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Thanks to posts and e-mails from forum members, we now have a very useful file of downtown (and a few Faubourg Marigny and upriver) recommendations of where to take future visitors for Sunday brunch in New Orleans.
On June 2 we ended up at Bacco (or, as folk are apt to say in the local vernacular, "Bacco's"), which was convenient to our guests' hotel and could take a reservation at their hour of opening (11:30). Bacco offered complimentary valet parking, but we parked in a meter space (no charge on Sunday) on Chartres Street right outside the restaurant.
Service (waitstaff: Danny and Naomi) was prompt and gracious, even as the restaurant filled up (although it wasn't packed by the time we left around 1 pm).
We had called ahead about our party including guests with toddlers (1 and 2 years old; but quiet and well-behaved); and Bacco was ready with a capacious round table in a corner by the window; and two tall, railed seats* for the children. The food for the babies eating off (or, as 'The Times-Picayune' might write, "off of")the parents' plates was complimentary; although Bacco does include a "kids' menu" in its repertoire.
We all started with a tray of calamari diavolo (served with crumbled feta chese, the calamari were perfectly flash-fried - we can add Bacco to the short list of local restaurants that do not serve calamari with the rubbery consistency of fragments of old truck tires).
For entrées, we and our guests had, respectively, Bacco's veal scallopini; crabmeat omelet (the menu announced crawfish or crabmeat but the crawfish were not available); Bacco eggs (a nice variation of eggs Benedict, with prosciutto di Parma and sautéed asparagus); and polenta and (braised pork) grillades.
I couldn't sample RHG's veal dish because I'm allergic to mushrooms; but all the plates were nicely presented and pronounced superb. The portions were generous: none of us had room to try any of Bacco's interesting looking brunch dessert menu.
Our cocktails - also pronounced excellent - included a sazerac and a martini - I had a bloody mary (what else on a Sunday morning?) which was perhaps the second best that I've ever had in the Quarter - the best, of course, is served at Molly's at the Market.
Our visitors graciously insisted on picking up the drinks tab, while I was astonished that the food in the entire delicious repast totaled only some $82, rounded up to $100 with tip. ("You don't need separate checks?" Danny asked me, looking slightly baffled, when I requested the meal check. We must have looked like tourists, although nobody had ordered iced tea!)
All in all, a very enjoyable, pressure-free Sunday brunch in a quiet, spacious, and pleasant ambience; and great value. Strongly recommended.
[* In my childhood in England back in the second millennium, we used to call babies' booster seats "high chairs". I recall happily that it was something of a rite of passage in growing up when one was first able to ask the parents, "Please may I get up" instead of "down" from the dinner table.]
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I like kids. They taste like chicken.
