Critic Helen Freund Finds Modern Southern Comfort at Brown Butter

Recent Gambit hire Helen Freund unleashes her second review this week, taking on Mid City's Brown Butter Southern Kitchen and Bar: Chef-owners Simon Beck and Dayne Womax are serving what they call "Bible belt cuisine" – that is, "Southern-inspired fare from outside New Orleans." The dining room is comfortably laid-back and "service is friendly and accommodating," but it sounds like the real standout here is Brown Butter's take on chicken and waffles:

Thick pieces of sourdough, grilled on a waffle iron, provide the infrastructure for a decadent chicken and "waffle" sandwich, in which buttery chicken confit is combined with smoked ham and aged white cheddar. After a press on the iron, the sandwich is draped in syrupy Steen's mustard glaze and sprinkled with powdered sugar, and the result is stick-to-your-ribs comfort food.

Other dishes of note include the T.L.T. sandwich, which subs tasso ham in for the usual bacon, and a New York strip with bone marrow-roasted potatoes. Overall, "While some dishes need some fine-tuning," Freund declares Brown Butter "a promising addition to Mid-City's rapidly expanding culinary scene."