My recent trip to New Orleans started with a trip to a great restaurant (K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen) and ended with lunch at another wonderful venue, the Redfish Grill on Bourbon Street. I realize some people might look down on going to such tourist-friendly establishments, but they’ve never let me down and I leave the dinner table feeling satisfied and having enjoyed some lovely food.
Case in point; Monday lunch before flying back to DC. Two friends and I picked a lot from the menu, and started with six of the Redfish Grill’s BBQ oysters — though imagine a Buffalo sauce flavor rather than anything smoky. The bivavles sextet came topped with blue cheese, and made for the perfect appetizer to start our meal.
We also snacked on three boudin balls of alligator, with the meat stuffed inside batter and deep-fried. They’re served with Abita Andygator three mustard sauce and apple pepper jelly. Tremendous.
Among the entrees was a turducken gumbo: grilled chicken, smoked turkey sausage, duck dirty rice, and crackling. The starters were surprisingly filling, and the sheer size of this brilliant gumbo almost sated me.
But I somehow found room to also enjoy the surf and turf po’ boy stuffed with a generous slab of house-made hot sausage, a crisy portion of catfish, pepper jelly slaw, and a dollop of potato salad.
Also interesting that Redfish Grill goes with the more traditional (and many would say correct) term “po’ boy” to describe the city’s legendary sandwiches, rather than the term “poor boy” used by the owners of the Parkway Bakery & Tavern sandwich shop (the 108th dinner interview) and New Orleans food critic and radio show host Tom Fitzmorris (the 49th interview).