Bourbon House

Finally, a weekend that didn’t involve driving to the far reaches of south Louisiana and Mississippi or opening up Hôtel le Gordon. I could finally take advantage of the free time and do what I do best- eat and watch football.

If you know me, then you know that I sniff out coupons like Tyrone Biggums sniffs out the white stuff. When the email reminder for Groupon came through a few weeks ago with Bourbon House as the deal of the day, I quickly snatched it up. Bourbon House is part of Dickie Brennan’s family of restaurants- a family who really knows how to treat their diners especially well, not to mention the good food that comes out of their kitchen. With its vast windows and interior balconies in the expansive dining room, Bourbon House also shows off the Brennan’s uncanny ability to design incredible dining rooms. Since we were practically dining half off, and we had gotten the seafood platters on our previous trips, we decided to break the monotony and share a few of Bourbon House’s small plates. We started off the mild Friday night with a plate of okra and eggplant “fries”. The fresh eggplant and whole okra were flawlessly fried, and were paired with a Creole Ranch sauce.

For the next course, we went with the Crystal Alligator. The alligator, usually a tough meat, was extremely tender and doused in a Crystal hot wing sauce. This slightly spicy sauce was subdued by the accompanying blue cheese.

Being that we were in a seafood-centered restaurant, we figured we would be doing the restaurant an injustice if we didn’t order some sort of seafood. The first of the seafood dishes was a Crawfish Fried Rice. The Asian-inspired dish, chocked full of Louisiana crawfish tails and topped with a sunny side up egg, was quickly inhaled like the Tennessee Titans' mascot inhales cheerleaders.

The final dish of the night showed off Bourbon House’s ability to locate the best and freshest seafood, even outside of Louisiana. The tuna tasting paired three unique tuna dishes on one plate- seared, Carpaccio, and tartare. The tuna, in both its raw and slightly cooked form, was both simple and delicious.

Once we had handily finished off the tuna, we made our way out of the restaurant just in time. A few West Virginia fans, presumably in town for the LSU-West Virginia game, were seated at our neighboring table. When one of the Mountaineer diners failed miserably at putting words and sentences together, we knew Bourbon Street had claimed yet another victim, and we knew that we didn’t want to stick around for the side show our waiter was about to witness.