Purloo Wins Praise From Critic Helen Freund

This week, it's more good news for Purloo at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum — this time from Gambit's Helen Freund:

Delta corn tamales pay homage to the classic Mississippi bastion of comfort food. Delicate corn husks unfold to reveal tender, steamed cornmeal topped with deep red crawfish gravy. The dish is sprinkled with feta cheese and slivers of green olive, which add a salty element that complement the sweetness in the gravy and the plump crawfish tails. She-crab soup, that creamy low-country staple, arrives drizzled with Madeira and tastes buttery yet somehow light at the same time, faintly reminiscent of the sea. Several Louisiana blue crab claws submerged in the bisque offer a welcome surprise.

She recommends skipping the overly pickled beet salad, though, and do finish with the rice calas with cafe au lait pot de creme for dessert.

Meanwhile, critic Tom Fitzmorris ranked his favorite restaurants for catfish. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Middendorf's tops the list; but for something a little more centrally located, there's Mr. Ed's in the Quarter or Vietnamese barbecue catfish at Cafe Minh on Canal.