NOLA Dining: Restaurant August

Posted by Chris

Restaurant August, located on Tchoupitoulas Street between Canal and Poydras, serves as the flagship restaurant of acclaimed New Orleans chef John Besh. The restaurant opened in 2001. Besh, the winner of a James Beard Award in 2006, now operates eight other restaurants, seven in the New Orleans area alone.

            My wife and I dined at August on New Year’s Eve. Since we had planned to eat our way around the city, we decided to order the chef’s tasting menu with wine pairings. The chefs at August presented a wonderfully complex array of flavors and pairings that represented the most inventive and confident food we encountered in the city. The presentations were simple and clean, everything on the plate served a clear purpose, and the portion sizes were perfect for a tasting menu (enough for a couple of bites, but not enough to fill you up until the end). The chefs demonstrated a remarkable restraint by allowing the ingredients to stand out. What follows is a course by course breakdown. 

Amuse bouche: cauliflower served two ways, served inside of an egg shell

Inside the egg shell was a puree of cauliflower with a layer of roasted cauliflower near the bottom that allowed the dish to play with textures as well as highlighting an often derided vegetable.

 1^st Course: terrine of Banyulis poached foie gras, pain d’epice, candied golden beet

By placing the foie in a terrine mold, the foie adopted a visually appealing marbled appearance. The wine, similar to a port provided a nice sweetness as well to the foie gras. Spice bread gave crunch to the course.

2^nd Course: truffled panzotti pasta with cured yard egg, Louisiana caviar and fresh winter truffle.  This was our absolute favorite course. The truffles provided a rich earthiness to the dish, the egg broken over the top served as a sauce, and the caviar played off of the other two nicely by offering some acid and sweetness.

3^rd Course: P&J oysters pan-roast, salsify risotto, nduja sausage, garlic froth.

Fresh oysters coupled with a salsify (otherwise known as the oyster root) risotto complimented each other nicely and the sausage absorbed some of the liquid and offered some heat to the dish. The garlic froth paired well with sausage and the oysters.

4^th course: beef rib-eye with fresh horseradish, roasted baby root vegetables, tete “en croute.”  The rib eye was cooked to a nice medium with a crunchy pastry like crust. The horseradish was a classic pairing with steak, but the freshness separated it from more conventional steakhouse fair. Root vegetables were a pleasant touch as well. 

 

5^th course: dark chocolate hazelnut tart, almond and Satsuma ice cream

The dark chocolate was rich and flavorful, the almonds added a pinch of salt. The Satsuma ice cream tasted like an orange, and the tart provided crunch. This was a fantastic finish to the meal.

Notes on service and décor: Service was generally very good apart from us receiving our fourth course before the wine had arrived. Also we did not receive knives until my wife asked for them. On the plus side, the table captain did get Chef Besh to sign a copy of the tasting menu. For five courses, the meal took a little over two hours, which seemed, from our perspective, a little quick. The restaurant seemed to be dimly lit, which provided an intimate setting, but was a little too dark.  

Overall, Restaurant August offered innovative and delicious food and had the wisdom to let the delicious local ingredients shine.