Everything about Atchafalaya represents an advance beyond what the three previous Café Atchafalayas accomplished. (Yes, even better than in Iler Pope's hegemony, which was good but much less ambitious than this.) Tocco and Jaffe have taken advantage of the place's antiquity (it's been a restaurant since at least the 1920s) to make a cool dining room...

It's the nicest restaurant surprise I've had lately. The shrimp and grits had a spicy, ruddy sauce over big, heads-on shrimp atop creamy, firm grits. It was a decidedly Creole flavor. We may not be far away from the day when New Orleans surpasses the Low Country of South Carolina in cooking this dish, even though they invented it. The soup was perfect for a cold night, made with butternut squash, tomatoes, and some other vegetables. Hearty, hot, and rustic. They also sent out a cup of the chicken-andouille gumbo, which took the current vogue for extremely thick gumbo to a new plateau. The chicken was indeed worth eating more than once a week. A nearly-perfect crust of skin and coarse pepper covered an ideally moist interior. The sauce was good, too: exotic mushrooms in a cream sauce with a little Cognac. I love a well-made chicken dish. They have become rare. This was just the sort of thing I'm thinking of when I order it. Even the mashed potatoes were up to snuff, pleasantly lumpy, just creamy enoug...

[Their] card noted that the place is ‘New Orleans's only five-A restaurant.’ I could come up with no challenge to that claim.

"I returned for another dinner at Atchafalaya, which was so impressive a couple of weeks ago."Of the Boudin-Stuffed Quail, Tom said it was just right. Spicy, crisp skin here and there, that bacon flavor coming in for brief cameos, the rice of the boudin acting as a dressing. Good dish." The Whiskey Kiss "was not only a Good drink but a very generous one."
Impressed with our Chef Mark Springfloat's skills, Tom commented... "Good name, Springfloat." :)

"This brilliant new restaurant near the foot of Louisiana Avenue has snuck onto the scene. Atchafalaya is only a slight misnomer. It’s not Cajun but very much a Louisiana place with a menu that at first glance seems familiar. Every dish is made with enough innovation and good ingredients to pop out the place emphatically. The service style, wine list and even the bar are unexpectedly sophisticated."