Brennan's

Brennan's is one of the old French Quarter stalwarts, still serving turtle soup and bananas foster after all these years. We stopped in for their traditional breakfast, which was a) expensive, b) nothing but tourists, and c) really delicious.

I started with a baked apple in cream (top photo), accompanied by a "Creole" Bloody Mary with pickled green beans. Note: it's hard to find a really good Bloody Mary. I've had too many Bloody Marys that were merely vodka with tomato juice and maybe some Worchestershire--not spicy, not complexly layered with flavors, definitely not tasty. Brennan's is one of the very few Bloody Marys I've had that were up to my own standards. It was spicy, complex, and I wouldn't have changed a thing about it (except maybe the price).

(Speaking of prices, they had the balls to charge us $4.95 each for coffee and hot tea. Now, I can understand charging for the Bloody Mary. But really, shouldn't coffee come free with the meal, especially if it's three courses for $45 a person? I mean, come on.)
Then I had the Eggs Sardou, which is poached eggs in artichoke husks on a bed of spinach with hollandaise sauce. The eggs were divine, but that broiled tomato in the middle? Was a hard, tasteless, barely pink supermarket tomato. In Louisiana in the middle of the summer, and they can't get a better tomato than that?

Dessert was--what else?--bananas foster, flamed tableside.

Verdict: generally excellent. Too obvious they're catering to tourists with the breakfast, what with the high prices and charging for coffee and crappy tomatoes and all. Next time, I'll get breakfast at a diner--it probably won't be quite as delicious, but coffee won't be $4.95, either, and who needs breakfast to be a gourmet meal?