I have been to Herbsaint twice now. The first time, Jenna and I left and had to record our gushed comments on praise in a note on my phone, so profuse were they that I worried about forgetting them all. The second time, I had an unprecedented kind of love affair with my dessert. And yet, I have had a lot of trouble sitting down to write this review. I adore this place, and my conundrum is this: must I dissect this emotion and justify precisely why I feel the way I do? But I’ll humor you, because if there are any cynics out there reading this, the least I can do is convert them to believers.
Herbsaint is located in the Warehouse District of New Orleans, on St. Charles Avenue where it’s one way. The dining room is incredibly bright and airy, with huge windows that let sunlight just flood in and coat every crevice of the room. The room has a luxurious, clean, organic kind of openness that makes it a pleasure to just sit in: it somehow strikes that balance between serene oasis and chic hotspot. So when you take your seat at the table with the white linen tablecloth right by the window overlooking St. Charles, either your standards for a good meal have just shot out the roof or you are so aesthetically satisfied that you are content to just steep in this atmosphere…
…that is, until the people at the table next to you get their first plates. A whiff of delicate fried frog legs with fines herbes and the sight of an impressively dark-rouxed gumbo are sensually stunning and incite a carnal but innocent kind of jealousy. Luckily, when this happened to Jenna and me, it was after we had placed our orders – providentially enough, for the same two dishes. In between bites, the couple at the next table glanced over at us and said, “It sounds like you really know your food!” We laughed and befriended them. As it turns out, they teach at Cornell College in Iowa, and every January, they come live in New Orleans for a month so they can stock up on the food and culture that are apparently lacking back home. We gleefully talked food with our kindred spirits as we gazed lovingly at their food. Ours could not come soon enough.
Now, that is not to say that the service was anything short of superb. We owed our impatience solely to an acute kind of hunger that was sharpened at the sight of some truly beautiful food. At long last, I found myself peering down at my plate full of frog legs as Jenna, across the table, melted in a love-puddle around her gumbo. This being my first dining venture into amphibian territory, I rolled up my sleeves and dove in. Frog legs look a lot like anorexic chicken legs, I think. These ones were fried in an ethereal take on Southern fried chicken batter, topped with a generous handful of fresh herbs, and piled in a pool of spicy, hot oil. As I bit in, I was overjoyed by the texture of the batter… until I got a bone in my mouth. Turns out, I’m not a natural when it comes to eating frog, and my rabid hunger got the best of me. That kind of put a damper on my mood (I have always found unwanted bones and stray shells to be overly offputting), and I found the oil to be gratuitous and overbearing. I did, however, fall in LOVE with the meat, trappings aside: it’s true that it does taste like chicken, kind of, but it’s more chewy; I found its mouthfeel to be quite different, as chicken is generally kind of stringy when broken, whereas frog just falls off the bone in succulent bite-sized parcels.
I felt the same kind of visceral attraction to my second course that I did when my frog legs arrived, but I also felt a degree of surprising restraint: it was one of those almost-too-beautiful-to-touch deals. A small bundle of house-made spaghetti languished in a pool of creamy butter-yellow that was spangled with tiny bits of crushed red pepper and bits of guanciale. Resting jauntily atop this was a golden brown fried poached egg – can you imagine!? The waiter instructed me to break the egg perfectly down the middle, and when I did, it oozed generously in a yolky rush – essentially, a deconstructed carbonara. The spaghetti was tender but not gooey; the sauce was creamy and comforting but with a subtle punch that made it multi-faceted rather than single-noted; the egg, which had been lightly breaded, was delicate and crispy, a wonderful punctuation to each luscious pasta bite. Having never eaten guanciale before, I was a bit startled by it, as it is leaner, less greasy, and unabashedly richer – almost pungent – in flavor. Of course, it’s a delicacy, but it will take just a bit of getting used to, my being so accustomed to bacon.
Actually, I think I’ll cut this entry short here. I know reviews are traditionally written in one fell swoop, but the truth is that this is being published on a blog. You are most likely reading this from your RSS, leafing through a bounty of new posts, and I am aware of this: blog posts just aren’t meant to be prolific. I wish I could have cut to the chase with what I’ll write next. SO: I’m going to just start a fresh post for those of you with taxed attention spans. Sneaky…
Hello, Blake Makers. I’ve got a new philosophy on blogging. I’ve always been a believer in doing what you love, blogging what you love. You know that I love food, but I also love ideas. From time to time, I’m going to share my latest ideas with you, like this one.
