Tujague’s Restaurant

There is no good reason for there to ever be an open table. It’s amazing!

Tujague’s is a fabulous place to get a drink. Their bartenders are true mixologists. I had a brandy crusteaux (sp?) It was a heated lemon rind with brandy poured over, some other awesomeness and a sugared rim. Fantastic. Really, that’s in the top three alcoholic cocktails of my whole life. I also had their legendary grasshopper for dessert. The grasshopper was invented here. Imagine a liquefied Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie with a kick and you get the idea. Getting it after my meal was definitely a wise decision because it is dessert in a glass.
I got the full, multi course, Creole meal.
The shrimp remoulade has been made the same way for over a hundred years. To me it was overpowering the shrimp and I actually liked the shrimp remoulade better over at the The Gumbo Shop. I got to try a small bit of their boiled brisket. While boiled brisket doesn’t sound that appetizing it is off the chain goodness. I really kind of wish I had selected the boiled brisket as an entrée after trying a little of it, that brisket was so good. I had a mushroom ravioli for supper and it was good.
Would I go again? Yeah, I might. There’s so many other places I would like to try but if someone said let’s try Tujague’s I would be willing to go. I had a small bistro table against the wall and my chair was on a definite angle towards the wall as the old floor is sloping over that direction.
The ladies room though was a travesty of messiness. When I told my server about it, he was quick to send someone to take care of the conditions in there though.
If I was walking by, I would stop in and get that brandy drink at the bar again in a heartbeat. The bar is standing only, no stools, just a brass rail to lean on. I imagine that 150 years ago only men were in that room, milling about, discussing politics and local scandal, and spitting in spitoons but now it is cheery and bright. Go get a drink and consider the boiled brisket for supper.

This is a gem of a restaurant. It’s got wonderful history and is a local favorite. If you want jambalaya (authentic) and appreciate the time it takes to prepare you will love this place. Servers are very knowledgable about their food. I know a place is good when they have a made from scratch caesar! Give it a try!

The service was wonderful by Phillip. The food was to die for by Chef Marcus. This is the oldest restaurant in NOLA. And it’s still going strong! This is a must to visit.

Totally loved the food. The service the experience. Thank you so much for going above and beyond!!!

This was by far the best food I had the pleasure of consuming during my trip to NOLA. The wait staff was incredible. I will definitely visit again the next time I venture to the French Quarter.

This place was the absolute worst restaurant I have ever tried. There was a huge line across the street and I’m not patient so we decided to have lunch here, it wasn’t busy at all so that should have been a red flag. The waiter sat us down and disappeared for a while, was it busy — no! But he was busy gossiping like an elementary school girl by the restroom. The waiter finally brought some cold stale bread and since I was starving I ordered the gumbo immediately. The gumbo was room temperature ew but still managed to eat it. There were fruit flies on the Caesar salad after that… I’m glad I didn’t get sick. Poor management definitely… you’ve been warned.

The building has a lot of history. It was really cool. Well actually it was really hot inside but once we got the air conditioning sorted out it was great. I had the amazing lump crab nest gnocchi. SO GOOD! And the hurricanes were delicious. For dessert I had the chocolate pecan pie. Perfection!
It’s got such a great location, right there in the French Quarter next to Jackson Square and across from Café Du Monde.

Good local flavors. Bread is the lightest ever — crunchy on the outside and use air on the inside. Place is a little run down.

Very cool, old school bar with a fair pour and good bartenders. I cannot speak for the restaurant as we made it no further than the bar.

In our short stay here, I must have had a good 6 Bloody Marys from this place. I am a huge lover of Bloody Marys. I must get it from my mom, only thing is, she doesn’t drink, so growing up we would always get Virgin Marys.
This, however, is no Virgin Mary. This sucker is packed with booze, and all the fixins. By far one of the most fabulous Bloody Marys I have ever had. The okra really sealed the deal.

I don’t know what happened on the day we visited recently, but everything was really bad. It took a long time to get our food. When it arrived, my crab cake was cold. I sent it back. The 2^nd time my order came out, it was good and hot.
Our waiter couldn’t remember who we were or where we sat or what we had ordered. To be fair, they said they were short handed that day.
There was a family who never got their entrees and just walked out. I don’t know if they paid for their drinks or appetizers or not. And they had arrived before us.
Our waiter brought us the wrong ticket. We left enough money on the table to cover our food and left.
Where is Gordon Ramsay when you need him?

We made reservations for Christmas Dinner based on the Reveillon dinner menu we saw posted online as well as printed in many New Orleans guides. Our group of 5 was promptly seated at a plastic folding table covered with a table cloth in a room separate from the rest of the diners. The service was friendly, but my Mississippi dirty gin martini hardly had any gin in it and was served in a small martini glass for $ 10. It was mostly olive juice.
We then realized after we were being served salads without being asked which we wanted from the prix fixe menu that it was not going to be available. The dinner choices were fish, chicken, or steak not any of the choices from what was printed anywhere else which included more regional dishes. We were also never offered additional drinks or coffee with dessert.
We felt like we were being ushered through the process so they could take our $ 85 per person (including tip and 1 drink each) and got a bad wedding level meal. The service was good enough that they swept you up by having conversations before you could really realize what was happening. I very much feel like we were taken for a ride. They knew that there was no way we would leave because every other restaurant in town needs reservations on Christmas.

Christmas dinner: Fixed price menu: 4 course for $ 60/​person.
First thing I noticed was how run down this place is. You walk through a bar then into an area where the bathrooms and entry to the main dining room converge. Lots of people running into one another.
We were seated right away since we had a reservation. First two courses is a soup and salad. Salad was shrimp remoulade which was a few pieces of romaine, a cherry tomato halved, drenched with a garlicky salty dressing. At least I got 3 shrimp.
Soup was sweet potato crab bisque: lukewarm thick soup. Texture was more of a sauce than soup. Sweet and a few crab pieces but not inspiring on any level.
Entrée: Filet mignon. When delivered I was asked to cut through it right away. Medium rare: perfect! Taste: too salty, bits of what appeared to be rehydrated garlic or onion flakes on top. Was this sous vide/​steamed? Texture was strange. Served with mash potatoes and thin slices of squash and zucchini. The squash is something I would imagine out of a cafeteria. Boiled and slopped onto the plate. The mash was good which I felt was the highlight.
Dessert: bread pudding: strong nutmeg smell. Too sweet. Crudely cut piece.
I just get the impression that no time and thought was given to plating either.
Service was acceptable but the person who seated us and who also cleared our table was obviously wanting to be somewhere else. Such attitude has no place in the service industry unless of course you don’t care about a good tip.
Very disappointing experience given the occasion and how this place came highly recommended. Black Angus steakhouse is a 5 star compared to this complacent establishment.
I hope management reevaluate the quality and taste of their food. In addition, I would say: make your customers feel welcome so that they’d want to return very soon, and bring their friends.
Since my initial review, I stumbled across their cookbook at Roux Royale. I didn’t have time to go through this but the irony :)

We visited New Orleans over Christmas break and were told that many restaurants would likely be closed on Christmas Day. I looked online for restaurants that touted special menus for this special night, and came across Tujagues.
The reviews I read about this placed were mixed. Some expressed extreme satisfaction, and others not so good. I fell into the latter camp on this occasion.
Here is a course by course review:
Salad– Shrimp salad with a remoulade dressing. This looked like something that came straight out of a salad bag from the produce section of a grocery store. Slap 3 shrimp on it and slather with a garlic dressing and call it good. Except it wasn’t. The portion size was dismal as well.
Soup– Sweet potato bisque with crab. The soup lukewarm (at best), and was cloyingly sweet and unbalanced in flavor. It tasted like dessert in a bowl. There was no depth of flavor and the crab was lacking.
Entrée– Drum fish with vegetables and mashed potatoes. The fish was cooked well, but the sauce was too citrusy and the vegetables (squash) were bitter and over cooked. Again, this dish felt like it could have come from a buffet line. Tip for the cooks here: vegetables should not be something you just steam the heck out of and throw on a plate. Take a look at how The Bombay Club (just up the street) prepares their veggies. They are so good that they can serve them as a standalone dish.
Dessert– Bread pudding. This seems to be a popular dessert around these parts, and I would expect that this should be a no-​brainer to execute. The bread tasted under-​cooked or perhaps there was so much sauce on top that everything tasted mushy.
Tax, tip and no drinks came to $ 140 for two people. For what we received, I think we overpaid by about $ 100!
Maybe it is the concept of the prix fix meal that throws them off. The whole meal basically felt like everything was pre-​cooked and just sitting in a steamer pan waiting to be served. I understand that this is a busy night for them judging by the people standing around waiting for a table, but I for one would rather wait longer for a better cooked meal than to be eating assembly line food. Maybe their «cook to order» meals are better, but I would never go back to try a prix fix meal here again.
But for our attentive waiter, this would have been a one star review…

Went on thanksgiving night. The décor was in extreme need of repair and the chairs were almost falling apart. Dinner was a fixed menu and was mediocre at best. Bland fish, a small scoop of potatoes that anyone could have made in their home. The plating was sloppy as well. The wait staff was abysmally haphazard and inattentive. Value for the money was way too pricy for what we got.
I would never go back.

Had my first cocktail of my NOLA trip here. A wet windy afternoon, stumbled across this old school place. The type of joint you just know all types of sorted shit has gone down. The air is thick with the vibes. Waiters and bartenders in black and white. Stand up bar, bartender with a Sazerac tatted on his arm… so had to go with a Sazzy, which the bartender made with such love and care. It was like a magic show but not pretencious «mixology» like much of the stuff I see back in SF. I would defintiely go back or reccomend for your first Sazerac.

Tujagues is one of the top 3 MUST eat New Orleans classic restaurants. It is old school no doubt, the familiar look of a 100+ year old establishment is everywhere. Tile, marble, long bar, well dressed and choreographed wait staff, so on and so on. Just an over all NOLA old charm that this place is dripping with.
The owner is usually there to greet those hungry souls wandering in. Super friendly guy. Or it could be his managers that are equally charming, witty and funny but above all warm and inviting. Speaking of charming, the bar that you first walk into is peppered with quite a mix of patrons. The everyday Jackson Square artist, tourist and locals in for a drink. By local I mean French Quarter residents. This is THEIR place. That doesn’t mean they aren’t polite. Very welcoming. Numerous times when catching a seat in the bar area I was pulled into an adjcent conversation.
So Tujagues is the home of the Grasshopper cocktail. I never had that yet. But I have had the Pimms cup many many times. They do it right. The bartenders know a staggering amount of cocktails. Its almost like play stump the bartender when I go. being a beer guy I have a limited repertoire but everything I ever asked for, they could handle.
The food. Ohhh man. First off I gotta say this Gumbo. There is a cook behind the scenes, Mrs. Brenda. A lovely woman that has been working at Tujagues for over 40 years. Her gumbo is my favorite of all time. I one day plan on consuming a gallon of it. The crab cakes, the off menu chicken bonfant (sp) the boiled brisket with the horseradish sauce, the shrimp remoulade, the lump crab and gnocchi… the veal! I have had alot of different items here and all are so delicious! There is now a brunch menu, something that is new to the tradition, with the yummy versions of shrimp and grits and lost bread.
The wait staff is just as much a highlight as is the food. All are high end top shelf people. Friendly and knowledgeable about the menu. There is no «no substitutes» here. They will do what they can to make you happy.
Make sure you include this in your travels into the French Quarter!

Walking from the hotel to find a good place for steaks, we asked a local horse & carriage driver for recommendations. He suggested Tujague’s and a couple other places. We thought he said «Two Jacks». The founders of this restaurant are Guillaume & Marie Tujague, from Bordeaux, France.
We passed Café du Monde and walked past this place because nobody was dining, the place was empty! By the time we were done with dinner, there were plenty of people in the restaurant! We decided to roll the dice and give it a go. So glad we did! Such a great little place! We thought it would be really expensive since they had white tablecloths & cloth napkins! It was a little pricey, but we enjoyed ourselves! (
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We were unsure of this place at first, but we settled in and were fine! We were brought out 2 warm, medium sized loaves of french bread and butter, which our daughter was completely pleased with! (
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We decided on a Seared Jumbo Lump Crab Cake appetizer, it came with Tri-​Colored Peppers and Ravigote Sauce & a small salad. It was okay, but I think we were expecting it to be fried or baked well, not just seared (we overlooked that part of the description!). We also ordered a Corn & Crab Bisque Soup which was perfect! I really enjoyed this! The corn kernels sweetened the bisque and made for a nice texture as well.
Then we thought we should take advantage of their 5 course meal by adding on $ 25 to an entrée. (
) So, we got the Gumbo, Brisket Appetizer, Entrée, and Chocolate Pecan Pie. The Gumbo was good, but it didn’t compare to my husband’s mother’s gumbo! We really weren’t a fan of the brisket. It is a popular item, but we’d skip it next time. The pie was very sweet! I think we really were overdoing it with the dessert because we were stuffed by the time we got to it!
Our daughter ordered the 8 oz Filet Mignon which came with mashed potatoes & veggies (squash). The filet had an excellent char on the outside and was still nice and medium rare on the inside. It was most definitely one of the best grilled & flavored steaks we’ve had (and we’ve eaten a lot of filet mignons)!! If you ever come here, this is an item you really should order!
Hubby & I split a Blackened Shrimp Alfredo. It was good but the shrimp had a bit too much salt for our taste! Nothing too memorable, though.
Since we almost always have leftovers, we asked for a to-​go container. When it arrived at the table, I noticed it had «Who Dat?» on it. Cute! Who Dat fans!
One thing I noticed throughout the French Quarter is that the staff (waiters & chefs) are seen out in front of the restaurants hanging out! At Tujague’s, they walked right through the dining room, out the door (not to be used by guests), and were chatting away with people outside, as if they were on break. Then, they’d come back in and tend to you. It is a different culture, I suppose.
There is one guy at this place who is very hard to understand. Our daughter had been searching for someone with a thick accent on our trip from CA to AL and finally found what she was looking for!
If we ever make it back to NOLA, I think we will definitely be back! If only for another taste of that succulent filet mignon!

2^nd oldest restaurant in New Orleans.
I made a reservation through Unilocal,which was very convenient, as I went the day before Mardi Gras. The place has a really cool wooden bar with impressively carved Ionian (I think) columns to either side. The dining room is black and white tiles and is also like stepping in a time machine. It really looks like the set for one of Charlie Chaplin’s early movies.
The waiter had a legit cajun accent and was very attentive and friendly. I had crawfish étouffée and a few bloody marys (only $ 3 at lunch time!) I also had a grasshopper – invented there in 1928.
The grasshopper was chocolate-​minty deliciousness and they should never change a thing about it. The étouffée was also very good. I think that to some extent, this is a restaurant resting on it’s laurels a bit. On the other hand, their dishes are classics and are very good. I think it should find some way to balance a chef who is inventive but also won’t mess with the classics.
The lunch specials are a great deal here. Worth a trip for old school creole food!