Commander's Palace Visited 3/19/10 4 Forks

Commander's Palace 1403 Washington Ave, New Orleans, LA 70130

Dan and I were in town for a wedding and I had created this huge long list of restaurants I wanted to go to. Commander's Palace was tops on my list, so I decided to make a reservation to ensure we went. The reservation was for lunch on Friday. The website and email said to dress-up, but lots of people were not as fancy.

The outside of the restaurant is this beautiful blue and white stripe look. The inside is enormous, two giant rooms downstairs and then another huge room upstairs. For lunch they have a good prix-fixe lunch menu and $.25 martinis! You can also order other items a la carte, but by ordering the prix-fixe you save around $7-8. I ordered the seafood gumbo to start and an orange glaze fish as an entree and a cosmo martini. Dan got the turtle soup and the Tabasco shrimp and the commander's martini (it's the blue drink). We also ordered a bread pudding as a desert. I must say that the service there is amazing...they are incredibly attentive, almost too attentive. They make very sure that you have everything you need and the most bizarre part was that instead of re-filling our water, they just gave us brand new glasses b/c they wanted us to have "fresh ice cubes".

Both soups were really good, although I was partial to mine. Neither of us had had Turtle soup and when you get it, they offer you a splash of sherry, which I thought was a bit overpowering. I enjoyed my fish entree, although one piece was definitely cooked better than the other. One was overcooked and kind of mushy but the other pieces was perfectly flaky. The orange sauce was a bit sticky but tasted fine. Dan's shrimp was good but he didn't seem too wow'd by it. But the best part of the entire meal was the bread pudding. OMG. It was one of the best bread puddings I've ever had. First they pour a Johnny Walker sauce over it and then you plunge your spoon into it. I don't know what to say except that it was moist, had almost an almond-y taste of deliciousness. I would go back over and over again just for this dessert. I would definitely recommend this restaurant to anyone who visits New Orleans.