Bon Ton Cafe - New Orleans, LA

Posted By Michael Stern on November 8, 2000 5:04 AM

Bon Ton Cafe is the place to know the joy of crawfish etouffe, an unspeakably luscious meal especially in May, the peak of the season when crawdads are plumpest. You can have etouffe as a main course or as one part of a wonderfully monomaniacal meal of bisque, etouffe, Newburg, jambalaya and an omelet, each of which is made with crawfish. Or you can start dinner with an appetizer of fried crawfish tails. They look like little fried shrimp, but taste like shrimp’s much richer relatives.

Dinner begins with the delivery of a loaf of hot French bread, tightly wrapped in a white napkin. When the napkin is unfurled, the bread’s aroma swirls around the table. Then comes soup – either peppery okra gumbo made with shrimp and crab or turtle soup into which the waitress pours a shot of sherry. Other than crawfish in any form, the great entrée is redfish Bon Ton, which is a thick filet sauteed until just faintly crisp, served under a heap of fresh crabmeat and three gigantic fried onion rings. For dessert, you want bread pudding, which is a dense, warm square of sweetness studded with raisins and drenched with whiskey sauce.

A big, square, brick-walled room with red-checked tablecloths, Bon Ton is soothingly old-fashioned. Service, by a staff of uniformed professionals, is gracious and Dixie-sweet. The place is crowded with locals at lunch, but mostly groups of tourists and celebrants at supper. Either time, and whether you are a regular customer or a first-timer, Bon Ton feels like Creole home.

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Posted By Foster Blair on February 9, 2011 3:11 PM

More of a special occasion dinner as this is hardly a Roadfood stop; it's more of a downtown, high-end meal, like Galatoire's, with similar prices but without the "scene."

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Red Fish Bon Ton

gumbo

Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

Pecan Crunch Ice Cream

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Posted By Andrew Mook on March 19, 2007 9:46 AM

I've never been so disappointed by a N.O. restaurant. While I'd visited N.O. several times and had dozens of meals, I hadn't eaten at the Bon Ton Cafe before despite its reputation. Now I don't know what to say; tell me this is a post-Katrina aberration, like they couldn't find a chef.

My expectations were dashed. Strangely, our waitress warned us off some choices. The food arrived lukewarm after a long wait. It was also unspiced and resting in a pool of grease. Even the "famous" bread pudding was soggy, lackluster and generally tasteless.

I didn't want to write such a review. We've had many fine to nearly heavenly meals in N.O. This must not be "normal." All that reputation and pricing as a fine dining experience shouldn't produce this worst meal we've ever had in N.O. Ambiance, presentation and service was certainly OK. Relatively speaking, the food was a disaster.

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