Mandina’s Restaurant, New Orleans, LA Report #507

This place has been around a long time. In fact, it’ll make its 100th birthday in a decade.

I haven’t been here since back in the early 1990’s. A friend of mine and I used to work in the area and spent many a night after work closing down the bar here. Around that same time my wife and I decided to play tourist in our own city one night. Mainly to escape our kids! We got a hotel room, ate dinner here, then used a couple free tickets I had scored to see The Nutcracker ballet at the Saenger Theater. That was also the night I learned I wasn’t a ballet person.

But even though I hadn’t been here in about 30 years I remembered the food being good. This is another one of those instances when I have no idea why it took me so long to get back to a place.

Also, this is one of those old New Orleans restaurants whose motto might as well be, “You won’t leave hungry”. Everything we ordered was huge! If you look at the first picture above, you’ll see a customer inside packing up a doggy bag. There must be a lot of that here.

We decided to start off with a cup of seafood gumbo and the crawfish cakes. Our entrées were a stuffed shrimp plate and veal parmesan.

===== THE FOOD =====

Seafood Gumbo

Crawfish Cakes

Stuffed Shrimp

Veal Parmesan

They start you off with some hot, toasted buttered French bread rounds. Yummy.

My dining partner had the seafood gumbo. She said it was very good! Great flavor, sufficiently dark roux and plenty of ingredients.

The crawfish cakes were huge! But not like a good crab cake where you have crabmeat end to end. Mostly breading, but well-seasoned with a good crawfish flavor. They were served with a nice remoulade sauce.

The stuffed shrimp were bigger than some chicken legs I’ve seen! But again, mostly stuffing. In the stuffed shrimp pictures above, in the pic on the right, I cut off about a third of the top of one to get to the shrimp inside. But again, the stuffing was very good!

My veal parmesan was delicious. Two people could easily split this plate.

I really wanted to try the bread pudding. I was pretty stuffed, so I debated ordering it. Then I made a decision. If you’re one of the 10 or so people who reads these reports, you’ll know I hate raisins in bread pudding. So, I figured I’d ask our waiter if the bread pudding had raisins in it. If he said yes, I wouldn’t order it. If he said no, I’d get it.

He said not only did the bread pudding have raisins in it, but pineapple too! That should be illegal. I passed on it.

Good dinner here tonight. If you decided to come in, come hungry!

3800 Canal St., New Orleans, LA 70119 Ph: (504) 482-9179

Blaine

Blaine 9-2-2022

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