This restaurant is deceptive—in a good way. A recent lunchtime visit revealed a relatively simple, relaxed site with Southern fare that’s simultaneously straightforward, traditional (although with the occasional twist) and more complex than you might think.
There’s nothing fancy about the decor (refreshing); you’ll find wide spaces, tables and seats/booths. Analogue, according to Alfredo Nogueira (in his first executive-chef post), was originally conceived as a bar. However, it has grown to be much more than that.
Speaking of the bar aspect, my dining partner and I decided to try two traditional drinks: I had a very tasty Hurricane while she opted for a nice, but heady, Sazerac (Old Overholt Rye, Demerara, Herbsainte and Peychaud’s).
However, the food has definitely taken attention away from the drinks. Lunch options are divided into po boys/sandwiches, dishes and daily specials. The po boys are variations such as roast beef, fried oyster and hot sausage. The shrimp po boy and fried-chicken sandwich were more than tasty, but my favorite turned out to be one that I thought some might pooh-pooh because of its name: the mushroom debris po boy. The French fry-stuffed concoction confirms that Nogueira said: It’s a vegetarian sandwich that tastes like a non-vegetarian one.
Dishes include a gumbo that managed to do the near-impossible: (temporarily) make me a fan of okra. (Noguiera told me that these vegetables are the toughest item for him to procure, and he regularly gets them at Nichols Farm & Orchard.) The biscuits—which come with habanero jelly and butter (“to tame the jelly,” as our server told us)—are incredibly flaky and delicious. Other lunchtime dishes include beet salad, smoked fish dip (with hot sauce) and fried boudin (Cajun sausage made from pork shoulder, pork liver and rice, fried and served with house mustard).
There are also lunch-tray specials that are basically the best cafeteria food you never had. The day we went featured roast chicken and rice. (Other specials, depending on the day, are red beans and rice with sausage; meat loaf; and fried catfish.) If there was any doubt Noguiera knows his way around a grill, they were erased with this item that was even better the next day when I had leftovers.
The two-year-old Analogue has the best Cajun food I’ve tasted in a while—and, in a more general sense, the best Southern fare since I initially tried Lincoln Square restaurant Luella’s Southern Kitchen. I’ll definitely have to return here for brunch and dinner.