Hot Suppa’s new dinner service builds on longstanding strengths
By BRIAN DUFF | February 16, 2011
AN IMPRESSIVE JAMBALAYA Hot Suppa’s Southern creds extend to dinner. |
When you sit down in one of the comfortable booths for the new dinner service at Hot Suppa, it is hard to remember the many years when Hot Suppa was closed in the evenings. This quiet winter launch of the dinner service feels like a completely natural extension. The room, with its painted inlaid ceilings, brick walls, and wood booths was always on the elegant side for a breakfast and lunch place. And now they keep the lights pretty bright and the prices pretty lunchy in the evenings — so the transition to dinner does not feel jarring.The menu also builds on existing strengths. But while the lunch at Hot Suppa has long had a slight Southern lilt, the dinner menu speaks with a deeper drawl. It seems like the right move for dinner. Eclecticism is welcome at lunch, but an evening meal calls for a narrower culinary coherence. And Southern cuisine offers some great notes to cohere around during a particularly cold and snowy winter: warm spices, creamy textures, and rich flavors.
Several of these notes worked together in an appetizer of boudin balls, made with pork sausage. Beneath the crispy exterior the sausage had been whipped up with rice to create a juicy and light texture. Each bite was so infused with a terrific warm Cajun spice that the big dollop of mustard seemed superfluous. They were served with some cool-sour pickled okra — a nice idea that offered a bit of crunch, rather than the typical okra-mush.
While the boudin sausage came in the shape of three perfect snowballs, our other appetizer of fried green tomatoes came as three golden pucks. The slight sourness of the al-dente tomatoes worked well with the light crispy breading. Again, the flavors were pleasant enough that we barely took advantage of the mild remoulade that came alongside. The real star of this appetizer, however, was the pile of cool little bay scallops. The deep smoky flavor worked well with the squishy scallops' natural sweetness.
Jambalaya is a dish that can go wrong very fast, so it is impressive that Hot Suppa serves a good one. The rice finds that right spot where it is neither dry nor mushy, but both toothsome and soft — and a great conveyance for the dish's mild heat. It is speckled with green onion, and spotted with plenty of tender chicken and a drier smoked sausage.
There is nothing dry in an entrée of shrimp and grits. Shrimp and grits appear all over the Hot Suppa menu (as an appetizer, a side to the catfish, and a main dish) and they are indeed something to be proud of. The entrée version features grits that are creamy, runny, and resonant of the sweetness of the corn. A ring of the lovely white of the grits frames a pile of big shrimp soaking in shallow little pools of spicy red oil and butter. The shrimp is tender but not overcooked, and the Cajun spices just assertive enough to complement without overwhelming the sweet corn and the overall buttery richness of the dish.
Related:
Review: Bluebird Café, Review: Scallops and lamb soar at Havana South, Review: Whaddapita, More 
- Review: Bluebird Café
How easy it is to take your favorite local places for granted. The Bluebird Café is my regular weekly lunch spot and a shortlist contender for taking out-of-town guests to breakfast, but I've shamefully neglected its once-a-week dinners.
- Review: Scallops and lamb soar at Havana South
If you visit the Web site of Havana South, a new restaurant in the Old Port, you will find a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama looking handsome and happy.
- Review: Whaddapita
Whaddapita is an indicator of our bright lunch-future. It brings to Mediterranean food the trend of giving upscale-fast-food treatment to regional cuisines, sort of like the BajaFresh chain did with Mexican.
- Review: Cook & Brown Public House
When a restaurant moves into a location that has seen several eatery incarnations, it must work doubly hard to establish its reputation, both around the state and in the neighborhood. Cook & Brown Public House seems to be accomplishing both with aplomb.
- Review: Tucker's Bistro
Tucker's Bistro has always held a kind of enchantment for us, as for many other customers. The tree outside the restaurant wrapped in tiny white lights is only the beginning.
- Review: Basil's of Narragansett
Like the rolling surf a stone's throw from Basil's of Narragansett, a fine dining restaurant as reliable as this one never changes when it comes to essentials.
- Review: Apsara Palace
It's more than being loved by our mommy and being safe from barbarians from the North that we take for granted, isn't it? I found myself again and again going to Apsara Palace for lunch when I was in town, kind of a gastronomic migratory impulse, before it occurred to me to review the place and figure out what was so appealing.
- Review: Mermaid Café
The first special thing about the Mermaid Café is its location: on the Pawcatuck River, overlooking an island green with trees, a few boats in a small marina and, across the river, a busy street in Connecticut.
- Review: Mediterraneo
Mediterraneo, on Federal Hill, is a culinary greeter for the town's cuisine — at the beginning of Atwells Avenue, near the arch.
- Review: Café Zelda
Café Zelda is one of those places that feels elegant but homey; luxurious but not pretentious.
- Review: Chinese Iron Wok
As recommendations go, hearing indirectly from four mainland Chinese kids new to this country that Chinese Iron Wok is their favorite place to eat got plenty of extra points for authority from me. I had to check it out.
- Less
Topics:
Restaurant Reviews
, New Orleans, food, restaurants, More
, New Orleans, food, restaurants, dinner, comfort food, cajun, Hot Suppa, Hot Suppa, Less
