Cookies + Milk - Willa Jean, New Orleans, LA
It has been five years since Vodka and her college roommate, Whiskey Sour, made their inaugural trek to New Orleans, and quickly fell in love with the all the spirit, food, and roadie beverages the city had to offer.
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| Hello, Old Friend |
Since that initial visit, a brand new version of Best Thing I Ever Ate has launched in the world - one Vodka has unfortunately never seen because her cable company will not allow her to add JUST the Cooking Channel to her package. However, thanks to the internets, we are able to hit up some of the new hotspots - and/or hot dishes - that the Food Network stars have recommended.
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| Best Thing I Ever Ate, New Orleans, The Sequel |
Up first is Willa Jean, a place we tried to go to for breakfast during our last trip, but unfortunately found it completely packed. Due to this historical precedent, we arrive promptly on a weekday morning... and find the place totally empty.
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| "How Long's the Wait for a Table?" |
We are supposed to be consuming the Cookies + Milk, as recommended by Aaron Sanchez on the PICTURE PERFECT episode of Best Thing I Ever Ate.
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| A Well-Rounded Breakfast |
We had assumed we wouldn't be able to order this dish, as it wasn't featured on the online breakfast menu, but a quick perusal of the corresponding "counter menu" shows that we can in fact order said cookies at 7:30am... if we are seated at the counter. Perhaps because we are still the only customers populating the place, our waitress lets us know that we won't actually have to vacate our table, and we add a little dessert to our already robust breakfast choices (WJ breakfast for Vodka, and the crab omelette for Whiskey Sour).
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| Not a Hint of Greenery in Sight |
Our meals are incredibly decadent - the biscuits a particular highlight, and in their layered texture, a bit croissant-like in execution. The cookies are similarly extremely well executed - both crunchy and gooey, served appropriately warm for proper dunking within the corresponding milk. But they are more of the standard chocolate chip cookie fare instead of particularly unique or exotic. As it happens, the milk itself is what really makes the dish - called vanilla milk on the menu, it tastes more like cereal or marshmallow milk to our (not so discerning) palates. And the combination of the milk + cookie is quite satisfying.
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| A Cookie Monster Dreamscape |
The plate also comes with a ball of raw cookie dough, which is much less appealing - cloyingly sweet, neither one of us manage more than one dainty bite. And while we would absolutely hightail it back to Willa Jean for our next jaunt to New Orleans, the cookies + milk would not necessarily make the cut for a future order - eating our weight's worth in a biscuit sampling seems more likely.
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| Mind Your Own Biscuits and Life Will be Gravy |
We depart Willa Jean with a biscuit in one handbag, a cookie in another, a cup of milk clutched in Whiskey Sour's hand, and the certainty that five years on, New Orleans has not lost its ability to delight us.
Willa Jean's Cookies + Milk: 4 stars
