Clancy's: Press

Clancy's

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By Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune best bets: Sauteed sweetbreads, crab salad, veal chop forestiere.
open: Lunch: Th-F; Dinner: M-Sa.
ENTREE PRICES: $19-34.
RESERVATIONS: Yes.
Parking: Street.

Leave the time traveling hocus pocus to tomorrow's-trend chasers and the seersuckered swells. Clancy's diners are too busy being where it's at to care what time it is.

The trance begins with a drink, preferably a Sazerac, poured a finger or two higher than generous, and proceeds from there under the informed guidance of tuxedoed, imperturbable servers who could teach doctors a thing or two about bedside manners.

Yes, half the guys in the bar look to have just stepped off the 18th green, a detail you'll notice mainly because people are the primary decoration in the converted po-boy shop. They're drawn to this rakish embodiment of Uptown New Orleans because the food hits that sweet spot between tradition and individualism. That, of course, is a local tradition all its own.
The New Orleans Menu (nomenu.com) nice casual
AE DC DS MC V
website

WHY IT'S NOTEWORTHY
Clancy's is the Uptown answer to Galatoire's, with a passionate local following and a menu of simple but very good New Orleans style cooking. Its kitchen leans largely on traditional Creole restaurant dishes of the kind that the newer, more vogue-conscious bistros hesitate to serve. The wait staff is chummy and efficient. And the wine cellar is surprisingly fine for a restaurant of this size. A table here has been a tough score, particularly since Katrina.

WHAT'S GOOD
It's fun to eat here. The kitchen mixes original dishes with traditional ones, and buys fine enough ingredients that even the least complicated dishes make you stop and appreciate their goodness. (Case in point: the soups of the day.) Clancy's was the first local non-barbecue restaurant with an in-house capability for smoking food; those dishes add interest to the menu. It's never been the best restaurant in town, not even for any single dish. But it's reliably delicious, more so than most bistros.

BACKSTORY
Clancy's was one of the original crop of bistros that redefined Creole cooking in the early 1980s. It opened on St. Patrick's Day, 1983, after its owners--none of whom were restaurateurs previously-- gentrified an old neighborhood bar without changing it too much. Current owner Brad Hollingsworth, who earlier in his career was a waiter at Galatoire's and LeRuth's, has a good sense of what local people like. And a passion for wine that fills a terrific cellar.

DINING ROOM
Clancy's premises still has the feeling of the neighborhood cafe. There's nothing fancy about it. The long downstairs dining room is convivial and bright, with large windows lining one wall. The bar is always packed with people waiting for tables, as well as singles dining. The little room just past the bar is a pleasant place for a dozen or so diners, if you can stand the traffic heading upstairs, where a maze of small dining rooms completes the ensemble.

ESSENTIAL DISHES
The menu changes frequently, with new dishes appearing and old ones disappearing almost nightly. This selection is typical. Fried eggplant with aioli Marinated crab claws
»Crabmeat Remick
»Crabmeat salad
»Seared sea scallops with foie gras and port reduction
»Shrimp remoulade
»Fried oysters with Brie
»Sweetbreads chef's way (changes daily)
»Rabbit sausage en croute
»Boston salad with walnuts, hearts of palm, and blue cheese
»Smoked soft shell crab (or any other way)
»Grilled fish with smoked salmon
»Seared tuna au poivre
»Angel hair pasta with crabmeat and grilled tomato
»Risotto with lobster and mushrooms
»Pan roasted chicken
»Roast duck
»Veal with crabmeat and bearnaise
»Veal liver lyonnaise
»Veal chop with herb demi-glace
»Grilled lamb chops
»Smoked pork loin
»Filet mignon with bearnaise or Stilton and red wine demi
»Creme caramel
»Lemon ice box pie

FOR BEST RESULTS
Reservations well in advance are essential. Going with a local regular is a good idea. The entree section always includes a pasta dish and a risotto that works well as an appetizer.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT Easier parking, easier reservations, being able to push into the bar, and other matters brought on by Clancy's popularity are the wishes of all its customers.

FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics. Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.

Dining Environment +1
Consistency +3
Service +2
Value +1
Attitude +1
Wine and Bar +3
Hipness +1
Local Color +3

SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Romantic Good for business meetings Many private rooms Open Monday dinner Historic Reservations recommended

ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Clancy's was one of the original contemporary Creole bistros. Twenty years later, it's matured into an Uptown answer to Galatoire’s. Its culinary bona fides are solidly enough established that it can lean back on some old, funky, but delicious Creole dishes that most hip places are afraid to serve. Likewise, the service staff can joke around and take certain unusual informalities with the mostly-regular clientele.

This is my favorite kind of menu. While the standards are really quite traditional in style, the specials are as adventuresome as any you’ll find elsewhere. Clancy’s also has more than a few signatures. It was the first local restaurant to smoke foods in house, and that’s still a good part of the menu.

Clancy’s has a great bar. The wine list is startlingly large and interesting for such a small restaurant, and the collection of Cognacs, Armagnacs, single-malt Scotches, and small-batch Bourbons is tremendous. They can even make you a great cocktail, something that is becoming a lost art.
300 Most Essential Restaurants The most-debated question when the conversation gets around to dining out is, "What's the best restaurant in town?" Even after rating restaurants for thirty-eight years, I find that question almost impossible to answer. Great restaurants are incomparable. Differences in personal taste and the inconsistency of even good restaurants are wide. One person's #1 may be another's #7 and a third's #81, sometimes without any serious disagreement as the the substance.

It comes down to which restaurants work best for you.

A few years ago I came up with a new criterion that considers such personal needs. I call it essentialness. How important is a restaurant to the local dining picture? Deliciousness plays the most important role, but a host of other elements come into play: creativity, culinary uniqueness, history, location, romance, value, and a million other things.

Putting it another way: Which restaurants would you least like to lose? Asking that question recognizes a fact we've always known: that the best poor boy shop is a more essential restaurant than the thirteenth best gourmet Creole bistro, even if the latter may have better food, service, and surroundings. If there's only one good Ethnikian restaurant in town, it becomes more essential than if there were many.
I think you'll find in this list how deep the New Orleans restaurant community has become. On the other hand, I know that even this is a personal opinion, and that other diners will certainly disagree with certain rankings. This is a good thing, and I hope you will make your known on our messageboard. If a large number of people like a restaurant better than I do, it will move up the Essential list. (Though not in my star ratings, which I think ought to be purely one man's opinion.)

Pretty Complete, But Ever Evolving
When I first published this list in 1977, it only required 100 listings to give a good picture of the New Orleans restaurant scene. But even after Katrina and other setbacks, in 2012 we have more restaurants than at any time in the history of the city. Elsewhere on this site you will find well over 400 restaurants with detailed, up-to-date reviews. Even though that's many more than any other publisher of reviews has to offer, it's still only one-third of the number of restaurants open. This may be the maximum possible, at least at the moment. The three hundred on the list below represent the current limit for such a ranking. Past that number, there's too much flux.

And new restaurants keep coming on. Several that opened during the past year certainly belong on this list, most of them in the top half of it. However, they're too new for me to have dined enough to give a solid rating.

A few restaurants have made recent chef changes that I expect will push their ranking up. But the new chefs haven't been there long enough for me to sample their work. I've left them where they were in the rankings until I can gather solid information. The Upperline also has a new chef, but I don't expect that the change will result in a drastic up or down movement in the restaurant's essentialness. (It rarely does for any chef change.)--Tom Fitzmorris.

The 300 Most Essential New Orleans Restaurants

   1. Commander's Palace. Garden District. 1403 Washington Ave. 504-899-8221. Contemporary Creole.

   2. Stella!. French Quarter. 1032 Chartres. 504-587-0091. Eclectic.

   3. Restaurant August. CBD. 301 Tchoupitoulas. 504-299-9777. Eclectic.

   4. Galatoire's. French Quarter. 209 Bourbon. 504-525-2021. Creole French.

   5. Emeril's. Warehouse District. 800 Tchoupitoulas. 504-528-9393. Contemporary Creole.

   6. Pelican Club. French Quarter. 615 Bienville. 504-523-1504. Contemporary Creole.

   7. Brigtsen's. Riverbend. 723 Dante. 504-861-7610. Contemporary Creole.

   8. Le Foret. CBD. 129 Camp. 504-553-6738. French.

   9. Bayona. French Quarter. 430 Dauphine. 504-525-4455. Eclectic.

   10. Clancy's. Uptown. 6100 Annunciation. 504-895-1111. Contemporary Creole.
Zagat A "who's who of New Orleans" stirs up a "vibrant" scene at this "traditional", slightly "pricey" Uptown "power hangout", "running into friends" and "swooning" over "superb" Creole "classics" (like smoked soft-shell crab) complemented by "generous drinks" and an "exhaustive" wine list; "hidden among family homes", its "out of sight" locale and "professional", "old-style" staff entrance its status as a "locals' darling", but stick to the "packed" downstairs, rather than the quiet, somewhat "dreary" upstairs, for prime "people-watching".
Wine Spectator somelier: Brad Hollingsworth
wine strengths: California, France
wine selections: 590
wine prices: Moderate
corkage fee: $20
cuisine: Creole
menu prices: $26-$39

“They're drawn to this rakish embodiment of Uptown New Orleans because the food hits that sweet spot between tradition and individualism.”

2011 Readers’ Choice Award:
Favorite New Orleans Restaurant

“Clancy’s is the Uptown answer to Galatoires.”

300 Most Essential Restaurants
Clancy’s #10

food	decor	service	cost
27	22	26	$52

Wine Spectator Best of Award Excellence