After Ike, In the Big Easy

So, I got in late afternoon yesterday. Bumpy last few thousand feet, not too bad.

First the hotel, the Windsor Court, is very nice. Harrah’s is paying for the “room,” which turns out to be a good sized one bedroom apartment, with foyer, dressing room, kitchen, and two balconies looking towards the French Quarter. Most of the buildings are three to five stories with little apartments and gardens on top. Very swank, as Big Rick would say.

The Casino is big, predictably noisy and has 7,328 one, two and five cent slot machines or maybe 500, one or the other. I never got to play Pai Gow poker as there was only one table and it was always full. I was left with roulette.

I had dinner at John Besh Steak, adjacent to the Casino. I’m told Besh was a challenger on Iron Chef America. I assume he lost. The space is very nice, as is the service. The food, not so much. I started with corn and crab bisque. Corn was present in abundance, no crab or crab flavor to be found, the base was a soup, not a bisque. Next up was flash fried soft shell crab on a cauliflower emulsion. My first flash fried food with an emulsion, and my last. Whatever flash frying is, is does too good a job. To my knowledge soft shell crab is not tough or chewy and it usually tastes like crab. This was more like an upscale Howard Johnson’s crab plate, nicely presented.

Gambling losses are minimal and I would be ahead had I not played “Rapid Roulette.” $200 in twenty minutes.

More as the trip warrants.