| rev:text
| - Emeril's style of cheffery is considered by many young chefs these days to be lazy and outdated. Though he probably was, at some point, an inspiration to most of them (they'll never admit it), his generation's approach to food and cooking seems to be a dying artform.
But there's something refreshing to his laissez faire, rustic kind of cooking. It's less scientific and more "feel". Less sous vide and more pan roasted. This is what I was looking for when I dined here.
Unfortunately, the experience mostly seemed hackneyed and lazy.
The server was...well...weird. I couldn't quite read him. Maybe he was new. Either way, he did a satisfactory job and was at least friendly.
We started with the chilled seafood platter. I was excited because the menu said the shrimp and lobster was "creole boiled" and that there was king crab remoulade. And though, the shrimp and lobster were fresh and delicious, the were certainly no creole spices to be found anywhere. Not to sound like an elitist, but I lived in Louisiana for 8 years and have eaten lots of creole boiled whatnot and there was no spice at all in this seafood...and barely any flavor. (Ok, I guess I'm an elitist...sue me!)
Second course we received the gumbo and the barbequed shrimp. The former was rich and smokey, full of flavor and decidedly lukewarm. The other complaint about the gumbo is the homemade andouille: super garlicky...overwhelmingly so and whatever spices were in there weren't ground up enough because I was crunching on some stuff every other bite. The shrimp were superb. This is a classic Emeril dish that always delivers. I will say I would prefer a crustier, sturdier type of bread to serve with the dish. The rosemary biscuits, while fantastic, crumble when trying to dip into that beautifully rich and flavorful sauce.
For the main course, we split the grilled salmon with barbeque sauce, frizzled onions and brabant potato hash with tomatoes and andouille. Fresh fish, perfectly cooked to medium, yet a bit overwhelming. Lots of flavor doesn't always translate to balanced flavor. There was a lot going on in this dish and again, the homemade andouille just kind of overpowered my palate (not to mention my GI tract. I think I burped garlic for about a week).
The dessert was decent. We ordered the trio with bread pudding, banana cream pie and chocolatey something-or-other. The chocolatey-something-or-other was (obviously) not memorable. The banana cream pie was UBER rich but tasted good. The bread pudding was definitely the best part.
More is not always better. There was definitely a little too much BAM! and not enough thought put into these dishes. This seemed more like the cuisine of an upscale Claim Jumper than of a world class chef.
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