On The Road Again

Creole Red New Orleans "Style" Restaurant 409 West Congress Street Savannah, Georgia "Historic Savannah's ONLY New Orleans Style Restaurant" for good reason. Why could Katrina not have take a slightly eastern course and washed away Creole Red's? I would personally push the plunger that set off the explosives to bring a levy full of water down on Creole Red's. FEMA should be notified as this is definitely a hazard to national security. Are you getting the picture that I didn't like Creole Red's? Well, actually, I sort of liked Creole Red's - my colon however had other opinions. And it is not by accident that I used the plural on "opinions" - Creole Red's was a repeat offender. The first clue should have come when we sat down (all alone in the entire restaurant) and saw that the "New Orleans Style" included Texas Pete hot sauce. Ummm.... For one, Texas Pete hot sauce is from North Carolina - not really New Orleans or even Texas for that matter. How about Crystal or even Tabasco? With no one else in the restaurant, it was amazing that it took almost 45 minutes (I know because we watched the entire Savannah TV news while waiting) for our food to arrive. I ordered a very standard Crawfish Etoufee, while Diane had the gumbo. I guess Diane didn't realize that she had ordered the "bone in" gumbo - Fish bones... we can only hope. Perhaps the Creole Red folks were trying some voodoo thing with the chicken bones, it was hard to tell. For what it was worth, my etoufee was not... well... bad. Good would not be a word I would describe it with either. How about, "It didn't outright suck". Yep, that just about sums it up. Even someone in Fodor's got the repeat offender status from eating at Red's! The ambiance was... notable - and not in a good way. The blaring televisions were only trumped by the extremely wasted woman who came in with her "old man". They went to the back for a while... to do... who knows. Two younger guys came in and sat down across the restaurant from us. They seemed nice - in an upscale drug dealer kind of way. The wasted woman came out from the back and started talking to the two young guys. In order to get her to leave them alone, they passed her some - "go away" token. Sadly for the young drug dealers, it did not work. She felt obligated to sit and chat with them in exchange for their "kindness" - even reluctantly dragging her "old man" over to thank them. Diane and I had choked our meals down so I planned a quick get away in order to avoid the gun play that I thought was about to happen. Mercifully for the drug dealer guys - and the two of us as well - the lady left to go enjoy her token. I don't think that we'll be going back.