Cafe Adelaide -- August 2007

Mr. Lake's New Orleans Food Blog

Cafe Adelaide -- August 2007

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Cafe Adelaide

Loews New Orleans Hotel
300 Poydras Street

Website: http://www.cafeadelaide.com/

Cafe Adelaide is in the Lowes Hotel. It looks and "feels" like it could be anywhere. I got absolutely no New Orleans vibe from the place (and there's nothing wrong with that) but the decor leaves me cold. In my opinion, it has a "hotel dining room" ambiance. Most diners, by all indications, were locals -- there was a large crowd celebrating a family birthday as well as the usual one table of diners knowing another table of diners and sharing a drink together before re-splitting to their own tables for their meal.

Cocktails:

We were in a festive mood so ordered a Mai Tai and a Brake Tag (Southern Comfort, Amaretto, OJ and cranberry).

Appetizers:

We had the Shrimp Tasso "Corndogs" which I loved. I suppose this is a take-off on Commander's Tasso Shrimp Henican but having never had the Henican I can't be sure. Anyway, Cafe Adelaide's "Corndogs" were lovely to look at (my photo of it was awful) and delicious. Two large shrimp (tail on) coated in a light corndog-like crust sitting upon a great five pepper jelly and topped with halves of pickled okra. There's a sweet and peppery thing going on here that went great with the Mai Tai.

We also had Shrimp Remoulade with "seafood boil salad". What made it extra nice is that the salad is tossed in the Remoulade "dressing" so that each morsel is nicely coated. Very good.

Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail (Appleton Jamaican Rum, Cointreau, lime juice, and "a secret ingredient) and the Adelaide Swizzle (New Orleans Amber Rum, fresh squeezed lime juice, bitters, a splash of soda and our secret ingredient!)

Warning! Warning! I plated our leftovers for the following photographs because the photos I took of our entrees at Cafe Adelaide were terrible.

Crispy DesAllemands Soft Shell Crab

I didn't "get" this dish but thought it sounded interesting. The crab was nicely fried but the red beans didn't complement it at all.

The Special -- Red Fish

This was described as being red fish with the skin on (but crisped) with crabmeat and some kind of mushrooms (I don't remember but they were delicious) and corn, etc. Mike loved it. I thought it tasted "fishy" but discovered that if the skin was removed it tasted nice and fresh. I think the crabmeat was described as being "lump" (but I could be wrong). Lump it wasn't.

Service was slow until Mike got annoyed enough to use his angry tone and then everything went swimmingly.

Diners at Cafe Adelaide are treated to the same "everybody's plate arrives simultaneously and each is served by a separate server". For the large birthday party crowd all the servers gathered next to our table which happened to be where all orders were brought out to await being served. A few other tables were aslo in close proximity to this "staging area". I think they need to re-think the logistics -- the place isn't very large and my opinion is that the servers ought to be gathering out of diners' sights or, in the very least, some distance from the tables.