. They even had the nerve to give us the menu after with some salt, where was that to begin with? The menu, not the the salt to rub the gaping wound with. Upwards of 700 hundred after tip, and I feel robbed to the gun. James beard is a popularity...

In a little old house in a little town just outside New Orleans, there is a great chef doing great things. James Beard thinks so as well. The Tire dude has not made it to New Orleans just yet, perhaps to our benefit as Saint Germain is flying way below radar. For our last night in NOLA we found what is probably the best fine dining in the region. 10 courses of deep flavors, textures, and whimsy that show off not only what is local and seasonal, but with serious French, Japanese (and a bit of German) technique and sensibility. From the website: —“Our goal is to recreate the feeling of eating at a chef’s home. Tableside service and guest interaction with the chefs is incorporated as much as possible. Our kitchen team takes advantage of the smaller guest count by utilizing techniques that would be much harder to duplicate on a larger scale: dry aging of meats, washed rind cheese making, and á la minute seafood butchery, to name a few. “ — Two seatings a night, max of about 14 people per seating. First four courses (bites) are at the bar, the rest in a tiny little dining room with plenty of architectural charm and fun decor, including a lighting fixture from Copenhagen carved from a single piece of wood to resemble an Oyster shell. The first bite was a Parmesan and caramelized onion “soup,” a tantalizing burst of creamy umami that welcomed us to what was going to be a night of tasty surprises. Another bite was a riff on meat and potatoes: two fingernail-sized pieces of barely seared Wagyu, a little block of fried potato pancake, and a kickass Au poivre rich with demi glacé. Later courses included Lamb Merguez Gougeres, sweet breads and morel (not Lizette’s favorite lol) and well-executed “hay aged” Squab with Koshikari rice prepared in a Japanese style. The cheese course was a perfect cheese soufflé with Saint Andre cheese sauce. The Gelato was made of Lovage. All-in-all, the entire experience reminded me of the 3 Star Single Thread in Healdsburg, CA, except with more of an attitude towards comfort, both in the food and the service. Delightful....