Lunch at Bon Ton Cafe in the CBD
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Sitting at a red-and-white checkered table at Bon Ton Cafe has a way of transforming you from the mental space you are in when you walk through the restaurant’s doors. Bon Ton Cafe has many tables in its one biggish room, and these tables are usually full during lunchtime. The buzz of conversation is intoxicating. I always feel like I will see someone I know upon walking in–a co-worker, a friend, maybe even my parents. Its brick walls remind you that this place has been here a really long time, and its distinct wall hangings keep watch to make sure things don’t change too much.
The nearby French Quarter offers many fine restaurants from which to choose. The Central Business District offers several good choices as well. The Bon Ton Cafe is one such CBD stalwart and august restaurant. Its creole and Cajun fare are top-notch. But it doesn’t forget that it’s a CBD restaurant. Which means that you get the luxury of a fabulous meal with the benefit of it fitting within your budget, both time-wise and money-wise.
And as your water glass is repeatedly filled by the wait staff and your bowl of crackers slowly get buttered and eaten along with gumbos and Debbie salads and fried oysters and grilled fish specials, and the clang of silverware plays its own song above the din of the diners, you forget those piles of paperwork waiting for you back at the office. Even if just for one too-quick-to-end hour.
What’s a Debbie Salad? Is this regional lingo I do not know?
Allow me, Katie. The Debbie salad is a bed of lettuce, with a healthy layer of crabmeat and a couple of large, whole spicy boiled shrimp thrown in to make it, as we like to say around here, “Mo Betta.” Tossed with a Creole mustard vinaigrette (which alone is worth the price of admission) and some fresh crunchy asparagus spears and cherry tomatoes. Although there are many other places with a similar cold crabmeat salad on their menus, as far as I know only the Bon Ton calls theirs a Debbie Salad.
Do as Nola did today, get the small Debbie salad and a cup of gumbo or turtle soup. They keep the hot bread coming, too.
Very jealous I did not have that for lunch today myself, although I did have that same lunch last week, thanks to our hostess, on one of my rare weekday forays to the CBD.
And don’t forget they have the best rice.
Okay… I’m officially hungry now. I haven’t had good gumbo in a long time.
Made my mouth water that did!