Juan's Flying Burrito

Jolie picked me up from my house and drove us to mid-city to meet ellie for burritos and margaritas at Juan's (a self-proclaimed "creole taqueria")!  Juan's was really crowded for a wednesday at 6:30 PM.  In fact we had to wait for a table, and once we were seated, a line up to the door was formed.  So it is apparently a very popular place!  Upon walking in, I noticed two hand-written signs (thick, colorful magic markers were clearly used) to advertise two special drinks:  summer sage sangria and melon margaritas.  Both sounded good, but I decided on the melon margarita ($6) upon being seated.  The melon margarita was really good (a little strong) but the chunks of melon at the bottom were too big to go up the straw, forcing me to drink it really slowly which I guess wasn't a bad thing.  I wasn't carded (which I had hoped for since I just turned 21!), and later when ellie and jolie ordered drinks, the waitress just said "Ya'll are 21, right?"   So clearly they're not too strict with drinking age here.  Anyway, ellie ordered a mango margarita ($6.25), which was basically a totally delicious mango smoothie.  Jolie got a house frozen margarita ($5.25) which was good, too.  I was pretty jealous of ellie's mango margarita.

We ordered some guacamole and chips ($3.95) as an appetizer so we didn't drink on an empty stomach.   They were good, but nothing spectacular or unique.

Jolie and I both ordered the supergreen burrito ($6.95), which is a mix of grilled spinach, onion, peppers, broccoli, green chile, mushroom, jalopenas, avocado and salsa.  You can get it with or without cheese/sour cream.  I got cheese and jolie got both cheese and sour cream.  The monster of a burrito is wrapped up in a thin spinach wrap. We felt okay about our choice being SO huge (and eating all of it) since there weren't any beans or rice... clearly just a way to make ourselves feel better.  The burrito was messy, to say the least--I got burrito juice all over my white shirt!

Ellie ordered "Al Pastor" burrito ($7.50), which involved shredded pork, grilled onions, pineapple salsa, sour cream, pickled jalopenos, cilantro, pinto beans, and yellow rice. Al Pastor was really flavorful and the pineapples were a great addition. However, the jalopenos snuck up on you and sometimes were really concentrated in certain parts of the burrito. Ellie was a good girl and took like half of her burrito home.

Overall Juan's Flying Burrito is a good deal. You get a LOT of food for pretty cheap. The drinks are good, too, but it might be better to go during a happy hour/drink special time, as $6.00 drinks can add up, especially when they're so drinkable and delicious. Also, prepare to wait for a table (even on a weeknight!) as this place is really popular after-work dinner/drinks joint. Also, the decor is really fun and I love their logo (which is on the burrito wrappers and on a neon sign on the wall): a donkey with wings.

Boucherie!

Boucherie apparently started out as a purple truck that sold BBQ at festivals, a local classic I'm sad to say I missed. Now its a delicious, semi-fancy restaurant down the street from the old streetcar home. Located in the old Iris (with Iris still beautifully carved into the buildings window), you feel more like you're going to visit someone in their shotgun then going out to eat. We got there early for dinner, 5:30, and thank goodness we did. The place started to fill up, and about a half an hour after we arrived, another group of four got turned away for not having reservations. It was that good.

We started out with a "Small Plate" Collard Greens with Grit Fries. Though as a good southern girl I'm a fan of good greens, these were way more flavorful then I've ever had. And the Grit Fries (grits fried into sticks) were the perfect way to soak up all the juice from the greens. Next, we were gifted with an Amuse Bouche, Wahoo Ceviche on Corn Chips. We thought it was a special present from our cute waiter, since no one else had gotten any. But either way it was a perfect snack.
After quite a wait for the food, and much spilling of water, everything was brought out. I got the Pulled Pork Cake with Potato Confit and Purple Cabbage Cole Slaw.

The pork cake was tasty though a little dry, but the

cole slaw added color and strong flavor.

Rachel ordered the Grilled Wahoo with Fried Pickled Okra & Roasted Tomato Harissa. They didn't have the Wahoo so she ended up with Mahi Mahi. The fish was slightly raw which made it juicier, and the harissa sauce was made it better. The okra was perfectly crispy.

Ellie had the Smoked Scallops with German Potato Salad & Fried Arugula Coulis, my favorite. The scallops were ideally flavored, and the potato salad was like juicy scalloped potatoes, making it a dish of circles.

Finally Dana got the Smoked Black Angus Beef Brisket with Garlicky Parmesan Fries. The beef brisket seemed to be Boucherie's true roots: a melt-in-your-mouth, slathered-in-sauce piece of meet. And the Parmesan on the fries seemed to add just the right amount of salt.

We left feeling full but not stuffed, after resisted what looked like yummy, fatty desserts like Krispy Kream Bread Pudding and Bacon Brownies. As we stood outside discussing the food, we noticed a tree which seemed to be growing bags across the street. On closer
inspection, it was an avocado tree, one of my favorite deserts.

Mimi's in the marigny

Mimi's in the Marigny is mostly a bar (the top-rated bar in new orleans by gambit, I think), but upstairs, a pretty extensive tapas menu is served.  We drove over to the marigny to delight in some flavorful tapas as our dinner.  The bar downstairs was relatively crowded when we walked in around seven, but the upstairs was completely empty.  We sat down and perused the menu, basically concurring that pretty much everything sounded good.  Since Jolie wasn't there yet, we decided to order a few different tapas, with hopes that she'd get there by the time they came out.  The nice thing about tapas is that you can keep ordering to your heart's content and it comes out pretty quickly.  We started with our all-time favorite- goat cheese croquettas.  Three balls of fried goat cheese topped with honey and caramelized onion.... heaven.  It was pretty dark upstairs, so we took pictures without flash first, and they came out pretty terribly.  Also, we were so ravenous that we ate pretty much everything nearly to entirety before realizing we hadn't taken pictures.  I'll post pictures just out of formality, but they're pretty terrible. These goat cheese balls are half-eaten and destroyed. 

The next item we got were beef-filled empanadas with roasted red pepper aioli.  The meat inside was really well-spiced and the aioli provided a perfect compliment to whatever spice was used.  The order came with four empanadas, and by the time we took the photo, there was only one left

Next we got gambas al ajillo, which were shrimp sauteed with garlic, parsley and white wine, and by the taste of the dish, a LOT of butter.  Three large shrimp and a large piece of hearty bread which soaked up a lot of the sauce were presented on the plate.  Though this dish was tasty, it was not as good as when I had had it previously.  Maybe the sauce was too buttery and rich.  The chunks of garlic hidden in the sauce, however, were a nice surprise.  The fourth dish was a potato dish.  It was almost like chunky hashbrowns with a somewhat spicy tomato and cheese sauce.  Fancy bar food.

Ellie with the gambas (front) and patattas (back)

Me with gambas and mostly-eaten pattatas.  

Jolie and Ellie sucking on the heads of the gambas [sort of].

Dana munching on something.

We decided to order two more tapas after finishing the first four.  We went for spanish cheese with red peppers, which was served with some warm hearty bread, and mushroom manchego toast (not pictured).  The cheese listed that came with the cold cheese tapas plate were manchego, mahon, drunken goat, and valdeon, and the portions were very generous.  We weren't really sure which cheese were which, but we're pretty sure the drunken goat was the "stinky cheese", which was pretty moldy and very strong.  The other cheese were good, though I found a few of them to be a little oily.  The manchego mushroom toast was absolutely delicious.  The toast was crunchy with melted manchego, smothered with an extremely creamy mushroom sauce.  Possibly my personal favorite dish (after the goat cheese croquettas of course).  

A torn-apart cheese plate.  

We finished our night with the new seasonal beer from abita: SATSUMA flavored beer.  When we got to Rouses right before closing, we were pleasantly surprised to find only one 6-pack of the beer left on the shelves.  It was fate.  Personally, I really enjoyed the beer, though the flavors are definitely strong, and could be described as tasting like flowers.  The more you drank, the more mellow the flavors became, though, and it was very pleasant to drink.  The strawberry beer by abita might edge out the satsuma beer by a little, though!  At Mimi's, ellie also ordered a woodchuck cider (pear flavored) which was very tasty, but kind of pricey at $4.50 a bottle.  

Satsuma brews

Overall, Mimi's is a fun place to share lots of dishes.  It's a crime to order the same dish at a restaurant within a party, so by ordering lots of different things to share, that problem is solved.  Every dish is relatively small (and very very flavorful), but also relatively inexpensive (ranging from $5-$7), so the more people you have, the more of an excuse you have to order lots of different dishes to taste.  I imagine on the weekends it is more crowded and the ambiance is more upbeat, but even on a slow thursday night, it was a really chill place to hang out, pig out, and drink if you're of age (**they are actually seemingly strict about carding**)  

Surrey's Café & Juice Bar

Today’s food venture was truly a union of both eating and sport. After a yoga class at Wild Lotus (in which Rachel, Dana, Jolie, and I were instructed at one point to stick our butts out, like at the club) we hungrily headed downtown on Magazine St. to Surrey’s Café & Juice Bar. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I had my misgivings about Surrey’s. Sure they had wheatgrass shots and Banana’s Foster Pancakes, but breakfast for $10? Surrey’s, you had a lot to prove to me. However, I am happy to report that this was the best meal I have eaten all summer. 

Despite a small crowd outside the door, we didn’t have to wait more than fifteen minutes before being ushered into this colorful local spot situated in a stately old house (you know its for real when signs in the bathroom ask you to respect the 100 year old plumbing).

 We were directed to “the table top with the 50’s kitchen décor” by our server. I was quite taken by a mannequin in a beaded pointy bra surrounded by plastic fruit and reclining in a hammock suspended above the bathroom door. Dana made the astute observation that it would suck to work at Surrey's, it is tiny and you had to wait for someone to walk down the single aisle between two rows of tables before attempting to traverse the length of the restaurant yourself. 

I got an apricot iced green tea ($2), which was good…but basically just iced tea. I hesitated for a while before ordering, wavering between my safety breakfast of migas ($7) or the more adventurous shrimp and grits (a whopping $12.50). I figured that I would be daring and do the shrimp grits (plus I knew I would have to take a picture with my chosen dish). Best decision I’ve made in a long time. First of all, I didn’t know that grits could be that creamy. As for the barbequed shrimp sauce- superb, I don’t know how much butter was involved in the production of my meal, however the sauce was seasoned to utter perfection. I did salt it and throw in some Tabasco, but if you’ve ever dined with me, this is a pretty standard routine. The shrimp were fresh and large. The whole thing was garnished with crispy bacon and some slices of French bread, both items perfect for dipping. The whole deal was topped with a sprig from what I will assume to be a Christmas tree. In sum, I would recommend this spot to anyone who wouldn’t mind shelling out a little more cash for a truly excellent New Orleans breakfast. *Warning! This place is cash only, so be prepared.

RACHEL:I had intentions of getting something "healthy" at surreys, but 

failed once I saw they had banana pancakes on the menu.  So I ordered the "big banana pancake" with pecans as an add in. The other options for extras were peanut butter and cream cheese, all three of which were an extra $1.25.  Since banana pecan pancakes are one of my favorite foods in the world, I chose the pecans, though I imagine peanut butter would be pretty darn good as well.  When it came out, it was literally the size of a pizza.  It covered an entire plate that was at least one foot in diameter.  I covered it in syrup and dug in.  It was thick, doughy and sweet and the bananas tasted nearly caramelized.  I was a little skeptical to pay 7.50 for ONE pancake (including pecans), but the size and the taste made it worth while.  I ate a little more than half of it, and brought the rest home...which I ate as an afternoon "snack"!!  Since Surrey's is a juice bar I also ordered one of their fresh juices.  I got carrot/apple juice, which you won't like unless you really like carrots (which I do, and the addition of the apple sweetens it and makes it more drinkable).  It was good, but at the price of $5.00, I wish I would have gotten more.  I also wish it would have been colder.  As far as I know, all they do is pass the fruits/vegetables through a  juicer, so I don't see why it is so expensive.  A shot of wheatgrass is an extra $3.00, so I passed that up, no matter how healthy it is for you.

DANA: I started off with an iced coffee which was good but make sure you specify if you want milk with your coffee as I was served just black coffee on ice. For my meal, I went back and forth between getting french toast or the migas, but in the end the migas description won me over- "lightly scrambled eggs sauteed with red onions, bell peppers, and tomatoes folded into grated cheddar cheese and corn tortilla chips, served with pico de gallo" I chose the biscuit and hashbrowns to go with it (the other options were toast and grits). DELICIOUS. The eggs were fluffy and full of flavor from the onions, peppers, and tomatoes. The portions were big and the biscuit homemade- perfectly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I wouldn't exactly call the hasbrowns hasbrowns- they were more like potato wedges than the traditional grated kind, but were well seasoned and tasty especially with the side of sour cream I ordered (extra $1.00).

So while my friends are eating for sport in the dining Mecca that is New Orleans, I am playing the game up here in Natchitoches, Louisiana, Land of the Free and Home of the Meat Pie. For three weeks this summer, I'm working at the ADVANCE Program for Young Scholars, an intensive camp for gifted high school students. The cafeteria we use here definitely leaves something to be desired, as the tried and true staples of my diet are "foods that look like macaroni and cheese but apparently aren't." So, throughout this summer, I'll be corresponding from here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the two days prior to my arrival at staff training for ADVANCE, I went to Shreveport with my parents. There's not a lot to do in Shreveport, so I found myself spending a lot of time at the Boardwalk, an outdoor outlet mall in Bossier City. While there, my mom and I took on a perennial favorite: Fuddruckers. We both ate turkey burgers, which were...okay. They were overspiced, most likely to combat the blandness of turkey. Having not been since I was in elementary school, I was pleasantly surprised by the toppings bar, but it was not enough to overcome the bizarreness of the meat. It was also extremely overpriced...maybe 10 dollars for the burger combo, something I was pressured into buying by the cashier.

I know that Fuddruckers isn't exactly fine dining, but it was a disappointment for a hamburger. I'm hoping that my time in the foreign land of northwest Louisiana will reap more positive food experiences.

Though I have no pictures of my cafeteria food thus far, gross highlights include a mucousy pistachio pudding covered in graham cracker droppings and particularly runny powdered eggs.

Frosty's Cafe in Metairie

Our first official blog post/review is for a restaurant that is an old favorite: Frosty's Cafe.  We had to make the treck out to metairie in rush hour traffic, but it was worth it for the delicious bubble tea and food.  Frosty's bubble tea is unique (well maybe not unique, but superior at least) because they use actual fresh fruit in the smoothies.  The counter has a display of various colorful cut up fruit that they use in the bubble teas.  I, however, skipped out on a bubble tea this time, as I had a huge buffet lunch at Mat & Naddies earlier today with dad (which was delicious, btw, but didn't bring my camera).  Anyway, I got pho ga, which is basically a vietnamese chicken broth-based soup with chicken (obviously) rice noodles, and scallions.  It comes with a plate of cilantro and mung bean sprouts and some kind of spicy pepper that can be added on to your liking.  Needless to say, it was delicious and filling and I felt like I had a fish bowl's worth of liquid in my stomach after the meal.

Ellie got a vermicelli noodle bowl with crispy tofu.  I can't say much about it, since I didn't taste it, but she did fool Dana for a second when she said it was a vermicelli bowl with french fries on top.  Ellie also got a honeydew bubble tea which I did taste and it was DELICIOUS.  Bubbles were of perfect chewiness.  But then again, you wouldn't expect anything less from Frosty's.

Jolie and Dana came along, too, but they were not prepared with their headbands, so we didn't take any pictures of them (sounds kinda mean in retrospect, I guess).  Jolie got the same soup as me, along with a taro bubble tea.  Taro bubble tea is my favorite flavor--it tastes almost like drinking liquid cake.  It is rich, to say the least.  Dana got egg rolls, filled with "mystery meat", which she described as tasty and more filling than expected.  They came with a dipping sauce that looked to be similar to pepper jelly, but then again, I don't really know what it was.  Dana also got a kiwi banana bubble tea, which is an old favorite back from high school.

Overall, Frosty's was a great dinner at a good price.  My soup was gigantic and was like, $6.95 I think.  If it didn't involve driving out to Veterans to eat there, I'd probably still be in my 4-5 bubble tea a week habit from high school.