Thursday, May 17, 2007

honest to goodness meal

Sometimes it looks like a joke to me, but actually it was my dinner.

The mashed potatoes are stoemp, the sausages are bratwurst. And I wouldn’t be fooled by their simple appearance, or by the mustard signature. Both (the stoemp and the bratwurst. Not the mustard) were more complex than they look. And when I say complex, I don’t mean that in some messed-up trendy fusion sort of way. I mean that this was very purposeful humble food. Not your average plate of fat and salty/hot and plentiful; there were a lot of flavors to contemplate the whole way through. The herb-and-spice job made sense, delicious sense, wasn’t plain, and best of all, wasn’t fussy. And isn’t that the point of the bistro? Unpretentious and perfect. I loved this dinner. I mean that. Earnestly. Like the food.

New Orleanians, this is a great place to take your meat-eating friends. Especially if they mainly stick to the east bank. The outside looks distinctly oompah/hofbrau, the inside looks like Thailand/Portland. They don’t use the $ sign next to the prices, but just give you the price as a round number (23, 7, 12 … like that).

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