This spot at the corner of Euclid and Washington avenues has seen several restaurants come and go, most recently Coco Louco. Evangeline’s is clearly meant to be a warm, inviting place to hang, recreating a laid-back, Big Easy kind of vibe. The bar is lively and specializes in retro New Orleans mixers like Brandy Milk Punch, Hurricane and Mint Juleps.
The food is home-style Creole, rotating many of the same ingredients into most of the dishes. You’ll find plenty of: Creole red sauce, parmesan-mozzarella toppings, Andouille sausage and crawfish, with a buttery white sauce thrown in here and there for good measure.
A nice opening touch was when bruschetta came to the table, gratis, as an amuse bouche—you can’t knock that start to a meal. The two toppings were muffaletta olive and marinated feta. The olive was the traditional bayou ‘olive salad’ of green olives, pimiento, cocktail onions, vinegar, parsley, oil and capers—very pickled and astringent to the taste. It was meaty and good. The feta was more on the creamy side, with grated parmesan on top.
The most popular starter, judging from how often it came out of the kitchen, is Tabasco Butter Shrimp ($8). The bowlful of tender, sweet shrimp was served in a soupy casserole of pretty red sauce with plenty of butter and a little bite. The shrimp were done just right and flavors were good, but that much sauce did the dish a disservice; it’s simply poor presentation and unappetizing.
Another starter, Broiled Crab Parmesan ($10), was tasty, a casserole of shredded crab covered with a hefty dose of cheese. Here again, less cheese would have been better. But they got it just right with the happy hour fries, Red Bean Andouille Pommes Frites, especially for $5. The thin-cut potatoes had a judicious dose of Creole sauce and red beans, a few slices of well-softened Andouille and a little melted cheese. All-around my favorite starter.
My favorite bigger dish, Famous Beans & Rice (half $7, full $14) was a dense and flavorful concoction of house-made Andouille sausage, chunks of steak and very tasty red beans dotting the mound of rice under it all. It was a classic one-pot dish, everything thrown together, with plenty of Louisiana flavor from celery, onions, tomato and spices like paprika, oregano and pepper (red and black).
Louisiana Shrimp Creole ($14) embodied the charm of this kind of cuisine with its profusion of rice covered with first a Creole tomato sauce and tail-on Gulf shrimp, then a blanket of melted mozzarella and parmesan cheese. The seasoning was good, with a hint of red pepper, and the rice absorbed it well. The shrimp were tender and sweet, and the cheese a nice addition to enrich the acidic tomato-ness of it all.
A similar dessert, on two different nights, yielded two very different experiences. Strawberries Jubilee ($9) came as berries appealingly sitting in sticky, rumlaced caramel sauce with two scoops of vanilla oozing into the hot caramel. Bananas Foster ($8), supposedly with that same sauce, came out swimming in liquid; the sauce never coagulated.
Evangeline’s has its imperfections, but also its appeal. It’s got the warmth of a neighborhood eatery, with prices and portions to match.
[chef chat]>> don bailey
FAVORITE INGREDIENT | Garlic
FAVORITE LOCAL RESTAURANT | Juniper or Taste
FAVORITE COOKBOOK | I like Emeril
MOST MEMORABLE DINING EXPERIENCE | A Jamaican jerk house in Cuba that was set up on the road by the beach. For around $7, we had a feast.
GUILTY PLEASURE FOOD | Pigskin, chicken skin and chocolate—not all at the same time
[amuse bouche]
THE SCENE | Casual neighborhood pub, New Orleans-style
THE CHEF /OWNER | Don Bailey
THE PRICES | $4 to $13 starters; $12 to $18 entrees; $10 sandwiches
THE FAVORITES | Red Bean Andouille Pommes Frites, Famous Red Beans & Rice, Strawberries Jubilee, Louisiana Shrimp Creole
By Jonathan Carli
Photos by Bill Barrett
