Ian McNulty: How do these great New Orleans restaurants still manage to be off the radar?

One is a special occasion restaurant deep Uptown with a vivid connection back to a dearly missed restaurant of another era in New Orleans dining.

Another is a French bistro that also happens to double as a neighborhood pizzeria. Then there’s one that serves an upscale combination (though not fusion) of traditional Vietnamese and contemporary Creole cooking.

These are three restaurants that have been on my mind lately for the way they reframe the idea of a hidden gem and because they offer particularly welcome dining options at this time of year, with the city heaving with visitors clamoring for tables at those not-so-hidden gems.

The idea of a hidden gem might bring to mind a backstreet joint known mostly to people in the neighborhood. Not so with these. Each has prominent placement, and plenty of other restaurants around them. But they still seem to fly under the radar.

They have longevity and little buzz, and do little if anything to try to manufacture any. They’re not likely to make much imprint on the algorithms informing your online world.

But here they are serving delicious food that’s not exactly old-fashioned but rooted in an older style, serving a clientele that is almost totally local and has kept each going for many years. They should be on your list.

Bistro Daisy, 5831 Magazine St., (504) 899-6987

Dinner Wed.-Sat.

Returning to Bistro Daisy after much too long, I was startled to realize it’s been around for 17 years, and soon sank into memories of my first visits in its early days. The line on Bistro Daisy back then was how it was a new restaurant with a classic feel. Today, it feels naturally like a modern classic.

It’s located in the middle of a block deep Uptown with no on-street parking, which may be a reason people cruise past. But this quietly excellent, reliably romantic restaurant should be on your list for special evenings.

It’s also a restaurant with a vivid link back to a much older one that still lives in memory.

Early in their careers, co-owners Diane and Anton Schulte worked at Peristyle, the spectacularly good French Quarter restaurant.

The roasted chicken with a “dusting” of very finely chopped porcini mushrooms at Bistro Daisy always takes me back to the version of this dish I had at Peristyle in its prime, with such juicy, tender meat under earthy, aromatically mushroom-scented skin.

Salads are especially fine here, and both the crabmeat and chilled roasted beet edition and one with julienned Gala apple and endives go back to the Peristyle days.

After all these years though, Bistro Daisy’s prime characteristic is the consistency it’s maintained, blending French underpinnings with local influences for its own voice.

You can start with the cute, daisy-shaped “Daisy salad” (named, as is the restaurant, for the chef's daughter) or the Herbsaint-poached oysters with fennel, then get the classic bouillabaisse with garlicky rouille.

End with the baked Alaska, a version that both shrinks and elevates the classic of ice cream and cake under a cloud of meringue, singed into concentric brown stripes.

Café Minh, 4139 Canal St., (504) 482-6266

Lunch Tue.-Fri., dinner Tue.-Sat.

What will it be to start? The French onion soup or the spring rolls? The entree salad topped with a fried softshell crab or the charcoal pork soup with egg noodles and bok choy?

You can steer a meal in many different directions at Café Minh, though from pho and banh mi to speckled trout with crabmeat and seafood pasta, the dishes mostly stick to their respective Eastern or Western spheres.

This restaurant, also opened in 2007, was then the latest chapter for chef Minh Bui, who a decade earlier introduced New Orleans to a more upscale take on Vietnamese flavors.

Today, he and Cynthia Vu Tran run a restaurant that draws a rock-solid following of regulars back from all across town to this corner by the intersection of Canal Street and North Carrollton Avenue.

This is especially evident at lunch, when Café Minh functions as a business lunch meet-up spot outside of the Central Business District.

I love the beggar purses filled with ground shrimp and pork and the tender shrimp dumplings, and I like how when you order a few appetizers they’re all arranged together for a shared platter presentation. The specials list goes on and on, and seafood is a particular strength.

Ciro’s Côté Sud, 7918 Maple St., (504) 866-9551

Dinner Thu.-Mon. (closed Tue., Wed.)

The name here flips a peculiar New Orleans protocol when restaurants change hands.

A man named Pascal added his name to what’s now Pascal’s Manale. A woman named Ruth famously added her name to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. But this longtime Maple Street gem came about when a pizzeria called Ciro’s was bought by a man from the south coast of France who opened a neighborhood bistro called Côté Sud in its place.

But during renovations, neighbors kept asking Ollivier Guiot if he’d still serve pizza. So he took the hint, kept the brick oven and hitched the new name behind the old one for good measure.

That was in 1996, and ever since this charming, cozy spot has maintained an unusual dual specialty. You can get a pizza with a light-charred, blistered crust in addition to, or as an alternative to, the French staples.

Thus you might see kids eating a pizza while their parents cut into the magret de canard au peches (duck breast with peaches, prunes and apricots in a bourbon sauce) or dunk frites in the steamed mussels in a blue cheese broth, which is especially good.

A split table like that will probably reunite over the French desserts and share a tarte Tatin a la mode or the profiteroles.

The wine list is impressive for a restaurant of this size and price range. Keep this in mind when you want a Monday night restaurant, but no matter when you visit always remember it still accepts only cash or check.

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