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Our weekly blog on the New Orleans fine dining scene
Haute Plates

August 2011

The Lunch Spot

08/25/11

The Lunch Spot

An exhaustive list of almost everywhere worth lunching downtown

Posted at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments: 3

August Squared

08/18/11

August Squared

I have let myself and everyone who reads Haute Plates down so far this summer by not writing about COOLinary New Orleans.  COOLinary, if you are not familiar, is the annual promotional event for restaurants in New Orleans which offers two- and three-course lunches for around $20 per person and three-course dinners for around $30 per person. In past years, I’ve taken advantage of this event to eat relatively cheaply at some of the best restaurants in the city, usually going to at least one restaurant a week while it was in session.  This summer, I looked up last week and realized it was nigh the ides of August and I hadn’t done squat.  I know that...

Posted at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments: 1

Golden Experience

08/11/11

Golden Experience

I had twice eaten the cooking of Saffron - brainchild of the husband and wife team of Arvinder "Dickey" Vilkhu and Pardeep Vilkhu - when I was welcomed back to the restaurant to ask them some follow-up questions about a dinner this past Friday. I was surprised with a tasting menu of some of the most ridiculously delicious Indian food I’ve had in Louisiana.

While enjoying a history lesson concerning the nine years of formal catering and the 21 years the couple has been cooking food for friends and family, I was served Aloo Tikkie, a typical food you can find today on the streets of New Delhi, India, where Arvinder was born and raised. The dish is comprised of two delicately pan-fried patties of potatoes stuffed with a...

Posted at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments: 3

Soda Jerks

08/04/11

Soda Jerks

The heat index read 109° when I walked out of the sun and into the air-conditioned confines of the Soda Shop, the newest family member of the now sprawling John Besh culinary empire. The Soda Shop is located at 945 Magazine St., at the corner of Magazine Street and Andrew Higgins Drive.  It was formerly a coffee shop in the WWII museum. Besides immediately averting heat stroke, the interior is very welcoming with an intentional throwback look aping an authentic 1940s diner; there are metal tables in the middle and red faux-leather stools at the marble-top bar with a 6'x10' mural of a victory crowd in New Orleans on one wall and war-time movie posters festooning the others (my favorite is Donald Duck hitting Hitler in the face with a...

Posted at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments: 3

About This Blog


Robert D. Peyton was born at Ochsner Hospital and, apart from four years in Tennessee for college and three years in Baton Rouge for law school, has lived here his entire life. He is a strong believer in the importance of food to our local culture and in the importance of our local food culture, generally. He is a partner at the law firm Christovich & Kearney LLP and began writing about food on his website, www.appetites.us, in 1997. That is approximately 72 Internet years, for anyone counting.

In 2006, New Orleans Magazine named Appetites the best food blog in New Orleans. The choice was made relatively easy due to the fact that Appetites was, at the time, the only food blog in New Orleans.

Robert has gills, but they are nonfunctional.

He began writing the Restaurant Insider column for New Orleans Magazine in 2007 and has been published in St. Charles Avenue magazine and on the website www.slashfood.com. He is the only person he knows who has been interviewed in GQ magazine, albeit for calling Alan Richman a penis. He is not proud of that, incidentally. (Yes, he is.)

Robert’s maternal grandmother is responsible for his love of good food, and he has never since had fried chicken or homemade biscuits as good as hers.

Robert once ate an entire goat, but it was very small, and he didn’t feel too good about it afterward. He did, however, feel better than the goat.

He developed his curiosity about restaurant cooking in part from the venerable PBS cooking show Great Chefs and has an extensive collection of cookbooks, many of which do not require coloring. 

Certain parts of the above are exaggerations, but one thing is true: Robert appreciates your comments and e-mails, so keep them coming.

If you find that you need a more constant source of Robert in your life, you can follow him on Twitter.

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