Cafe B makes comfort food luxurious in Metairie, earns 'Three Beans'
Published: Friday, October 28, 2011, 5:00 AM
By Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune
Care to live for a moment like a member of the top 1 percent you keep reading about? Order Café B's ravioli. They are built for a merger celebration, plumped with a combination of lobster and Gulf shrimp that stresses their sweet similarities, a point further emphasized by Champagne beurre blanc and a spoonful of choupique caviar. Seafood pasta can climb no higher on the hog without resorting to killing sturgeon or melting foie gras.
It's also a wonderful dish, and chef Chris Montero could probably nail it with one hand while texting with the other. He worked for more than a decade at Bacco, the French Quarter restaurant that anticipated New Orleans' tardy embrace of regional Italian cuisine roughly 15 years before it occurred. At Bacco, which closed at the end of last year, the lobster ravioli sold twice as well as any other entrée.
So it's no surprise to find the dish on the menu at Café B, the restaurant Ralph Brennan, who also owned Bacco, opened last May. Restaurateurs don't grow into businessmen of Brennan's stature by retiring proven hits such as these Bacco pleasure pockets. And if Café B is to become a hit for Brennan, it will come on the strength of its ability to satisfy customers who aren't in the market to be surprised. It's not an easy thing to do.
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By Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune
Care to live for a moment like a member of the top 1 percent you keep reading about? Order Café B's ravioli. They are built for a merger celebration, plumped with a combination of lobster and Gulf shrimp that stresses their sweet similarities, a point further emphasized by Champagne beurre blanc and a spoonful of choupique caviar. Seafood pasta can climb no higher on the hog without resorting to killing sturgeon or melting foie gras.
It's also a wonderful dish, and chef Chris Montero could probably nail it with one hand while texting with the other. He worked for more than a decade at Bacco, the French Quarter restaurant that anticipated New Orleans' tardy embrace of regional Italian cuisine roughly 15 years before it occurred. At Bacco, which closed at the end of last year, the lobster ravioli sold twice as well as any other entrée.
So it's no surprise to find the dish on the menu at Café B, the restaurant Ralph Brennan, who also owned Bacco, opened last May. Restaurateurs don't grow into businessmen of Brennan's stature by retiring proven hits such as these Bacco pleasure pockets. And if Café B is to become a hit for Brennan, it will come on the strength of its ability to satisfy customers who aren't in the market to be surprised. It's not an easy thing to do.
To continue reading, click the link below.
