A restaurant review of sorts...

Tonight, I went to dinner at Cobalt. 333 St Charles Street. The latest restaurant opened by New Orleans resident celebrity chef, Susan Spicer.

It was thoroughly mediocre. Throughout.

I should've taken our greeting at the door as a sign of the evening to come. The hostess seemed put out that we didn't have a reservation. Never mind the empty table, one of several, that we were instantly seated at.

We ordered cocktails to start. My friend had what he claimed to be a nice Grey Goose dirty martini. I had a rather unexciting Grey Goose cosmopolitan. What restaurant or bar can't make a decent cosmo in these post-Sex in the City days???

For starters, I ordered the oysters pan roast, while my friend got the Duck Confit "debris" Biscuit. Mine was incredibly bland, his quite tasty. The wines we ordered to accompany were quite nice.

Bread and butter??? We finally got some about an hour and a half after being seated. Well, after our starters.

Entrees? I had the venison in an ancho-berry sauce with a masa tamale. Extreme yawns. An incredibly boring and quite tasteless entree all around. Venison is supposed to be gamey, not lacking in taste. My friend had the lamb chops with shepherd's pie. He seemed moderately satisfied, but not overly excited.

The cabernet we ordered with the meal at the waiter's suggestion seemed to have a single note and absolutely no complexity at all. And over the course of a three hour meal, my water glass wasn't refilled once. Not a single time.

For dessert, we decided to split the Chocolate Bread Pudding. After fifteen minutes of waiting for its arrival, we each took one bite and asked the waiter to take it away. Dry, stale tasting, stuck to it's container.

$180 later... we were underwhelmed.

Our next meals are at either Marisol or Christians. We know they'll do better.