If you happen to be on Fury’s Ferry Road near dinnertime, you’re in the pleasant position of having a huge variety of food from different cultures to choose from. This is a non-exhaustive list, but there’s Japanese (Toki), Chinese (Hunan Café), Mexican (Mi Rancho and El Alazan), Italian (Cucina 503), Indian (Taj of India).
Then there’s the culture of New Orleans at French Market Grille West.
The restaurant grew out of the original French Market Grille in Surrey Center. And while it has the same flair, there’s also a vibe all its own.
On this Thursday night, the huge murals of New Orleans’ Bourbon Street served as a backdrop to buzzy and animated conversation inside the full restaurant, and the open kitchen hosted a parade of servers coming in and out with platters.
The menu of FMG West is very similar to its namesake original, with just a few creative differences. There’s a New Orleans-style “charcuterie,” for example, with smoked Andouille sausage sourced from Louisiana and served with provolone and chedder cheese and saltines. There are a half-dozen salads, including chef Jim Beck’s Caesar salad, which I suggest you order topped with fried oysters. Entrees include items like a crawfish pie, stuffed with crawfish tails in a sherry cream sauce, or seafood cakes with a jalapeno tartar sauce and a tomato buerre blanc, along with many other seafood, beef, chicken and vegetarian dishes.
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A blue menu featured a long list of the night’s specials, including salads, fried green tomatoes, a tempting chicken liver pate, raw and Rockefeller’ed oysters, lobster tails, grouper, an 18 oz. ribeye and much more.
There’s also “Cajun Sushi,” listed on a bright orange menu that can’t help but catch your eye. It’s a generous list of the usuals and some unique options, and since our server already gave us the heads up to order early if we wanted sushi, I quickly waved her down and put in an order for the voodoo roll, along with the fried shrimp entrée for my daughter.
I was grateful that her food came first, although after a few bites she decided the shrimp and fries were too spicy for her. Fine—another appetizer for us!—and I ordered her the kids chicken tenders, which came with lightly seasoned potatoes, both of which got her thumbs up. I thought the shrimp were great, tender and almost creamy inside, with a nice cornmeal coating that just left a warm hit of spice in my throat. Meanwhile, the fries were definitely spicy—and dark and thin and crisp, almost like a potato chip.
My husband joined us by the time our voodoo roll arrived. It’s rolled fat—our server warned us that all their rolls are huge—stuffed with fried crawfish tails, blackened shrimp and avocado, with a pile of the curly shrimp served alongside. It fell apart on me as I attempted to dip it in soy sauce and I had to eat each slice in two bites, but no matter. The shrimp wasn’t spicy, but the blackening just enhanced its pure shrimp flavor. The crawfish was mild and warm, and the avocado was sweet and creamy. I tried it with the Japanese mayo dipping sauce as well as a sweet teriyaki sauce, but soy is definitely the way to go.
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For my entrée, I went with the shrimpaletta. Featured on its list of po boys, it’s toasted French bread, sliced in half, stuffed with shrimp marinated in a tangy, mouth-pleasing mustard and olive dressing. I don’t even like olives, but I loved this—it just hit the spot with the bright seafood flavors I was craving that night. It came with homemade chips, but I gladly traded some for a few bites of my husband’s lemony and tender Creole rice, which came with his creamy seafood crepes.
It ended up being a rather special Thursday night. We don’t often dine in courses these days, but what is it people say about enjoying other cultures? In New Orleans, this is how they put it: “Laissez les bon temps rouler.” In other words, “let the good times roll.”
Make Your Reservation
French Market Grille West
360 Fury’s Ferry Rd.
frenchmarketwest.com
Entrée cost: $9.95 to $31.25
Danielle Wong Moores is a local freelance writer who’ll never turn down a shrimp cocktail, sushi or cheese dip. Her greatest food influences are her mom and writers MFK Fisher and Amanda Hesser. Her Dine and Dish column runs the second and fourth Fridays in The Augusta Press.
