Palace Cafe (NOLA)

[Jason Perlow]

Pictures with captions, opinions and descriptions in later posts. Click for Palace Cafe Website

Entry Staircase

Oyster Pan Roast - Regular Appetizer (Rachel)

Grilled Diver Scallops - Appetizer Special (Jason)

Citrus Salad - Special (Rachel)

Bacon Salad - Regular (Jason)

Catfish Pecan Meunière - Regular (Rachel)

Shrimp Tchefuncte - Regular (Jason)

Coca Cola Cake (Jason)

Lemon Torte (Rachel)

Bananas Foster (not our table)

[spaghetttti]

Jason, I'm supposed to be fasting, but I'm almost licking my monitor.

Everything looks awesome and you do take some fantastic photographs.

drooling and misty eyed...

[Jason Perlow]

Palace Cafe was one of the restaurants we had most looked forward to re-visiting on our trip to New Orleans.

Several years ago during a trade show during the summer, I beleive the same year the restaurant was opened, we went to Palace Cafe. We were incredibly impressed by food and the service, which was to be expected because this was a Brennan-owned establishment -- all of which have set very high benchmarks for restaurants in New Orleans. Palace Cafe is also a very attractive restaurant, a huge open space with a spiral staircase that leads up to the top level dining area. The restaurant is loud with a semi-open kitchen, and there's lots of servers racing around at all times. It's a happening restaurant that wouldn't be out of place in New York City or Los Angeles.

We arrived at around 9PM on Friday night for our dinner reservation, fresh off the plane after checking into the hotel. We were promptly seated, so my gully sense had not yet been set off. However, after sitting at the table for 5 minutes without anyone bringing us water or taking our drink or appetizer orders, both of us became alarmed and very unsettled. This may have been because we just spent 8 or so hours travelling, but we thought that going 5 minutes without having water brought to us or our drink order taken was definitely sub-par for a restaurant of this class.

Finally, the server came and took our drink orders. I think Rachel may have had to reinforce to the server and the water guys to bring us water a few times, but we eventually did get it and I got my Bloody Bull. For those of you not in the know, a Bloody Bull is a Bloody Mary with beef stock or bullion added. It adds a really awesome beefy dimension to the drink, and for those of you who like Bloody Marys, I can assure you, it only improves things. Palace Cafe, like its sister restaurant Commander's Palace, makes a damn good one.

Both our appetizers were very good -- Rachel had the Oyster Pan Roast and I had the scallops appetizer special. The oysters in the cream sauce were a bit overkill, but then again, this is typical for New Orleans and we knew what we were dealing with this week. My very fresh and delicious grilled scallops came in a butter and chantrelle mushroom sauce, excellent. Couldn't complain about that one.

The salads that followed were a disappointment -- it seems that in New Orleans restaurants for the most part really don't have good access to high-end salad greens, they seem to get the same stuff the supermarkets do. Skip the salads.

Fortunately the main dishes were very, very good. Rachels pecan-crusted catfish with meunière sauce was expertly cooked and the sauce was wonderfully rich, and my Shrimp Tchefuncte, which was kind of a peppery etoufee, was a great but yet again extremely rich dish with huge juicy gulf shrimp (did I see a pattern for the week?) with tons of butter in it. (Ok, we're on vacation, I kept saying to myself. Better see the cardiologist when I get back. ) . The rice that came with these dishes was also perfectly cooked and also very buttery.

Many people, including the table next to us told us that the White Chocolate Bread Pudding signature dessert is not what it used to be -- so we ordered alternate desserts. Irregardless, both of these were disappointing. My coca cola cake was extremely dry, with a cloyingly sweet coca-cola reduction and accompanied by homemade Jack Daniels ice cream with coca cola sugar "bottle shards". The ice cream was the best part, I left over most of the cake and the shards were unpleasantly hard and tasteless. Rachel's warm lemon torte was a little bit better but they completely forgot about the accompanying lemon truffles until we told them to bring them. Something at this restaurant that night was off.

If you are going to order a dessert at this place, go with the traditional Bananas Foster. Just about everyone in the restaurant seemed to be ordering it and it LOOKED good. I've had it Brennan's, the restaurant that started it all for this family, and it was really good there. This one seemed to be just like it. I feel like a dumbass for not ordering it then because we didn't order the dessert at any other restaurant the entire week we were there.

I'm not sure if it was the busy friday night, the planets were in the wrong alignment or the wrong people were on shift that night, but we were extremely disappointed in Palace Cafe. I had to wonder if Dickie Brennan is really aware of of what is going on in that place and if he is still tasting his own place's desserts and is aware of the abyssmal service issues. The main dishes and the appetizers were still good though -- but this place wouldn't last 2 seconds in New York City in the shape its currently in.

Not a total disaster, and it had some nice highlights, but it put a pallor on the two other Brennan restaurants I visited that week. Fortunately, this was a quirk.

[Rachel Perlow]

Here's the address info:

Palace Cafe

605 Canal Street

504-523-1661

I would like to say that, despite some of the server issues, they were very nice and when they did pay attention to us, it was very professional. Does that make sense? My lemon torte thing was just bad. It was described as a lemon linzer torte, what came was mostly crust with very little lemon curd filling. The lemon truffles were just sweet with barely any lemon flavor or tartness. Very very disappointing.

Like Jason said, the apps and mains were very good, and they're rich enough to just skip dessert.