N’awlins for the night!

 

After a week at home getting a few of those honey-do projects accomplished, we were already thinking about the next road trip.  Friends invited us to accompany them to New Orleans for an evening of food and fun.  So, we left the EGG at home, and traveled down with them shortly after lunch on Sunday.  Chef John Besh has a number of fine restaurants in or near the French Quarter.  One of those is LUKE in the central business district.

You enter through the bar and pass by vistas of seafood and oysters.

 

From the bar, you are taken upstairs and seated near the kitchen where the short order items are prepared.  Most of the appetizers and sandwich type items are prepared right before your eyes.

But, we weren’t there for short orders.  Once every month or so the LUKE puts on a specialty dinner consisting of four or five courses.  Last nights dinner was centered around oysters and duck, two favorite ingredients of Louisiana cuisine.

                        

We were seated at a table with eight other guests which we didn’t know at the beginning of our dining experience.  By the time it was over two and a half hours later, it was like we had known each other for years.

The dining started with two towers of oysters on the half shell.  Louisiana oysters, along with others from Florida and Puget Sound in Washington.  Awesome.

From that point the camera got put away and sorry to say, not another photo was taken.  We had food this country boy had never seen before.  More appetizers of something sitting on rounds of French bread.  Garden salads followed by an oyster and duck dressing.  Then both stuffed duck and roast duck with dressing.  Other things between the main dishes that I can’t even remember.  Way too much food, but it was a great evening with friends, old and new.  And, the best thing was the price for the evening.  Very reasonable for such a dining experience.

As we definitely didn’t want to make the drive back home after such a feast, we had reserved a couple of  hotel rooms just a block or so from the restaurant.  Monday morning found us walking the edge of the French Quarter looking for a breakfast place.  Though it was early on a Monday, the street artists were getting set up and the crowds were already growing around Jackson Square.

 

We settled for a nice restaurant right on the square with a view of the Cathedral.

I’ll let the breakfast plates speak for themselves.  Some of us couldn’t wait for the photo’s to be taken.

 

 

Top left, to bottom right.  Corned beef hash, Eggs Benedict with fried oysters, Country breakfast, and Banana’s Foster French toast.  That’s vanilla ice cream in the small cup with the bananas.  What can I say, it’s New Orleans food at its best.

After all that, we spent some time just walking around the area. 

 

You never know when you might find something you just can’t do without.

 

By ten or so, the sidewalks were getting crowded.  There’s always a crowd at Café Du monde, twenty four-seven.

 

It was time to head for home.  The subject of Lunch never came up.  I don’t think we will be having much for supper, either…..jc