In New Orleans there are certain movie theaters, drive-up windows and alleyways where you can buy a stiff drink, yet there are still a few restaurants without a liquor license.
Some might consider this a hassle, but personally I love it. Bring-your-own-bottle policies lend an easy-going and celebratory mood to meals as the inexpensive librations go around a table of friends. I’ve seen jugs of homemade sangria and even pitchers of martinis brought to bear. Add in the corkage fees some restaurants charge and the bill at these types of places can still be surprisingly light—no small consideration with the expenses of the holidays and Carnival approaching.
All these dynamics come into play at one of my favorite new restaurants, SukhoThai in the Marigny. Opened in October by a worldly New Orleans native and his Thai wife, there’s an inviting, vibrant atmosphere here that is at once neighborly and cosmopolitan.
The menu has more than 50 entrees (including eight meatless main dishes), plus soups and appetizers all more of less revolving around the classic spicy-sweet, cool-hot taste combinations of Thai cuisine with main ingredients of lime, garlic and chili. They let you customize the spiciness for many of the dishes, with the most searing level referred to as “Thai hot” with evident ethnic pride.
The signature dishes of Thai cooking are represented, such as an aromatic green curry served in a soup bowl ready to be ladled over sticky rice. This dish also comes with moist, stretchy flat bread that is flavorful enough to eat on its own.
You can go hearty or light with this food. One refreshing choice is minced duck, with the dark meat chopped to bits and served atop a wet, sweet salad of lettuce and minty garlic sauce. The “drunken noodle” is a more substantial stir-fry of wide rice noodles, strips of beef and egg with a variety of tender vegetables. Among the numerous seafood choices is a plate of beautiful scallops, shrimp and cross-cut slabs of squid enrobed in a dark and earthy mixture of garlic and black pepper with the consistency of homemade salsa. Even pillowy shapes of stir-fried tofu covered in blazing red curry were good enough to tempt my fork over to the plate of one vegetarian dinner companion. They apply a $5 corkage fee here but, with most dishes under $10, you hardly notice. I look forward to working my way through this huge and varied menu, one $7 bottle of Australian wine at a time.
When I visit another B.Y.O.B. favorite, Lola’s in the Faubourg St. John, I almost always clear through a glass or two before even getting inside. That’s because a visit to this very popular Spanish restaurant invariably entails a wait of some duration on the sidewalk. Weekend, weeknight, it doesn’t seem to matter, and the explanation is simple: interesting, well-prepared food, reasonable prices and a dining room about the size of a suburban garage.
Prepare yourself for the inevitable wait by corking your bottle of wine (or running across Esplanade Avenue to the small Whole Foods Market if you forgot to bring one) and peruse the menu. I usually start with their phenomenal mussels, slurping the accompanying tomato vinaigrette from each pearly half-shell like oyster liquor. The pepper-studded ceviche and moist crabmeat over avocado are also good starters.
Paella is the centerpiece of Lola’s menu, with big servings of jambalaya’s Iberian cousin showing up all aromatic with saffron rice cradling a harvest of seafood and meat. Two people can split the large version of this dish and still argue about who gets the leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch. Fideuas bring the same ingredients cooked with angel hair pasta, but the arborio rice does a much better job of holding all the spices and flavors.
I have friends who swear by Lola’s lamb stew, called caldereta, but my go-to entrée is the pork loin. This is a he-man thick slab of meat, but it’s been marinated so thoroughly it comes out tender and juicy to the core. After all this, a caramel flan is a mercifully light finish.
When I feel like thumbing my nose at the potential of a Sunday afternoon or an obnoxious hangover, I think of brunch and a certain number of “eye-openers.” Facing a wallet drained by Saturday night, a do-it-yourself champagne brunch is the antidote at the Quarter Scene Restaurant, located on Dauphine Street on that invisible line between the French Quarter’s streets of noisy mania and quiet grace.
The Quarter Scene is an informal, inexpensive answer to the grand morning repasts hosted at the big-time courtyards closer by Canal Street. The restaurant itself is brightly painted and sunny up front, sympathetically darker in back, with a playful décor of Mardi Gras bead-art and bric-a-brac throughout. Matassa’s Market, the one-time recording studio turned corner grocery, stocks champagne one block away and the Quarter Scene has no corkage fee. Open for dinner and lunch with po-boys and other New Orleans standards, the best meal here is breakfast, which they serve until 2 p.m. daily.
It seems the simple addition of hollandaise sauce can bring an egg dish from diner fare to bistro cuisine, which the Quarter Scene recognizes on two of their best brunch dishes. Eggs Beauregard is poached eggs over an English muffin with ham, tomato and a sunny, creamy hollandaise, while the more colorful Eggs Claiborne replaces the ham with shrimp and avocado. The corned beef hash here comes with big, roughly-hewn chunks of meat that flake nicely under the fork, though the accompanying potatoes and bell peppers need the addition of plenty of salt, pepper and hot sauce.
A simple malt waffle comes out hot with softly melting whipped cream, chopped pecans and sliced strawberry, kiwi and banana. The polar opposite of this relatively light start is a groaning platter of food called Bayou Country, which throws a chicken-fried steak and biscuit covered with sausage gravy and poached eggs at your appetite. Careful, nap time could follow close behind.
Wherever you dine B.Y.O.B., I have one simple piece of advice: leave whatever libations you have left over for the staff. They have no service bar to raid when management isn’t looking, and nearly everyone appreciates a glass of something at closing time. If you eat there again, you’ll be remembered warmly. But even if you never return, you’ve made an easy deposit in the worldwide karma bank.
REVIEWED THIS MONTH
Lola’s, 3312 Esplanade Ave., New Orleans, 488-6946
Quarter Scene Restaurant, 900 Dumaine St., 522-6533
SukhoThai, 1913 Royal St., New Orleans, 948-9309
