High Hat gets “3 Beans”
High Hat Cafe serves up the South in New Orleans, earns ‘Three Beans’
Published: Friday, January 13, 2012, 10:14 AM
By Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune
High Hat Café’s fried catfish tastes very much like something you’ve eaten before, probably at an address not far from High Hat’s and likely more times than you could possibly remember. After all, we live in a place where fried seafood is almost as readily available as a pack of gum.
That High Hat’s fried catfish is better than most is why you’ll order it again. This is due to more than the fish itself, which is sheathed in corn meal crust so thin you can discern the ridges of the sweet-fleshed filets. Its sides — hush puppies and hand-cut fries that bring shame on all those seafood places that use frozen — are attractions, not filler.
The fact that High Hat’s catfish nods lovingly to the cooking beyond New Orleans and into the Deep South becomes more obvious once you order a few of the menu’s other dishes.
Take the Delta tamales, stouter than our local variant, stuffed with pulled strands of pork and served with a side of oily drippings for gilding the lily, like a French dip gone to Veracruz, Mexico.
