This year for Valentine’s Day, “The Chef” surprised me to dinner at Gautreau’s, one of the top ten Zagat rated restaurants in New Orleans. Considering we’re locals, we couldn’t believe that we’ve never been to Gautreau’s!

Bread. 

Chilled Lobster. Grapefruit Yuzu Aioli. Avocado. Passion Fruit. Pickled Ginger.

Foie Gras Torchon. Cherry-Port Reduction. Hazelnut Granola. Honeycrisp apple. Toasted Brioche.

Crispy Sweetbreads. Spicy Parmesan Cream. Gnocchi. Crawfish. Carolina Green peas.

Special: Crispy Fried Quail and Mixed Green Salad.  

Pork Osso Buco. Citrus Gremolata. Tagliatelle. Roasted Fennel. Castelvetrano olives. Grape tomatoes.

Banana Split. Brulee’d Banana. Vanilla Ice Cream. Banana Bread. Butterscotch. Chocolate Sauce. Toasted Walnuts.

Sue Zemanick is the owner/chef of Gautreau’s and you might recognize her from shows like Top Chef Masters and Knife Fight. With her growing popularity, I was really interested in what the restaurant had to offer…

The restaurant is quite small and the waiting area is very limited, but I found it to be quite intimate. As for the food, there was a great amount of detail and thought to each dish. We ordered the chilled lobster appetizer which was amazing! There were so many levels of flavors and it was so refreshing. I owe it to the light touch of passionfruit, grapefruit aioli, avocado, and heck…every element was SO good. The Foie Gras was paired well with a cherry reduction, a nice touch. The sweetbread dish was good, but were quite small. I would have preferred them bit chunkier, but the flavors were there. There’s nothing like a mouthful of ouffel (ironically, pronounced awful)!

Chef’s Notes: “The Chef” gave me a quick course on Sweetbread preparation and some chefs like to prepare the sweetbreads into smaller pieces and others prefer to keep large chunks. It’s all personal preference!

One of my favorite dishes was the Special Quail Salad of the day. The fried quail ate like a perfect crispy fried chicken and was balanced so well with a bed of salad. Lastly, was the Pork Osso Buco. It’s rare to find a Pork Osso Buco so we couldn’t help but order it. It’s not as moist as Veal Osso Buco, but still very delicious! I love the thin and delicate tagliatelle that came with the dish. It was reminiscent of a super thin rice noodle marinated in a deep and flavorful Osso Buco sauce.

To finish off the meal, we had the mainstay Banana Split. This was probably THE best Banana Split I’ve ever had. The bruléed banana and the banana bread was outstanding!

I would highly recommend trying Gautreau’s. Don’t believe me? Just check out those pictures…

Rating: 4.5/5 spoons