Café Carmo – tropical bistro something unique in downtown New OrleansBy Cheryl Hentz
There is something new on the dining horizon and it’s located smack dab in the heart of the Central Business District of New Orleans.
Café Carmo, otherwise known as simply Carmo, is a tropical café or bistro built upon the rich, multi-cultural culinary influences found throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the Gulf South – the “Tropical” or “Atlantic Rim,” if you prefer. The menu introduces New Orleanians to unique, but traditionally-inspired dishes, the majority of which are new to the city. While owners Dana and Christina Honn are having the pleasure of introducing some new flavor to the city, in some ways they are actually bringing back and reinventing flavors that have at different times been a part of New Orleans.
“We’ve done research at the local research center and have found some bygone New Orleans flavors and dishes – things that were popular at one time or another – and that’s some of what we’re featuring in our dishes,” says Dana.
Those dishes can best be described geographically as West Africa meets Europe meets Latin America meets Southeast Asia. Carmo’s dishes feature top-quality, local ingredients, as well as some exotic products from around the globe. Juice of cacau (the chocolate plant), red palm oil, dried pounded manioc root, specialty peppers and unique meats and cheeses are just a few items which help define this comfortably traditional, yet innovative cuisine.
The Carmo Salad is probably the most popular item, says Dana. It features rice, pineapple, avocado, nuts, currants, cucumber, scallions and smoked ham with citrus mango vinaigrette. But the Brazilian Chicken salad (Jaciara’s Salpicão) is gaining in popularity, adds Christina. This salad features smoked chicken and ham with raisins, green onions, peas, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, cheese, shoestring potatoes and is topped with their own special dressing.
“What we’ve been trying to do from the very beginning is have a handful of dishes that people can only get here and that people feel they need to have once a week or once every two weeks or whatever it is. We’re really aiming to be kind of iconic, local, fresh and different,” says Dana.
Besides a variety of salads, unique deli sandwiches and daily specials, Carmo features plain, Maqaquito and Creole Banquette breads, and scrumptious baked goods, including brownies, muffins, and cookies. Several flavors of tropical juices, as well as coffee, espresso, cappuccino, latte, hot and iced tea, soda and freshly-squeezed orange juice round out the menu.
Open since spring, Carmo’s hours are currently Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am to 3 pm. But sometime this summer they plan to begin featuring some evening hours, as well. At that time they will offer an expanded menu, featuring some small and medium plates.
“One of the dishes being added at that time, the Carmo Broil, will feature a combination of mushrooms, shrimp and escargot served in a type of escargot dish with Havarti cheese over the top and then broiled, and served with French bread,” says Dana. “We’ll also be offering some house-cured meats that will include different house-made sausages and house-cured and house-smoked salmon and tuna. Some of the dishes will have a West African influence; there will also be different kinds of soups.”
The Honns hope to add beer and wine to the list of beverages once they start offering evening service. And while they already do catering on a limited basis, later this summer they also plan to add delivery in the Central Business District to the services they offer.
Carmo is the surname of Christina’s father who passed away in 2005. So naming the restaurant after his they felt was a nice tribute to him. In addition, the menu items are all original recipes and are all things that either Christina adapted from her own or her family’s recipes, or they are other offerings that have “fit the concept,” Dana says, who also notes that the idea for Carmo actually came from many of the places he and Christina frequented when living in her native Brazil.
“There were a lot of times that we would go to these casual, but elegant restaurant cafes that would feature fresh ingredients, lots of fruit, local seafood and local products in general,” he says. “One of the things about New Orleans is we have great cuisine here, but a lot of it is not terribly light. So one of the things we thought would be a niche for us is serving cuisine that is light, but very satisfying and flavorful – and again, in a casual, but elegant setting.”
The environment is warm and casual, encouraging guests to feel at home and linger, whether they’re sipping a cup of Carmo’s extremely fresh-roasted coffee or snacking on one of their tasty “street” foods.
“It’s our intention to ‘grow’ a space which is conducive to creativity, which is familiar yet new, which achieves high quality and simple elegance without extravagance, and which is inviting enough to be considered a friendly ‘every day’ space,” says Dana, who also believes that the fact that the space is relatively small adds to the feeling of intimacy. “We’re especially reaching out to locals. So many places are focused on tourism only and while we certainly don’t want to exclude by any means, we do want to make locals feel welcome and special, also.”
If you go…
Café Carmo
527 Julia Street, Downtown New Orleans
504-875-4132
Wireless Internet available
Visit them on the World Wide Web at
www.cafecarmo.com
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