Laura Benton

Some restaurants create ambiance through design and others create it through time and habit and this one in Uptown New Orleans has been doing it the second way since 1983 when it opened on Robert Street and started filling the neighborhood with the smell of browning butter and buckwheat batter. The dining room is small in the way that makes you feel like you stumbled into someone’s private dinner party.

The best quick bites are never really quick because you end up standing at the counter debating between three different sandwiches and then staying to eat a second one anyway. That is the situation at a certain Louisiana spot where the meats are cured in-house and the sandwiches are built with the kind of care that makes you slow down even though the whole point was to grab something fast.

A great Reuben sandwich is a study in balance the sour tang of sauerkraut against the richness of corned beef the creaminess of melted Swiss and the crunch of toasted rye that holds everything together without giving up halfway through the first bite.