Dinner at Arnaud's

Yesterday was our last day in New Orleans, so a small group of us decided to find someplace nicer to eat. Not Commander's Palace kind of nice (not that we could get into CP friday night anyhow), but still a nice dinner. To make a long story short, our studio instructor wanted to meet and chat with a few students over cocktails and he recommended the bar in Arnaud's. Nice place, very old school, with white mosaic tile floors, and the waiters all wear white ties and tuxes. Cigars on display in old cabinets, cocktails with ingredients you've never heard of, and the service is exemplary. Anyway, we grabbed a a few sofas in the corner and ordered a round of sazeracs. 

A sazerac, for those who don't know, is a locally famous drink, of which New Orleans seems to have a limitless number. There's the hurricane, the hand grenade (an ever popular concoction seen all over Bourbon street in a grenade shaped container), but the sazerac seems to be an altogether more elegant drink, not typically served in a plastic cup for street consumption. It is a cocktail of rye whiskey, sugar, and bitters. It's not a big drink- it took up less than an inch of the very cold highball glass it was served in, with a razor-thin sliver of an orange.

I'm not a big whiskey drinker, but I figured "when in New Orleans", and its not like I was chugging this thing. Sazeracs are very strong drinks, and we pretty much sipped those suckers for about an hour. And by the time we were done, we were really feeling it. So we decided to transfer over to the zagat-rated restaurant. The waiters found a table for us in the jazz room, so the seven of us grabbed a long table towards the back of the room. Another round of drinks was called for - Tanqueray and tonic, an old favorite, for me. 

The jazz was great- they were far enough away that we could converse normally, but still contributed to the overall feel of the place. I ordered the crabmeat Karen, which is crab and mushrooms stuffed into puff pastry which is crab-shaped. It was quite good. What stole the evening was the bananas foster, which they prepared tableside. I was dying as I watched our waiter fry up the bananas in the brown sugar and rum in the butter, and then the whole thing flambe'd and served over vanilla ice cream. It was unbelievable. I can't make up my mind if it was better than the ethereal, sublime cafe du monde beignets. 

All in all, it was a great culinary capstone for the trip.