Booty's Street Food New Orleans Bywater

Booty's is located at 800 Louisa St, New Orleans, LA 70117

 

Booty's continues the NOLA Bywater tradition of ambitious restaurants. The dinner menu has tacos, dumplings, octopus, mofongo, ramen, and other assorted soups and vegetarian items. This type of restaurant is not operating solely for profit. You don't do a menu with proteins and dishes from all over the globe without ambition. It is a huge challenge to do such a versatile menu for such a great value. We ate four dishes and each of them were memorable and above average.

I started with a bywater bomber, which is a elevated daiquiri. It was delicious like a fresh citrus fruit slush. A good drink should be pleasing to anyone, and this was a good drink. We ordered tacos, fries, Korean dumplings, and octopus skewers. Now the details.

The item I was most critical of was the octopus skewers. The octopus was grilled well but the chili sauce on it was overpowering. Octopus has a delicate flavor and the chili sauce was too loud to be complementary.

The Belgian fries were great, creamy and uniform. The shape of each fry was similar, like long finger width 3-D rectangles. We ate these on the side while we ate tacos and dumplings. The tacos are served in a sampler format. Four different tacos each a different style. One a Caribbean style with drum and pineapple salsa, a Korean pork kimchi taco, and two different South American styles. My favorite taco was the drum, good white flaky fish taco with clean flavors. 

Booty's menu items are global.

Korean dumplings, were crispy crunchy and the sauce for them was soy citrus. Soy sauce tends to be overly salty but the citrus flavor made it light and aromatic.

The challenge for Booty's is doing a hundred different things while maintaining a high standard. Booty's meets this challenge. People don't do difficult things just for the money. They do it for satisfaction. 

New Orleans is lucky to have an ambitious restaurant scene. Booty's is definitely a factor. Today's food nerds want excitement and surprise. They want to learn new cultures. Restaurants are evolving to stand for more than food and drink, purely for profit. New Orleans restaurants have to power to be catalysts. I think Booty's and the New Orleans Bywater are moving things forward.

Oh and did I mention, the most expensive thing on the menu is $10! Man this place is some One Hundred plus type shhhhhhh.

Suis Generis Bywater NOLA

Suis Generis is located at 3219 Burgundy Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117

Suis Generis is another ambitious New Orleans Bywater restaurant. Ambitious is the first thing I think of when I look at the menu here. The menu and drink program are global in scope. The vibe here is a young one that is striving for new challenges. There was a DJ with turntables playing international music from actual records. Ambitious.

For example, we started with a mezze plate which is a middle eastern concept. The plates contents were not all middle eastern. It had olives (good and not too salty), which are typical Arabic sides/condiments. Also on the plate was gouda, danish blue cheese, and cured hard salami. The gouda was more creamy than tart and the danish blue was light, and both cheeses had excellent finishes. The danish blue finished with airy, dry blue cheese flavor. The gouda finish was creamy and dry. There was also a really good vegetable dip for the breads.

Pork belly with chard was excellent. The cookery on this dish was great the temperature on everything was hot. The seasoning on the chard is spicy and stimulating. The unique soy chili flavor wakes up your taste buds instantly.

The third small dish we got was watermelon charred organic tomato, cilantro, lime, salad. This salad was complementary with the other dishes we ate. That melon tomato flavor is really good after a bite of pork belly. 

I have to come back here and get some bigger plates and try the rest of the small ones. The product here is really fresh. The menu is really challenging for the chefs and your taste buds. The drink/wine/cocktail/beer menu is extensive. 

At a place like this, reviews are like a snapshot because in a few days these chefs will have some new ideas and new menu items. And that's what keeps the food nerds writing and coming back to eat and drink more.