Dante's Kitchen

Matto, his relatives, and I went to Dante’s Kitchen (http://danteskitchen.com/) on New Year’s Day.

Our friends in New Orleans kept talking about this restaurant and we were wondering how good it was.  We had our uncles from out of town and thought it would be a good opportunity to check out the restaurant.

Their dinner menu is not too expensive ($20-25 for Entrées), but the branch is quite reasonable ($9-13.5).

It is a small, old house remodeled into a restaurant.

The whole building is fenced in and it is not easy to recognize as a restaurant.

Even with a big sign on the fence (picture above), I have missed it whenever I drove by.

I ordered Dante’s Eggs Benedict ($13.5).

Eggs Benedict is my favorite breakfast food in New Orleans.  I know it has a lot of calories……That’s why I exercise daily, don’t I?

Regular Eggs Benedict has ham on the biscuit, but Dante’s kitchen used sliced pork loin instead.

It was served with honey-flavored hollandaise sauce on top of it.

It had a good amount of sweetness with the pork loin, and the butter-soaked biscuit was…………….amazing.

I gave the last tiny bite of the biscuit to Matto, and he said “That’s why you didn’t share with me”.

The secret ingredient of Southern food is always “butter”.  Recipes for Southern food use sticks of butter, and they usually taste great.

This Eggs Benedict clearly had a high content of butter, and I could taste it.

They have eight side dishes for $3 and they were so huge!!

Matto ordered Alligator Sausage and three 2-inch sausages came in a small bowl.

Matto’s uncle couldn’t finish his bowl of grits although it was so “butter-ly” and tasty. 

It is probably best to order one side and share with 3-4 others.

This restaurant receives an 8-Moshi.

Food was good and pretty reasonable. Parking wasn’t hard to find.  I can’t complain….. 

Coquette New Orleans

A Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a great New Year’s Day!

On New Year’s Eve, Matto, his family, and I went to Coquette (www.coquette-nola.com) on Magazine Street.

My boss recommended this place.  It is one of his favorite restaurants in New Orleans.

On New Year’s Eve, Coquette had a five-course menu for this special night.

Here is the list of food that I had…….

1.     Salad of local vegetables, navel orange, cashew

2.     Sweet potato gnocchi, city ham, sorghum brown butter

3.     Triggerfish, parmesan, quinoa, English peas

4.     Mississippi lamb crepinette, barley, pickled peppers, baby turnips

5.     Meyer lemon tart, beet meringue, house-made yogurt

I apologize for the low quality pictures.  I had my camera with me, but I left the memory card at home…….Stupid me!!!

So I had to use my cell phone to take the pictures. The lighting in the restaurant was low, so that didn’t help much.

In addition to the dishes above, they also served a small appetizer, a mini biscuit, and a bite-size corn bread before the meal, a strawberry jelly shot before dessert, and a citrus-flavored meringue lollipop after dessert.

In this blog, I decided to grade the food and experience out of a “10 Moshi” scale.

If the food and experience are amazing, it will be a 10-Moshi.

If the food and experience are really bad, it will be a 1-Moshi.

My experience at Coquette was a 9-Moshi!!!!

I liked the location.  The restaurant was easy to access and parking was easy to find.

The atmosphere of the restaurant was simple and neat.  I liked the décor.

Most importantly the food was absolutely amazing!!!!!

All the vegetable used at this restaurant was purchased from local farmers in Louisiana.

Starting from salad to dessert, it was really hard for me to choose my least favorite dish.

If I have to say one thing that I didn’t like at Coquette, it would be that stuff wasn’t organized at the beginning. We were the first guests to arrive at the restaurant.  Although we had a reservation for six, they had to set a table for us because they only had tables for two or four.  They had a special menu for New Year’s Eve, and they didn’t have menu printed and ready when we got there. It took a bit of time before we got a menu in hand.

However, they soon caught up and the service went smoothly from then on.

Overall, this was a nice restaurant.

I will definitely go back!