Ian McNulty: Nine dishes and one drink to try right now around New Orleans

It was a busy spring with festivals, friends and family visiting New Orleans in its prime season and the always hungry pace of keeping up with New Orleans restaurants. Now it feels assertively of summer, the slow time, though there’s plenty to look forward to, and that might be the simple salvation of your next meal on the town.

That’s why I’m rounding up some of the top tastes I’ve had recently to give some quick ideas for your next outing, from a pop-up to the highest of high-end dining. These are highlights from my notebook and recent stories to give you a quick glimpse of some new and enduring options.

Let’s dive in:

Linguine alla vongole at Fausto’s Bistro, 530 Veterans Blvd., 504-833-7121

The reboot of this old school Italian restaurant saw it return with new owners, a new look inside and the familiar menu with a sharper edge.

I was buoyed by the return of this dish ($19.95), a Tuesday special, deploying what seems equal parts clams and roasted garlic slices nearly the size of the clams, with a broth just asking for bread to drag through. We need more clams on local menus. My dream is that someone will even serve them raw on the half shell, but for now this dish is a good introduction to how to cook them right.

Red bean salad at Rosella, 139 S Cortez St., (504) 766-6642

Rosella draws up the idea of a neighborhood joint a bit differently from the classics around it in Mid-City, and its take on red beans is refreshingly different too.

Here the beans make up a chilled salad ($10 large, $6 small) with hot sauce and puffed rice, with a toothsome texture and a bright, light flavor that feels right for the weather. It’s served daily, but felt perfect to end a rough recent Monday along with a bottle of the well-priced Alsatian riesling ($30).

Shrimp pikliz at Fritai, 1535 Basin St., 504-264-7899

Charly Pierre brought Haitian flavor all across the spring festival scene, and I had this dish every time I saw it at French Quarter Fest, Jazz Fest and Bayou Boogaloo.

You can always find it at his Treme restaurant ($13). It’s essentially a cabbage-based slaw surrounding sweet shrimp with enough chile pepper spice to have you reaching for your beverage of choice. At Fritai, that could be one of the many rum drinks or the reposado and carrot juice cocktails.

Spicy tuna sushi taco from Nori Guys (various locations)

This pop-up was another hit from festival season, which I tried first at French Quarter Fest and then barreled back to at Bayou Boogaloo.

The shell for this “taco” ($10) is a fried sheet of nori with a tempura crispiness as it crinkles around sour sushi rice and diced raw tuna. It’s an alluring blend of crunch and fresh and spice I’d look for again anywhere. You can find Nori Guys popping up at taproom and bars; see the updates at instagram.com/nori_guys.

Seafood Platter, aka “the Shell Beach diet,” at Brigtsen’s Restaurant

723 Dante St., 504-861-7610

When I want visitors to really understand why I love and value Creole cooking so much, I take them to Marna and Frank Brigtsen’s place. This kitchen has mastered the style. Frank Brigtsen also has a good sense of humor.

This nickname for his always-changing, never-fried seafood platter ($48) melds Shell Beach, the fishing village in da Parish, with the South Beach Diet, a low-carb craze of the early 2000s.

This platter is not exactly low-carb, or even particularly light, but it gives one bright, robust taste after the next. This time that progressed through seared drum, oysters roasted two ways, a tender-sweet scallop and shrimp cornbread, each worthy of its own plate and together a tasty tour on a platter.

Crabmeat au gratin at Restaurant des Familles, 7163 Barataria Blvd., Crown Point, (504) 689-7834

This dining room gives you box seats to Jean Lafitte National Park (which is technically located just up the road). That means the floor show could include alligators the size of sofas basking or cruising through the green bayou.

What could draw your attention away from that? For us, it was the mesmerizing prospect of pulling large lump of crabmeat through the stretchy melting cheese and onto garlic bread with this au gratin. This is a road trip-worthy restaurant that is really only about 20 minutes down the road from the city.

Grilled chicken skewer at Hungry Eyes, 4206 Magazine St., 504-766-0054

This place is such an open-faced ode to the ‘80s. It makes you want to grow a mustache, grab a saxophone and play a solo on top of a car by the glow of neon lights.

The menu is much more varied in its inspiration, but dialed right into dishes that work for drinking food. A simple sounding chicken skewer is coated with peanuts and green onion over a bed of sprouts and cilantro. Pulling this apart and mixing it all up fits the bill perfectly as you move on to your second martini.

Tasting menu at Saint-Germain, 3054 St. Claude Ave., (504) 218-8729

It could’ve been the demitasse of Parmesan broth that started the 10-course tasting menu ($150, wine pairing $75), or near the end the cheese soufflé with a dollop of Saint Andre (think Brie mixed with cream), or maybe the scallop served in the shell. There were many highlights of this exquisite, expensive, yet still quite casual Bywater dining experience.

But right in the middle was this particular standout, perfection on a plate, a piece of coral trout, snowy white, dense, firm, with smoked tomato broth poured at the table, a plank of Parmesan tuile topped with all of tapenade balanced on top, striking its own balance between technique and ingredients. There’s world-class cuisine happening in this unassuming shotgun, and it keeps getting better.

Antipasto platter at Del Porto Ristorante, 501 E. Boston St., Covington, 985-875-1006

The bar in the dining room has its own identity at this long-running regional Italian restaurant, which feels like the hub of downtown Covington. People have been known to make a day of it here, stretching a late lunch into happy hour or dinner.

Presented with an antipasto platter ($30) like this and the excellent wine list, that becomes a very tempting proposition. There’s been a lot of change for downtown Covington and great additions to the hospitality scene. Here’s one that’s been an anchor for it through more than two decades.

Emeril’s reserve martini at The Wine Bar at Emeril’s, 800 Tchoupitoulas St., 504-528-9393

This one martini ($35) cost more than several of the bottles of wine I have knocking around in my fridge at home combined.

I ordered it because I’ve learned to trust what the new Emeril’s Restaurant is doing, from the tasting menu that is right now the peak of New Orleans luxury dining to the wine bar, a (relatively) more accessible perch to get a glimpse of this new chapter.

There was the beautiful stemware, the precise execution, the capers subtly infusing the gin, the briny influence of salty Zapp's potato chips that “washed” (a form of infusing) the vodka, the chilled accouterments, the side plate of a single chip dappled with caviar.

The whole thing is a diorama of indulgence. If you want to treat yourself, or maybe the martini lover in your life, here is a regal rendition.

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