Salt N Pepper

Salt N Pepper, 201 N. Peters St. , 504-561-6070
(Pakistani, LD)

I always knew that America and Pakistan would make sweet beautiful love in the form of a restaurant. And then Salt N Pepper comes along and has the balls to open a little dive serving the cuisines of these two mighty Allah/Jesus/Great Void-fearing nations right in the French Quarter. You could order a pizza or an oyster po-boy here, but being the foreign food snobs that we are, we always go for the Pakistani.

These crazy coo-coo birds love oil more than George W. Motherfuckin Bush and his momma put together. Be careful, too, to order the food to the proper spiciness level. Otherwise, you might have flames shooting out of your mouth. Well, if you can get past the grease, the vegetables will do you right, especially the spinach and eggplant are both creamy delish. Be warned about the samosas, too. They've got this weird flaky crust, but once you break them open, the taters will give you love. Stay away from the pakoras unless you're prepared to chomp into fried bits of onion and potato that may be well-cooked or may be the temperature of ice cream. The cook clearly gives a shit when he's making the flaky slightly sourdough naan and the deeply spiced potato parathas, though. Red alert: make sure you get it without butter. Oh, and with any dish, be sure to scream from the top of your lungs that you don't want any yogurt, or else you'll get a big stinking pool of it with anything you order.