Straya

2001 St. Charles Avenue
(Uptown--Lower Garden District)
504.593.9955

I hadn't planned on reviewing Straya just yet. I've been to the location in Metairie (Veterans and Clearview) twice. The first time was within two months of its opening a couple of years ago, the second time was last year with some friends and our kids. It's not fair to base any review on a visit within the first couple of months of operation, and it's not fair to judge a restaurant when you've got seven or eight adults and four or five kids running around. Now that Al Copeland has opened up a second location of Straya, I figured I'd make my way there around Jazz Fest time to see what was up. I was content with leaving it at that.

Enter Anne Rice onto the scene. Seems that the best-selling author of vampire and witch tales set in New Orleans doesn't like Mr. Copeland's sense of style. She doesn't like it to the point where she took out an ad in the entertainment section of the Picayune on the Friday before Mardi Gras and told the world about her dislike. The ensuing firestorm has spawned not only a 2-page response ad from Mr. Copeland, but a lawsuit in which he claims he was defamed as well. Well, much as I don't like reviewing brand-new restaurants, this is one of those times when you just have to make an exception. So, I went with Richard Vallon, friend and official photographic muse of Virtually New Orleans, for lunch at Straya.

Copeland calls the place "California-Creole." At first glance, there's a heck of a lot more California than Creole, in more ways than one. The first California touch is valet parking. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I've just about given up on trying to meet people for lunch at the Houston's a couple of blocks down the street, mainly because the parking situation is so atrocious. To simply drop my car off at the front door was a welcome touch. The building is the old Benson Mercedes-Benz dealership, so it's quite spacious. Straya occupies the first floor and the outside balcony of the second. You pull your car in under an archway next to the building into a small entrance courtyard on the side. Copeland plans to turn the rest of the space in the building into an all-suite hotel, which is why the great parking service.

The interior decor really jumps out at you as you walk in, just like it does in the Metairie location. This is someone's idea of Hollywood, but it gives me more of an impression of Miami. Maybe it's all the art-deco, but the inside of Straya is what I'd envision a classy bordello in '50s Havana or '90s Miami to be. Hooter's bills themselves as "delightfully tacky." I submit that Straya is the true definition of "delightfully tacky." It's chrome-and-brass art deco, with blue lighting on the ceiling. Nothing in the place is "cheap," however. The overall impression I came away with was OK. After all, it's not the terribly boring decor of a chain fern-bar place, it's not the bare-bones atmosphere of a po-boy place, and only so many restaurants can look like Antoine's or Galatoire's.

OK, on to the food. Richard was waiting for me, so he ordered a California Roll from the sushi bar. Yes, the St. Charles location has a sushi bar. The roll was fresh and crisp, a good appetizer. Eating sushi in a non-Japanese restaurant was interesting. Most of the time, you go to a sushi bar or Japanese place like Shogun, and sushi is either your entire meal or a part of a Japanese meal. Mixing sushi and pizza was fun. We decided to get two entrees and pick at both of them. The Straya menu focuses on four types of food: wrap sandwiches, pizza, items from the grill (meat and seafood) and pasta dishes. Each of these classifications offers dishes that range from basic (pepperoni, sausage, mushroom pizza) to exotic (fried oysters rockerfeller pizza).

We went with the Pepperoni/Sausage/Mushroom pizza and an Oriental Chicken Wrap Sandwich. Like most New Orleanians (and contrary to popular beliefs perpetuated by TV shows), I had iced tea to drink and Richard just had water. The food turned around out of the kitchen in no time at all. Of course, neither of us were in any hurry to be anyplace, so that sense of urgency usually associated with a "businessman's lunch" wasn't there. We were sitting in a booth shaped into a semi-circle that could easily seat four, so our waiter laid the two entrees in the center, with clean plates for each of us. I grabbed at the pizza first, and it was great. The crust was crisp but not too thin, good cheese, and a good sauce. The meats and 'shrooms were fresh and tasty. The pizza had small 1" chives sprinkled on top, which was a tasty touch.

The wrap sandwich was an interesting creation. I'd never seen one of these on my visits to the Metairie Straya, so I didn't really know what to expect. It's essentially a pita-wrap, but the presentation makes it so much more appetizing. Instead of a roll that you could shove into a hot dog bag, the sandwich was cut on a diagonal into three sections. Each section was stood on end, so that they looked sort of like napkins sitting upright on the plate. The mixture of colors of the ingredients made for a pretty plate. All that and it was pretty tasty. The Oriental Chicken Wrap was a combination of grilled chicken, a couple kinds of lettuce and some other greens, crunchy Chinese noodles, all sprinkled with a vinegarette dressing. The wrap wasn't "overstuffed," but it was fat enough that it wasn't exactly practical to pick it up and eat it. A fork and knife were definitely in order for this sandwich. A side item was included with the sandwich, and we choose the Tomato and Basil-Mozzerella salad. This was good, except there was only one piece of cheese in the dish! The salad was obviously scooped from a bowl and no thought given to the proportions of ingredients. A minor point, and one of those reasons why any restaurant needs time to work the kinks out.

We finished the meal off with Crepes Tiramisou. This was two chocolaty crepes similar to the cake layers of tiramisou, filled with the cream layer. They rested on a lighter cream sauce and had chocolate syrup drizzled over them. Cool, sweet, and fresh. A nice treat.

Service at a new restaurant often falls into one of two categories: overwhelming or disastrous. I'm happy to say that we experienced neither. Our waiter was prompt and attentive, but he left us alone for the bulk of the meal. The service style at Straya (at least for lunch) is tag-team: when someone from the wait staff passes by your table, they do a quick glance and see if they can bring you anything or pick up anything. The place that wrote the book on this style of service is Mr. B's, and it looks like the Straya management has eaten more than one meal there. Our waiter took care of us at the start, being very patient with us while we tried to make up our minds. Once our order was in, the tag-team kicked in. Our glasses were rarely less than half-full, plates were taken away as soon as we were ready to get rid of them, and there seemed to be genuine concern that we have a good dining experience.

The tab came to about $32 before tip. (Richard picked this one up; the damn Whitney Bank branch down the street on St. Charles didn't have an ATM! Anyway, I hope he left a decent tip.) That $32 was for one sushi roll, two entrees, one dessert, and an iced tea. The wine prices on the menu didn't look outrageous, and we didn't order anything from the bar, so I don't know about drink prices.

To sum it up, Straya was a fun lunch, and would make for a fun dinner as well. For dinner, I'm going to call ahead to make sure we can sit outside and look down at the streetcar. That will be fun. I wouldn't recommend Straya to a first-timer to New Orleans who's looking for real "New Orleans" experiences (stick with Copeland's if you want to support Al in his battle against Anne Rice in that case), but locals and regular visitors will certainly enjoy it. Once Mr. Copeland gets his hotel upstairs open, I'm sure that his guests will enjoy Straya as the house restaurant.

I've alluded to the controversy between Copeland and Rice several times in this review. We'll have a full feature on this situation in a couple of days when we get the film processed and scanned. (At Virtually New Orleans we shoot film and scan prints, instead of using lower-quality digital cameras.) Look for a link here and on the VNO Home Page for this article soon.

Questions or comments? Feel free to e-mail me.

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