NOLA does New Orleans like no one else
" I haven't had this good of Cajun food since I was at school in Natchitoches, and New Orleans. The beer choices were exceptional, and the service was great and friendly. The food takes a little time because everything is made fresh to order but that was not a big deal, and actually much appreciated…”
- Mike J., from Rockford MN
Our quirky whimsical boutique restaurant was created to bring a New Orleans style dining experience to the Osseo/Maple Grove area and beyond. Our cooking style is a delightful fusion of modern Creole cuisine with global influences and Chef crafted recipes made from scratch.
At NOLA, we make New Orleans recipes and American dishes with modern twists and unique flavors just as the chefs are doing in the ‘Big Easy’. Our dinner menu is packed with classic Creole creations such as jambalaya and delightful French ettoufee. Our most popular dish is our blackened catfish that is perfectly seared with fresh spices in a cast iron pan and served with our fresh house-made slaw. If you are in the mood for an easy, comforting, healthy small meal our red beans and rice will leave you completely satisfied.
“Some Cajun cooks eschew the flour and simply cook onions in butter, and I have heard that Paul Prudhomme uses an oil-based roux. I think the fun is in the arguing over which kind of étouffée is best. It’s what I love about Louisiana country cooking. So join the debate.
— Andrew Zimmern, Chef and Travel Channel TV personality.
NOLA's Big Easy Flavor
The vibrant, Euro-american personality of New Orleans evolved as a result of its unique geography. Essentially an "inland island," it is squeezed between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, surrounded on all sides by a giant oak-cypress swamp. 250 years of isolation from the mainland has enabled the city to resist rapid modernization and develop a culture unlike any other in America. Jazz, Creole cuisine, above-ground burial sites ("Cities of the Dead"), and rites of passage like the famous jazz funerals are just a few distinctive traditions that make New Orleans, Louisiana a place apart with a state of mind all its own.
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
New Orleans is also a melting pot of culinary traditions around the world. It is a style that combines comfort and complexity in a way unique to the United States. Blending Cajun, French, Italian, African, Spanish, Vietnamese, Indian, Caribbean, Chinese, Thai and a host of others from around the world, the food of New Orleans is a Mardis Gras of flavor. You are invited to celebrate every meal at NOLA.
“New Orleans is either the most cosmopolitan of all provincial cities... or the most provincial of all cosmopolitan cities."
-Charles Dudley Warner
Creole Cuisine
Creole cuisine is a style of cooking originating in Louisiana, United States. Blending French, West African, Amerindian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian influences, as well as general Southern Style cooking, it is rich and varied in texture and flavors. Although the Creole cuisine is closely identified with New Orleans urban culture today, much of it evolved in the country plantation estates of the pre-Civil War Creoles. Despite its aristocratic French roots, Creole cuisine does not include Garde Manger or other extremely lavish styles of the Classical Paris cuisine.
Creole cooking boasts extensive African influences because historically many cooks were African or Creole of African descent. They popularized the use of hot peppers and okra, called "gombo" in some West African languages. Other African influences include the centrality of rice in many creole dishes as well as the layered flavors typical of creole recipes. The Indigenous people of Louisiana introduced sassafras leaves, also known as filé, a thickening agent used in gumbo, and corn dishes like maque choux. The Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Canarian influences on Creole cuisine were the wide usage of citrus juice marinades. The Portuguese, Spaniards and the Italians also used tomatoes extensively, which had not been a frequent ingredient in the earlier French era. Pasta and tomato sauces became common during the period when New Orleans was a popular destination for Italian settlers around the turn of the last century.
Creole cuisine has a long history: The first French, Spanish and Portuguese Creole cookbooks date back to the era before the Louisiana Purchase. The first Creole cookbook in English, La Cuisine Creole: A Collection of Culinary Recipes, From Leading Chefs and Noted Creole Housewives, Who Have Made New Orleans Famous For Its Cuisine, was written by Lafcadio Hearn and published in 1885.
By that time Creole was already an identifiable regional cuisine recognized outside Louisiana: for example, an 1882 Florida hotel menu now in the New York Public Library's collection offered "Chicken Saute, á la Creole."
With the rise of southern American Cooking in the 1980s, a New Creole (sometimes called Nouvelle Creole or Neo-American Creole Fusion) style began to emerge. This movement is characterized both by a renewed emphasis on fresh ingredients and lighter preparations, as well as by an outreach to other culinary traditions, including rural Creole, Southern, Southwestern, and even Southeast Asian.
Cajun Cuisine
Cajun cuisine is a style of cooking is named for the French-speaking people of the Acadiana region of Louisiana. Around 1755, Acadians were forced out of their settlements by the British, and as a result, in a mass migration know as “the Grand Derangement“, they left Canada to find new new homes, eventually settling in Southern Louisiana. Due to the extreme change in climate, Acadians were unable cook their original dishes. As their former culinary traditions were lost, a new style of cooking developed which is now considered classic Cajun cuisine. Cajun cooking is a rustic cuisine; locally available ingredients predominate and preparation is simple. An authentic Cajun meal is usually a three-pot affair, with one pot dedicated to the main dish, one dedicated to steamed rice, special made sausages, or some seafood dish, and the third containing whatever vegetable is plentiful or available. Shrimp and pork sausage are staple meats used in a variety of dishes.
The aromatic vegetables bell pepper (poivron), onion and celery are called the holy trinity by Cajun chefs, and with the addition of garlic, the nickname is expanded to “the holy trinity and the Pope”. Roughly diced and combined in cooking, the method is similar to the use of the mirepoix in traditional French cuisine which blends roughly diced onion, celery and carrot. Characteristic aromatics for Creole recipes may also include parsley, bay leaf, green onions, dried cayenne pepper and dried black pepper.
A later 20th century development is the “Louisiana style” of cooking introduced by celebrity Chef Paul Prudhomme. With spicy, flavorful recipes and more complicated methods of preparation, Louisiana Cooking is something of a modern synthesis of Cajun and Creole flavors and techniques.