Mid-City's Creole table, still keeping the Monday faith
Mandina's has been a Mid-City institution long enough that its regulars have become regulars' children, and then their children after that. The room operates the way a neighborhood Creole table should: moderately priced, full of locals on a Saturday night, and occasionally shared with a volleyball team or a birthday party from Baton Rouge. That is not a complaint. It is the point. The turtle soup is the opening argument.
Red beans and rice is the Monday dish by New Orleans tradition, wash-day food going back generations, almost always served with smoked sausage. Mandina's keeps it on the menu, which says something about a kitchen that understands the canon is not a menu trend but an obligation. The room runs at volume on weekends. Large parties, birthday dinners, groups from out of town who came on a local's recommendation, and the actual locals who have been coming since before any of those visitors were born. The price stays moderate, which is part of why the room stays full. Mandina's is not an expense-account room. It is a Mid-City Creole room, and that is exactly what it wants to be.
Red beans and rice is the Monday dish by New Orleans tradition, wash-day food going back generations, almost always served with smoked sausage. Mandina's keeps it on the menu, which says something about a kitchen that understands the canon is not a menu trend but an obligation. The room runs at volume on weekends. Large parties, birthday dinners, groups from out of town who came on a local's recommendation, and the actual locals who have been coming since before any of those visitors were born. The price stays moderate, which is part of why the room stays full.
