Daily Loaf

Nola Cafe
2 Stars
301 W. Platt St., Tampa, 813-258-8778 or nolacafe.com
(See all recent restaurant reviews.)

You can see Nola Cafe from the Crosstown Expressway, if you’re looking at the right spot, but finding it while cruising down Platt is tough unless you happen to see the rustic, handpainted signs promising “Po’ Boys!” and “Jambalaya!” The little cafe is hidden in an awkward strip mall facing the pharmacy drive-through of a Walgreens, tucked into the back, the kind of spot you hear about and track down. In the Bay area, New Orleans cuisine is like that — rare, almost secret, with little of the fanfare that sprang up a few years ago after Katrina.

In unfortunate good timing, Nola opened a year before the hurricane devastated owner Louis Robert Jr.’s Louisiana home town. After the storm, the restaurant easily turned into a hub for New Orleans expats and well-wishers who wanted to eat and talk their way through the tragedy. It has the right vibe for that, with a newsstand tucked into a former closet, well-worn furniture and jazz standards playing through the speakers. Robert works his way through the closely arranged tables, talking up his restaurant’s inspiration and letting “le bon temps rouler.” With his help, Nola feels like the Morning Call Coffee Stand that was the restaurant’s New Orleans inspiration.

The food, however, is a much paler homage to New Orleans.

Nola’s menu reads like a list of Big Easy greatest hits: jambalaya, gumbo, beignets, po’ boys, red beans and rice. It’s short and sweet, exactly what you need for a quick taste of the city. And, at least when it comes to a few of the dishes, the restaurant delivers.

Like po’ boys built on chewy baguette buns, just a little lettuce and tomato — and a rich swipe of mayo — to accent crisp fried shrimp or oysters. A simple sandwich, but one of the classics, and Nola does it well enough to almost justify the $8.95 and $9.95 price tags. Almost. Crawfish etoufee follows the same pattern, the thick stew spiced enough to build a simmering heat in your mouth, crawfish shining through enough to taste. But at $7.99 for a small cup of the stuff, it’s too one-dimensional for the money.

Jambalaya — like a lot of Nola’s dishes — is obviously cooked earlier in the day, then reheated to order. That might work, if this rice dish studded by chicken and andouille sausage had more juice to it. Instead, it comes dry as a bone with a crust of unseasoned white rice.

Gumbo is a more serious problem. For many people this is the iconic food of New Orleans, so it has to be both authentic and tasty. You can sense the dark roux in each bite of Nola’s gumbo, but barely, and there’s a sharp tang of acidity that’s out of place. That tang is distracting in the chicken and sausage variety, and downright overwhelming when it comes to a seafood version, rendering both less than “wondamous, I ga’antee,” to quote famed pseudo-Cajun Justin Wilson. Sing it, brother.

Besides the po’ boys, there are a few standouts on Nola’s menu, like the odd but intensely flavorful red beans and rice. Cooked down to a liquid impregnated with fat, the beans in question act as a soupy substrate to deliver the smoky punch of andouille, chunks of which come in every other spoonful. It’s not red beans and rice as I know it, but I’ll still order a bowl of the stuff every time I visit the little cafe, to drink down on my way back home.

And I will be visiting Nola again, in spite of the lackluster food, if only for the coffee. There’s a long list of coffee drinks on the menu — longer than the food selections — ranging from cafe au lait to sugary, frozen caffeine that would make Starbucks blush. Most are made with New Orleans’ signature chicory coffee, a remnant of tough times when French expats had to use the roasted root of the endive plant to extend their dwindling supplies of nature’s delicious stimulant. It adds a rich, almost vegetal bitterness to coffee that’s a welcome change from the burnt roast of Starbucks or even the tasty brews from regular coffee shops.

At Nola, chicory coffee’s best expression is in the Nolachino, essentially a sweetened iced latte. Add a bag of the restaurant’s signature beignets — doughy, sugary and fresh from a fry — to get you through the morning, or to ingratiate yourself with a few choice co-workers.

That and a bowl of liquid, smoky fat (the red beans and rice) will laissez my bon temps rouler Big Easy-style, as long as I stay away from the rest of Nola’s less-capable New Orleans cuisine.

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