Cafe Orleans

Okay, I'm new to this blog so someone let me know if I do something wrong.

I recently went to Cafe Orleans, the restaurant that replaced Boomers Cafe. (Isn't it about time.) The decorations were about the same, though the posters are different and someone threw a bunch of Mardi Gras masks about the place trying to improve it, and failing. But despite the strange vibe from the restaurant I had heard good things about the place.

My husband, Sandin and I always share a plate, portions at most places are insane. We decided to do the same there. We decided on the Crawfish platter. Not a bad choice since it comes with jambalaya, steak fries or sweet potato fries, a green salad, and cornbread or French bread, and hushpuppies.

Like most people here in Utah, I'm an unexperienced Creole eater. Sandin on the other hand served a mission in North Carolina so he at least knew the southern terms, like hushpuppies. The food was interesting. We got the chicken and sausage jambalaya, cornbread, and sweet potato fries, as well as their Creole salad dressing.

The jambalaya is a rice dish with plenty of spice and large chunks of meat in it. It was good, but too spicy. If I went again I might try the crawfish jambalaya instead. The fries were delicious, but we didn't get any sauce to eat them with and they needed something (I'm not precisely sure what, something sweet perhaps). The hushpuppies are a small cornbread based deep fried dumpling. They were really good. They too needed something to dip into, but they were good on their own still. The salad dressing (I'm sorry I don't remember the exact name of it) was really good. It tasted different enough to be worth ordering. The crawfish was good as well, the small pieces of it were deep fried and once again could have used some dipping sauce.

The best part of the meal was the cornbread. It was the best I've had in forever. It was moist and sweet, but not too much. It didn't need butter or honey, but stood on it's own. This is a good thing, since neither butter nor honey were offered.

Altogether, the food was not bad, but the service was. We waited forever before we could order, our food came in a fair amount of time, after which the waitress disappeared and didn't return until it was time for the bill.

On the whole I give the place five plastic spoons entirely on for the food. The standing might have been higher if anyone had been around to get us something to dip our food in. But it's different, and in Cedar City we like anything that's different. There are so few restaurants here that it's definitely worth trying if you're tired of Winger's, Applebee's, or Fast food.