Microreview: Nola

Andrea and I have been talking for a while about trying Nola. On Mondays in January, a lot of downtown Palo Alto restaurants have special prix fixe menus, so we decided to give it a try last night.

Nanoreview/general impression: eh.
Microreview: nice decor and atmosphere; decent (though too hurried, as always in CA) service; our cocktails were good. The problems were in the food, which was careless and bland. The gumbo had no appreciable spice (and Andrea's had a definite burnt taste to it, like they stirred up the bottom of a pot of burnt soup). My jambalaya was pretty boring (also: who the hell puts salmon and "ahi tuna" in jambalaya?); Andrea's fried chicken was nice, but the accompanying sauce was cloyingly sweet. The desserts were pretty standard and, judging from the state of the ice cream, had been sitting for too long before coming to the table. The edges of the bread pudding were burnt. I don't think we'll be going back again, except maybe to sit outside and have cocktails once the weather gets better.

On the way to Nola we checked out the menus for some of the other restaurants, to plan for next week; I requested that we not look at the menu at La Cheminee, because if it was tempting I'd make trouble about going to Nola. On the way home we checked out the La Cheminee menu... of course they had Pot au Feu last night. Damn!