WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE SUMMER 2017

Dinner was another extravaganza at Dickie
Brennan’s Tableau, the newest restaurant in
Dickie Brennan’s stable. Located on Jackson
Square, Tableau showcases classic French
creole dishes with a twist — “sophisticated yet
true to tradition.” The open kitchen provides
some of its own theater, while next door is Le
Petit Theatre.
Tableau features a different reveillon menu
during each of its December nights, which you
can find closer to the event on its website, www.
tableaufrenchquarter.com.
But I’ll share a few of the taste treats we enjoyed.
For starters, we loved the shrimp remoulade
“Bloody Mary,” which showcased Gulf shrimp
with pickled vegetables in a bloody mary
vinaigrette, and the crabmeat ravigote, which
featured local jumbo lump crabmeat with chow
chow, cucumber and lemon aioli on lavash.
For a main course, steak, pork chops and veal
are on offer as is a charred cauliflower steak
or barbecued shrimp and grits . But I went for
the pan-roasted redfish Bienville, a fine white
redfish with frisee-fingerling potato salad and a
blue crab butter sauce.
One day we ventured out of town for a truly
transporting experience. We drove a little more
than an hour to the Houmas House Plantation
and Gardens, “The Crown Jewel of Louisiana’s
River Road.”
Louisiana’s Great Mississippi River Road is
a corridor about 70 miles long on each side
of the river between Baton Rouge and New
Orleans. Here are the state’s most famous
monumental plantation houses, most built by
wealthy sugar plantation owners in the Greek
Revival Style. The National Park Service has a
map, itinerary and list of sites on Louisana’s
River Road, www.nps.gov/nr/travel/louisiana/
riverroad.htm.
Houmas House was bought some 14 years ago
by New Orleanian Kevin Kelly who not only
restored it to exceptional glory, but turned it into
a wonderful restaurant with several venues as
well as a high-end hotel with 21 guest rooms in
beautiful new cottages. Next time, I’ll spend a
night here. (www.houmashouse.com.)
Kelly bought this property when it was a gutted
shell with no gardens. His associate, Jimmy
Blanchard, an extraordinary artist and designer,
brought it to newfound glory.
Named after local Indians, the Ouma, Houmas
House originated in 1720 with a brick hacienda,
Blanchard told us. In 1858, it was sold to John
Burnside for $1 million.
“Known as the Sugar Palace, It was then
the largest sugar plantation in America with
250,000 acres,” Blanchard said.
It was also the largest slave holder in Louisiana
then with more than 800 slaves, according to
the National Park Service.
“It was so Catholic, Christian and French, slave
plantations here were different from the rest of
the country because we had many free blacks
who owned slaves,” Blanchard told us. “It was
a whole different, complicated world… In fact, a
black person in Louisiana discovered how to
crystallize sugar so it could be shipped.”
Tour this former plantation home and prepare
to be amazed. Blanchard has designed every
room with fascinating, unique, evocative pieces
that are simply remarkable. “It’s been a home
for 300 years, so we show things from every
era — it’s eclectic. Most plantation houses don’t
live anymore, but this one is still lived in.”
Indeed, Kelly told us — he lives full-time here —
“my bedroom is on tour from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30
p.m. every day.”
The many various dining rooms as well as the
glorious gardens — with one of the largest
Top: Dessert sampler at Tableau: Vanilla
Bean Creme Brûlée, Flourless Chocolate
Cake and Bananas Foster Cheesecake. .
Bottom: Shrimp po-boy at Houmas House
Plantation on Louisiana’s famed River
Road.
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