Hi, I'm a new member here. I am enjoying reading all the posts, and wanted to say hi. I am originally from Louisiana, where food is love, and everybody has an opinion. After almost 20 years away from my home state, I'd pretty much given up on finding a truly good restaurant of Louisiana cuisine. Luckily, my parnter Fey decided to take me to Furlong's on Sunday, and it was amazing! We stopped by after a long, difficult day, just for appetizers, and wound up eating until we were stuffed. As a Louisiana native, I tend to shy away from the word "Cajun" these days—so often, what passes for Cajun food is pretentious, overpriced, over-peppered nonsense that completely misses the point of what good Louisiana food is.
While New Orleans has some of the best cuisine in the world, what most Louisianians eat is comfort food. It's real. It's flavorful. It's mostly deep fried. It's welcoming. It's comforting. Louisiana food--what the natives eat--is usually made with cream or a roux and everything in the pantry you can fit in the pot. It's a big Dutch oven filled with red beans and rice on the stove when you come home from school, or boiled crawfish spread out over a long, newspaper covered table, steaming and spicy and cluttered with potatoes, corn on the cob, and onions.
Furlong's…thank you…seems to have figured this out. Not only is the restaurant itself inviting, the staff there is exceptionally talented and willing to serve. After our first visit, we felt like regulars. Our server, Jennifer, was knowledgeable, friendly, and made us feel comfortable the minute we were seated. She knew the menu and was able to suggest things for me (I only eat seafood—no beef, chicken, pork—and I'm allergic to cheese, which makes things complicated.) She and the manager on duty, Woody, were extremely accommodating, and I wound up eating very well.
The food was just like I remember the really great restaurants from my childhood—perfectly cooked fried catfish, mushrooms stuffed with crab and shrimp, andouille sausage (which I didn't eat, but my partner loved), hot bread… It was like I'd gone home for the first time in years.
My favorite thing on the menu, though, was the crab and corn bisque. Honestly, I had tears in my eyes eating this soup. It was perfect—huge hunks of white crab meat, sweet corn, thick creamy soup. It had just the tiniest of kicks to it, and it really reminded me of the best meals from home. I fully intend to go back and just gorge myself on this stuff, the heck with the calorie counting.
We had beignets for dessert. There are as many different ways to make beignets as there are people in Louisiana—my family's version was more like Indian fry bread than what you get at Café du Monde. But Furlong's beignets are delicate, a little cakey, crisp on the outside, and served hot with tons of powdered sugar. I'm told they even serve Community coffee there, which is just so perfect it's not funny.
Woody suggested, and we split, another dessert of chocolate cake with a bottle of sparkling red wine. Neither my partner nor I are big drinkers, but we tried it anyway. The combination of the rich, intense chocolate with the wine was perfect, and elevated both to much more than what either could have been alone.
Bottom line is, if you want to know what it's like to really eat like a Louisianian, not a tourist on Bourbon Street, you probably want to check out Furlong's. After years of searching, I've finally found a way to go home without buying a plane ticket.