Station 6 Charms West End (Big Time)

Tom Fitzmorris finds Station 6 a welcome addition to the West End seafood scene: Though it is “only an illusion” that “someday the seafood houses of the past will return” to that area, Station 6 represents the new style in the area and has an approach to “seafood hunger” that it “widely and agreeably modern.” “Not overwhelmingly a seafood restaurant,” Allison Vega and Drew Knoll have created a menu that it “polished and chic.” Some of T-Fitz’s essential dishes include the Sloppy Drew (braised beef, provolone, onion jam horseradish); cracked crab stew with shrimp and oysters, and Mamere’s crabmeat casserole. Parking can be an issue at the busy restaurant, where T-Fitz can only score “illegitimate” parking spots. [CITY BUSINESS]

Brasted

Heads & Tails Seafood and Oyster Bar, charms Helen Freund: It is all seafood bounty at this convivial spot that mostly sticks to the iconic formula for a typical New Orleans neighborhood seafood restaurant. Freund encounters a “memorable” green salad of topped with fried green asparagus and “mound of lump crabmeat” in ravigote and “snappy capers.” She is equally charmed by the perfectly flaky Redfish Pontchartrain. Again, it is the crabmeat that seals the deal for her - “a beautiful reminder of the bounty of fresh seafood at Green's fingertips.” The crawfish beignets almost fall flat after they spend too long in the fryer, but are redeemed by a “creamy and dense” crawfish-filled dough that is more like a “Creole hushpuppy” than a beignet. The tomato grits served with New Orleans barbecue shrimp step outside the usual fare at a New Orleans seafood house and stole the show. It was“ as decadent a dish as there is, and reminded me of why Iack to it in all its glorious incarnations, over and over again.” [GAMBIT]

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WAREHOUSE DISTRICT — Helen Freund finds that Annunciation, now under the leadership of Chef Jacob Cureton, “straddle[s] a line between the past and present,” a nudge forward that imports the menu with “a bit of fresh air and new life:” Fried oysters with spinach and melted brie fall lack brightness without enough salt or acid, but many of the other dishes are lively. The stars of the menu are the ones that Cureton added after he took over, like a seared yellowfin tuna “full of bright flavors and contrasting textures.” The thin “sashimi-like” strips of tuna meet sweet potato habanero sauce and a gastrique of Steen’s cane syrup and eel sauce and are land over a bed of “Creole fried rice” that has “an addictive umami kick.” The dessert menu impresses Freund with a butterscotch pudding “re-imagined as a velvety budino,” a lemon ice-box pie that “tastes like a chilled lemon meringue hybrid,” and an “excellent” banana pudding that is caramelized in a creme brûlée style. [GAMBIT]