Bayona Restaurant - Downtown (4 Fleur)

As I start out this website, I'll begin with critiques of the only two restaurants that I have dined at twice in New Orleans: K-Pauls, and of course Bayona. Bayona restaurant is amazing. It hosts a very New Orleans style cuisine, not so much in a Cajun sense, but more on the style of the restaurant itself. If you know what the French Quarter is like in New Orleans, Bayona is exactly what it is reminiscent of. I was reading their menu and everything, I mean, everything looked delicious- but once the waiter came over and asked if we would like suggestions from the menu, he went off on a colloquy of his favorite items. I mean, he explained dishes into such detail I pretty much knew what I wanted after he was done 'suggesting' things to get. Although it is a small restaurant, Bayona is so delicious- definitely one of the best in New Orleans. I give it four Fleur de lis.

Service: Pretty solid, our waiter was always consistently asking how our meal was, but every time I needed him, he wasn't there. Otherwise he did a GREAT job explaining the menu and was very friendly.

My meal consisted of:

Dinner Food: Pickled Vegetables with relish and a homemade bread basket.
Just a small platter of different pickled vegetable with a basket of homemade rolls

This was okay, nothing special. The rolls were excellent.

Appetizer: Goat Cheese Crouton with Mushrooms in Madeira Cream
This was 2 small pieces of delicious toast, smothered with warm goat cheese, topped with a plentiful amount of mushrooms.

This was so delicious. I would love for this dish to be my meal, if only it were bigger! The dish consisted of a piece of toast with a dollop of warm goat cheese spread all over the top of it. On top of the cheese were sauteed mushrooms with a delicious sauce smothering the mushrooms that leaked onto the goat cheese toast and off the toast so you could have a little to dip whatever into the leftover sauce. I LOVE goat cheese, and the way they put this little teaser together was perfect!

Main Course: Grilled Duck Breast with Pepper Jelly Sauce and Wild Rice
Thinly sliced duck breast with a sweet pepper jelly sauce drizzled over the meat. The duck prior to the cut was heavily smoked with a side of wild rice.

Duck is one of my most favorite things to eat, but many chefs, in my opinion, tend to muck it up or not cook it correctly. Duck has a VERY fatty skin, which keeps and stores most of the flavor. When meat is smoked, most of this smokey flavor sits on the outer most part, while some of it soaks into meat. This particular duck was smoked almost perfectly. It wasn't too dry, it wasn't too moist. The only downside to the dish is that there wasn't enough! There wasn't that much on my plate, and I would have licked it clean if I were at dinner by myself.


Dessert: Vanilla Bean Ice Cream & Espresso
Homemade Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with a Homemade Sugar Cookie on the side, served in a cup

I love ice cream, and everyone normally has their own favorite, but I am the biggest fan of Vanilla Ice Cream, especially Vanilla Bean. I had an argument with my girlfriend once about how I thought Vanilla Bean was so much better then regular Vanilla; she said they were the same. I still to this day think that Vanilla Bean has much more of a refined taste, so when I heard that this was on the menu, I had to get it. Much to my delight, the Vanilla Bean Ice Cream that I ordered was some of the best ice cream I have ever had.