It would take a world turned upside down for anyone to confuse Metairie Road with Tulane Avenue, but a meal at Old Metairie’s most upscale restaurant rekindled flavor memories of what was once a true culinary find on that gritty strip in Mid-City.
Crabmeat and Patton’s hot sausage mix it up over squid ink fusilli pasta at TANA restaurant in Metairie. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The cue was a pasta dish with an interplay of spicy, rich Patton’s hot sausage patties crumbled between sweet crabmeat and jet black squid ink fusilli, the screws of each pasta shape catching the saffron and lemon in the sauce.
Chef Michael Gulotta and his partners developed TANA as a showplace upscale Italian restaurant in Old Metairie. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
It was not precisely the same dish I remember but unmistakably the style of chef Michael Gulotta. The chef of Asian-fusion-adjacent Maypop and MoPho once ran the kitchen inside Treo, a cocktail lounge that was part of a hopeful push of new businesses on Tulane Avenue a decade ago.
That kitchen was called TANA, and finding it on those woebegone blocks was akin to stumbling upon a tasting menu restaurant out in the sticks.
The Metairie restaurant TANA adds an upscale Italian destination to a growing restaurant row for Jefferson Parish. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Treo is long gone (Vandal, the hookah lounge that replaced it, seems to be booming). But earlier this year, a much fuller vision of TANA opened on a stretch of Metairie Road that’s been humming with new development, especially restaurants.
A striking showplace
The dining room at the Metairie restaurant TANA blends rustic and elegant touches. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Before visitors even cut into the menu, TANA makes a striking impression through a flow of different spaces. That starts in the lounge with deep, scalloped booths, a glowing marble bar, a vault locking away prestige whiskeys and rafter beams high above.
The bar and lounge at TANA in Old Metairie was designed to be its own destination for before and after events. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
This TANA is a showplace restaurant, one that appears to have spared no expense in design nor the application of bells and/or whistles.
The dining room at the Metairie restaurant TANA blends rustic and elegant touches. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
This might’ve been the hottest reservation in town when it opened. Things have mellowed (a bit), which made this a good time to revisit.
On the menu
TANA’s menu mixes the simplicity of fresh pasta and robust sauce next to more complex dishes that build layers of flavor. What’s impressive is the harmony between them.
Octopus is glazed with smoked bone marrow at TANA restaurant in Metairie. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
A thick leg of octopus was perfectly cooked (crisp on the edge, tender within), glazed with smoked bone marrow over a cake made from squid ink risotto. This is a picture of composed Italian fine dining.
Then consider the porchetta, a homestyle adulation of pork fat, with a thick slab of belly spiraled into a roulade. A mostarda made from muscadines cut through the richness, but the defining feature remains the surface of cracklin’ skin coiled around it. It gives a highly pleasing sound when tapped with the tip of a knife. This is porchetta perfected.
Porchetta, a crispy-edged cut of pork belly, is a specialty at TANA restaurant in Metairie. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Across the menu, you can chart three distinct guiding influences.
One is Louisiana, as the local-brand hot sausage and crabmeat pasta dish above demonstrates.
The Sicilian comes through as vivid as the thick red gravy all but burying a plate of radiatori, a great sauce-catching shape from the restaurant’s repertoire of housemade pasta (there’s a station just for this situated in the dining room).
Fried calamari is mixed with strands of zucchini for an appetizer at TANA restaurant in Metairie. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Then there’s Liguria, in northern Italy by the French border, where Gulotta trained early in his career. A prime example from this playbook is the calamari with zucchini, which is fried but still comes across very light with the zucchini cut like noodles to swirl with the squid.
Fine wine, dive bars
The wine cellar at TANA in Old Metairie runs deep, with choices from the $40s to four figures. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Use northern Italy as a starting point for the wine list, which shares the no-expenses-spared approach and can take you up to four-figure bottles. There’s much, much more down to earth value in the northern Italian Nebbiolo wines, and in particular the dolcetto d’albas for south of $60 can carry you from seafood through meat and pasta.
The wine list is displayed on hand-held computer pads at TANA, the upscale Italian restaurant in Metairie. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
TANA exudes modern Italian all over. It’s not nostalgic chianti-bottle-candle American Italian, but a convincing continental Italian blend of rustic roots and high style.
The dining room at the Metairie restaurant TANA blends rustic and elegant touches. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
It’s a new direction for Old Metairie. But if you want to balance out the evening, the rich harvest of scruffy dive bars that have long endured around this neighborhood await for a nightcap to recap the dinner. I like Martine’s Lounge just down the street (now smoke-free) or a jaunt over to the Electric Cocktail tucked away by the interstate.
TANA
2919 Metairie Road, (504) 533-8262
Dinner daily, lunch Fri.-Sun., happy hour 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.