A Mano

A Mano originally published on Food and Fond Memories on August 8, 2012 by sandyaxelrod Leave a Comment (Edit)

A man and a woman in front of a restaurant bar.

The Fabulous Bar at a Mano

I keep a running list of restaurants in New Orleans that I want to try so when we planned our trip I had a pretty good idea of which places Steve and I would be visiting. And one thing I knew for sure I wanted an encore dining experience at John Besh’s restaurant August. For our first “real” dinner in New Orleans we decided to try “a Mano” which has been on my short list since our last trip to NOLA two years ago.

The restaurant lived up to its name with an entire menu of creative food made by hand and with locally sourced ingredients to boot. Opened in the fall of 2009 by two chefs, Adolfo Garcia and Joshua Smith. Their inspiration comes from Italy but the delectable food is made in New Orleans.

Focaccia and Olive Oil

We wanted to taste everything on the menu so we decided to share several small plates. While we waited for our first course we enjoyed the amazing focaccia dipped in deep green first press olive oil. I am of the opinion that a great restaurant should serve great bread. And this was great bread.

A large charcuterie board with cured meats, condiments and a bowl of seafood salad.

House Cured Meats and Seafood Salad

Our first plate was the Affettati Misti, an assortment of house-cured meats and blood sausage presented on a wooden cutting board with the proper accoutrements to enhance the flavors of the meats. After one taste of a Mano’s freshly cured meats I was hooked. Wow what a difference from what you get at the deli counter. It was a revelation that salami could taste that good!

Next we devoured the Insalata di Mare salad of octopus, shrimp, calamari, fennel, orange and potatoes. The seafood was so fresh it tasted as if it had just jumped right from the ocean and onto our plates.

Gnudi with Shiitake Mushrooms and Buccatini all’Amatricianna

After the cold antipasti we shared the Gnudi, ricotta dumplings with shiitake mushrooms, brown butter and sage along with Buccatini all’Amatricianna, house-cured guanciale (similar to pancetta but made from the hog’s jowl), tomato, pecorino and spicy red pepper flakes. OH MY G-D! They were both so absolutely delicious that neither Steve nor I could decide which was the better of the two dishes.

During our meal we enjoyed a wonderful and reasonably priced red wine from Sardegna. On the wine list the Solino Isola dei Nuraghi Rosso ’09 was described as “ridiculously drinkable”. How could we pass that up? It really was wonderful and paired well with all of our dining selections. And at $32.00 for the bottle we felt it was quite a bargain.
Our server Kelle was so delightful and helpful and brought the chef de cuisine Nick Martin out from the kitchen to meet us. They both were gracious and gave us some recommendations for more restaurants to try. They also encouraged us to have dessert which wasn’t really hard to do. The hard part was deciding on only two. But we did narrow it down to the Torta di Giandiua a flourless chocolate & hazelnut torte with olive oil & sea salt and the Creme Brulee Gelato. Not only was each dessert amazing on its own but they played well off each other. The torte was rich, dense and very chocolaty. The gelato tasted just like cold creme brulee with crunchy bits of burnt sugar running through it.