McNulty Finds 'Old World Grandeur' at Restaurant R'evolution

This week the mack daddy of dining, Ian Mcnulty, wants you to know that Restaurant R'evolution's "conspicuously contemporary cuisine dressed in Old World grandeur" is "priced like a casino restaurant," but oh so worth it. The restaurant, an ambitious collaboration by Chicago chef Rick Tramonto and Louisiana icon John Folse took a rather long time to open, and comes with high expectations from food review land. To that end, Mcnulty says, "R'evolution makes the case more for bucking trends than setting new ones."

Diners can experience a more conventional dinner with seafood pastas and expensive steaks, or find Tramonto classics like a stairway to caviar heaven. But he suggests opting for the impressive cuisine that shows off the technical precision of Chef Chris Lusk and his kitchen.

A combination of buttery red snapper and sticky pork belly; a "Napoleon" striped with alternating layers of flounder and crawfish stuffing and a pool of oyster stew as sauce; a ruddy sheen of venison carpaccio, aromatic with specks of dark chocolate, walnuts and slivered grapes. They're visually intricate, like dioramas on the plate, and pastry chef Erin Swanson continues the theme with bread pudding under hives of spun sugar or a sack of beignets with candied coffee beans, pot de creme and fig jam.

McNulty compares the restaurant's interior to an intimate, flowery Creole Mansion, except "here diners also are invited to admire cases where charcuterie cures and a gleaming, state-of-the-art kitchen that could be a Food Network set." The service, he notes, can't always keep pace with the bustling restaurant.

· Mcnulty on NOLA's Most Ambitious New Restaurant of 2012 [Gambit]
· All Restaurant R'evolution Coverage [ENOLA]
· All Week In Reviews [ENOLA]

[Photo: Nikki Mayeux]