How do you Réveillon? The answer can be as varied as the restaurants and bars taking part and the holiday traditions New Orleans people build around them.
More restaurants are going big this year with truly decadent tasting menus for Réveillon. Others are bringing a parade of wintry dishes and local holiday classics (daube glacé and turducken, anyone?). And more bars are in the mix with holiday cocktails too.
Below, I have a preview of this year’s offerings. But first, the basics.
What is Réveillon?
Champagne is put on ice for a festive lunch at Antoine’s, the oldest restaurant in New Orleans.
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Originally, Réveillon was rooted in this Creole city’s religious customs, a meal served at home after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. The idea of Réveillon was reinvented in restaurants, where it now takes the form of set-price, multi-course meals served throughout the holidays.
This year, about 50 restaurants have Réveillon menus, while more have specialty cocktails, running from classic to pure holiday kitsch.
Normally held through December, Réveillon runs a tad longer this year, until Jan. 6, since the calendar essentially gives us an extra holiday weekend after New Year’s Day.
Preparing desserts tableside at Arnaud’s Restaurant in the French Quarter. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Restaurants serving Réveillon menus also have their regular a la carte menus available. You can find full menus and holiday service schedules at neworleans.com.
Turducken, tradition
At any point through the year, I might field the question of where to get turducken. The answer is a butcher shop for preparation at home — unless it’s Réveillon, when this medieval oddity sometimes turns up at the table.
Customers dine at Gabrielle restaurant in New Orleans. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune)
BRETT DUKE
This year, the turducken trail leads to Gabrielle (four courses, $65), where it’s served along with daube glacé, the jellied Creole beef dish spread, and rabbit with smothered purple hull peas, evoking this restaurant’s ties to rustic Louisiana cooking.
The open kitchen and dining counter frame the first floor at Gris Gris, a modern Louisiana restaurant in the Lower Garden District. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
If some old restaurants go more contemporary, some modern restaurants go more traditional for Réveillon. Gris-Gris, for instance, is giving a big ole hug to the holiday motif (four courses, $85) with an entire platter of baked ham, green bean casserole, dirty rice and gravy … and that’s after the gumbo and the baked macaroni pie. Gris-Gris has a number of holiday cocktails this season too.
Italian fish feasts
Avo’s Réveillon menu (four courses, $77) is a more condensed read on the feast of the seven fishes, a holiday tradition in some Italian families. This one has seven types of seafood embedded in three dishes, plus a dessert (thankfully seafood-free).
While it’s not pitched this way, Pascal’s Manale is serving an all-seafood menu that could be a “feast of four fishes.”
Thomas “Uptown T” Stewart has been shucking oysters for decades at Pascal’s Manale Restaurant at 1838 Napoleon Avenue in New Orleans.
Staff photo by Photo by David Grunfeld
The historic Creole-Italian restaurant, now run by Dickie Brennan & Co., is showing more of its progressive revamp, including this gently modernized holiday menu (four courses, $65) with salmon crostini, oyster dressing cannelloni and shrimp and crab gnocchi. I recommend doubling down on the bivavles at the stand-up oyster bar.
Holiday lights decorate The Roosevelt Hotel lobby in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger / The Times-Picayune)
Photo by Chris Granger / The Times-Picayune
Along these lines, Domenica has a “feast of three fishes” on its all-seafood Réveillon menu (four courses, $70). If you think of Domenica mainly for salumi and pizza, this could be a fuller picture, and it’s right by the glittering, Sazerac-soaked holiday wonderland lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel.
Bring a bear
The city’s old line historic restaurants are custom cut for the nostalgia of the season, while Réveillon brings different dishes from their French Creole set pieces. That goes for the lobster thermidor among the choices at Antoine’s (four courses, $72), and the short ribs with truffled grits at Galatorie’s (four courses, $58).
Arnaud’s delves into its own culinary traditions for Réveillon (four courses, $70) and folds in a newer holiday tradition — its annual Teddy Bear Drive, in partnership with the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation.
The annual Teddy Bear Drive is a holiday time tradition at Arnaud’s Restaurant, in partnership with New Orleans law enforcement. Officers give the bears to children during their work. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The program collects new teddy bears, which are donated to the police department for officers to give to children in the course of their work. Bring a new bear along when you dine for Réveillon or visit its French 75 bar for cocktails. The drive continues through Dec. 31.
Going big, $100 and up
Some Réveillon are lavish, and this year more restaurants are really swinging for the fences.
Taper candles flicker over the linen-clad tables at Restaurant August in New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
At the top is Restaurant August, where Revillon is a $200 dinner over seven courses, plus some lagniappe dishes, for a meal that includes a fruits de mer with four chilled dishes all on its own, a caviar course and both seafood and meat courses before getting to the desserts (plural).
In the same category, count Commander’s Palace, which always puts on a show for Réveillon and this year has five courses at $135, with oysters, a five-hour egg, marrow and escargot, sweetbreads and port-soaked sponge cake.
The dining room presents sumptuous settings across Miss River, the restaurant from Alon Shaya inside the Four Season Hotel and Private Residences in New Orleans. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Others in the C-note menu club this year include Saint John (four courses, $110), Seawitch (four courses, $100, or $145 with wine pairing), M Bistro (five courses, $115) in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Miss River (five courses, $125) in the Four Seasons, where the hotel’s Chandelier Bar is also on the Réveillon map for holiday cocktails.
A table awaits at Cane & Table, a French Quarter restaurant and bar with old world ambiance. (Staff photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
In the French Quarter, for instance, you can romp from the White Christmas martini at Mr. B’s Bistro (part of a larger holiday cocktail menu) to Cane & Table across the neighborhood for the Gilded Dream (a take on a Paper Plane) with stops in between for a flame-licked Trial by Fire at High Grace or a traditional eggnog daiquiri at Manolito, part of this hidden gem’s winter cocktail program.
That is enough for more than one crawl, perhaps, but the holiday calendar opens many invitations for outings.
Dining and Cooking