Winesday

Rene: A very smooth, well balanced white wine similar to a white burgundy, but different. I get some very slight oak, which makes the wine seem heavier in the mouth. I get a touch of stone fruit- apricots mainly. Nothing overbearing though. Something makes me want veal with mushrooms. Maybe veal marsala or alfredo from a place like Vincent's. Or the porcini crusted veal tenderloin at Stella! could work very well here.

Peter: The first two words that come to mind are straw and spice. Flat on the tongue. Not overly oaky, but it tastes of high alcohol. Need a dish with substance to hold up as a pairing. A nice roasted chicken would do - Mondo does a good one. Or a filet of sauteed snapper, skin on, from Cafe Atchafalaya.

Joe the Wine Guy: What you have here is a 2006 Newton Unfiltered Chardonnay. In the glass, the wine has an inviting dark straw hue and then opens with rich creme caramel, butterscotch, and fresh vanilla bean aromas later revealing baked apple and nutty characters. Flavors of white peach and caramel with a touch of honey lead to a lingering creamy finish. Lobster bisque would be perfect or poached fish or even pasta with a cream sauce. This wine is available at Antoine's and Ruth's Chris and retails for $49.99.

Atchafalaya

Restaurants like Matt & Naddie's, Dante's Kitchen, and Dick & Jenny's have gained a strong reputation by filling a niche between the larger factions of gourmet bistros and neighborhood joints. The premise is simple - serve dishes just a few ticks lower in sophistication than the former but at prices a few steps above the latter. This winning formula has boded well for the aforementioned eateries, and the same can be said for Atchafalaya, whose menu execution falls squarely in between those two genres. Which is to say, right where it should be.

Atchafalaya has been quite the hot ticket lately, to the point where walk-ins are rarely accepted during dinner or the uberly popular weekend brunch service. (We actually walked out one recent Sunday after calling 10 minutes ahead and giving our name for an available table, then waiting for 30 minutes while others were seated before us.) Even if your table is reserved, be prepared to wait in the small bar area where a group of musicians (a pianist, maybe a trumpeter or a bassist) play slow soft tunes. A wooden, hollow jigsaw puzzle creates a faux wall which separates the bar from the main dining room, and I have yet to dine with a person who did not say, “I love that little fake wall thing.”

The list of small plates includes my favorite dish in the house: the veal cheek meat pies. A thin, crunchy exterior protects a succulently shredded, almost creamy, interior. I could eat a dozen of these and have no regrets about missing anything else on the menu. Fried green tomatoes ($12) are sauced with remoulade and topped with an avalanche of crabmeat. Nothing wrong with that. The standard cheese plate is porked up with the hogshead variety. Well played. Roasted beet carpaccio ($9) was a vegetarian delight on the first take, underwhelming on the second.

Pastas dishes consistently fell short of expectations. Free-form Crab Ravioli ($14) had thin sheets cooked far short of al dente and a beurre blanc that was a little weak/bland. Pasta Atchafalaya ($18) has perfectly cooked crawfish and shrimp tangled among fettucini, but the sauce was thin and watery.

For entrees the Boudin-stuffed Quail ($20) is difficult to pass up, with a crispy jock-strap of bacon surrounding a partially deboned quail filled with creamy boudin. The accompanying collards had an excellent vinegary flavor. Shrimp & Grits ($23) are served head-on in a spicy, buttery sauce. Stuffed Flounder ($23) was topped with a heavy shower of crispy breadcrumbs and a scatter of crawfish tails that acted as the “stuffing.” An interesting update to a dish which can be overwhelmed with heavily moistened bread crumbs, but the jury is still out on which version is preferred.  A daily special of pan seared snapper was slightly overcooked, but the crawfish dirty rice accompanying the latter was made with a short grain variety that created the right amount of stickiness that I just love.

For dessert, most tables gravitate toward the moist red velvet cake with a restrained application of cream cheese frosting (and for good reason). But don't overlook the peanut butter fudge brownie ice cream, whose flavor profile conjured images of a frozen jar of JIF which fell into a Duncan Hines mixing bowl. I loved every spoonful.

Owner Anthony Tocco (of the Circle Bar and Snake & Jake's fame) is running the show and is a friendly host. In fact, the staff on the whole is quite knowledgeable, from the bartender suggesting a newly received Italian selection as an alternative to our Godello, to the server pointing us to the freshest seafood available that night. The beverage program is very strong - the wine list has both depth and diversity in terms of price and grape varietals, and the self-service Bloody Mary bar makes waiting for a brunch table infinitely more tolerable.

Atchafalaya - Par/Birdie
901 Louisiava Avenue
(504) 891-9626
Dinner - 7 Nights
Lunch - Tues-Fri
Brunch - Sat & Sun

Winesday

Writing about wine is a really easy way to either put people to sleep or make people convinced you are trying to make them feel stupid. Wine is a very ordinary thing. Or more accurately, wine should be an everyday occurrence, spoken about in plain English (if spoken about at all). But too often wine discussion becomes a battle of the snoots with people saying things like "The wine begins with a jaunt through a field of frostbitten arugula and ends with a box of Louboutins on Easter Sunday."

Really? What the hell does that taste like. And more importantly, why would you ever want to drink that?

The Pope knows people. This happens when you are elected by the College of Cardinals. So a few weeks ago, we met one of the Pope's "Wine Guys." Discussions about wine began and the following idea was hatched. The idea is simple, if you remove pretense and preconceptions can someone write about wine without sounding like an asshole?

Last week, Joe the Wine Guy dropped off a case of wine for us. The labels and any other identifying marks were either removed or covered up from the twelve different bottles in the box. Once a week, Peter and I get together, and open the wine. We take a few sips and without consulting each other write down our most basic thoughts. We aren't trying to guess the vintage or the grape or whether the winemaker used new oak or whether it was bottled under a new moon. Nope, we just want our gut reaction to the wine.

Wine is made to go with food. So we also want to know, what kinds of food would this be good with. So, we both write down the name of a restaurant and a dish at the restaurant. Again just collecting our stream of consciousness.

At the end of article, Joe the Wine Guy gives us his notes on what the wine really is and where you can find it. By the way, we don't know his thoughts until after we have tasted and written down our own.

That is it. The point isn't to get it right. It is just to keep it simple, stupid. Ohh and drink some wine; that is the real point.

Peter: Not surprisingly, this red wine tastes fruity - grapes, blackberries, blueberries. Not tannic enough for a steak, but maybe game birds. Roasted simply where the wine could act as the fruit sauce. Cafe Atchafalaya's Boudin Stuffed Quail or Cafe Minh's Lacquered Duck come to mind.

Rene: A red wine. Not heavy, but coats the mouth well. Fresh, blackberry flavor with cedarwood flavor at the end. Light tannins, good acidity, palate cleansing. Would want to drink this with something braised. For that, I go to the root beer braised short ribs at La Petite Grocery.

Joe the Wine Guy:  This week's wine is a 2008 Termes from Bodega Numanthia, a wine made from the Tempranillo grape. This selection features intense fruity aromas such as raspberry and cherry along with flowering ones like violets. When you taste it, you first get an explosion of fruit then you get spices, tobacco, raspberries, and blackberries. The wine is aged in French oak Bordeaux style barrels for 16 months. You can find it at The Wine Seller, Galatoire's, French Market Bistro, and Elios. Retail price is $29.