Continuing our New Orleans food trip reviews…the restaurant for which we held the most anticipation on our most recent trip was John Besh’s August. I don’t think we’ve been to a restaurant with as an elaborate dinner tasting menu yet, and the major highlight for me was definitely August’s seasonal vegetables tasting menu for vegetarians. Always nice to be more than an afterthought :-)
The five-course tasting menu was generally really well done food-wise, but the service was a bit off. For example, a spoon wasn’t delivered for my soup for some time, one of our courses was initially given to the table next to us, the courses had really weird spacing with some coming quickly and others taking 20 minutes, and one of our wine pairings didn’t arrive until after the given course was served.
Apart from those glitches though (which were a bit incongruous with the price, let alone the restaurant’s reputation), the atmosphere was great. The tables were placed in smaller, semi-open rooms on the first floor of the building, with the kitchen and restrooms on the second floor.
Back to the food - I think my favorite was actually the first course, an apple parsnip soup with some chives that was really amazing. Velvety with sweet and salty flavors, it was a major treat that could not have changed more my view of parsnips.
The next course was charred broccoli with local citrus, which was also really tasty though I am not sure if the dish was collectively that good. I liked the deep flavor of the broccoli, and the tartness of the citrus wedges, but somehow together, it didn’t quite work with me.
The next course was the ravioli, which I have to admit that I don’t remember that well at this point, so I guess was good but not that good?
The fourth course was blackened beets, which were really, really interesting. I have never had beets prepared like this, and they were quite substantive with some lightness added by the carrot puree and light cheese. Certainly the most interesting and unique dish of the meal.
The desserts I remember being good, though I didn’t document with a photo. I did get a shot of one of our last little treats though - a king cake macaron - which I had Andy eat because I wasn’t sure if there were any nuts in it, and sadly no wait staff were to be found to ask!
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