The first few courses were like appetizers, with fresh seafood prepared in an elegant Creole style with delicious sauces. The best dish was a "deep dish" rabbit and fois gras pie. It was very rich, but the fois gras was absolutely amazing. The entrée dishes were beautiful presentations of broiled scamp and then Mississippi quail. The quail was a little tough, but that would be my only complaint of the evening. The cheese plate was also one of my favorite parts of the evening. You had to eat the cheeses in a certain order, from light in taste to extremely powerful. I had never experienced anything like this before. The desert was a phenomenal bread pudding soufflé, and they also added a lovely chocolate plate and candles for our honeymoon.

The servers were very down to earth and not stuffy. Two servers put each dish in front of us at the same time and explained each one in very fine detail. The chef also signed my menu, which I still have to this day. It was a beautiful experience.

CP's interior looks like it was decorated by someone's Jr. League mom -- tasteful and bright. It also appears to be popular with the locals. There were a number businessmen and girls celebrating grade school graduations while we were there.

Just a tip: If you're on a budget, go for lunch.

After going on a self directed walking tour of the neighborhood (the restaurant will provide you with a map of homes that gives details about the architecture), we entered the main dining room with its butter yellow walls and pressed tin ceiling. Since we dined during a jazz brunch, colorful balloons were tied in bunches to the tiny lamps in the center of the tables. Therefore, while this is a fine dining restaurant---shorts are not allowed---the Sunday atmosphere here felt more festive than stuffy to me. We loved the jazz musicians: the trumpet player, the banjo strummer, and the round man with a Louis Armstrong voice and a cello who let out playful growls as he sang, "Oh, that tiger! Oh, oh that tiger!"

I ordered a Bloody Mary, leaned back, and soaked it all up. A series of nature paintings adorn the walls, and a manager pointed out that each of these original by Marilyn Carter Rougelot has a white heart hidden discreetly somewhere within the picture. We amused ourselves looking for these until our waitress returned with our drinks.

Note: Each dining area in Commander''s Palace has unique and different decor. While booked literally months in advance, patrons can actually have a table in the kitchen where they can watch the gourmet chef at work.

Of course, the menu here is the main attraction. Widely acclaimed as one of the best restaurants New Orleans has to offer (and this is high praise indeed!), Commander''s Palace is sure to live up to its reputation at any meal. It was extremely difficult for me to settle on any one thing with the likes of shrimp cognac and andouille grits, muscadine and chicory coffee lacquered quail, and pecan-crusted gulf fish as choices. I settled on a Creole spiced filet mignon that seemed to melt in my mouth. After a spinach salad dotted with candied pecans AND a generous praline parfait for dessert, my appetite was satisfied on every level.

Perfect!

For an entrée, I had a seared yellowfin tuna in a large bowl surrounded with a variety of legumes and a delicious broth. I though I might just pick at the legumes, but they all disappeared along with the delicious tuna. I can't remember what my wife had for an entrée, but she was very happy ending with a unique bread pudding souflée.

The owner/manager gave us a tour of the kitchen before we left.

The selection ranges from local, exquisite dishes to American, with prices ranging from $40 for an excellently prepared, mouth-watering steak dinner to $120 for seafood. The wine list is a worldly list of wines ranging from $27 to $1400 per bottle. The staff are experts in their profession and treat you like royalty, whether you spend a fortune or not. Each dish is masterfully prepared by a chef who cares about his display whether a steak or gumbo is served. The mouth-watering steak enticed even these midwesterners, where the steaks are the best. The chocolate mousse is a necessity even if you are at your fullest - share one with the one you came with. It will be a memory forever.

After not allowing ourselves enough time to take the cable car to the Garden District and grabbing a taxi, we arrived right on time for our 11:30am reservation (made weeks ahead of time). Only one other party was dining at the time, but by the time we left, the restaurant was almost full.

The staff treated us royally, from the moment we entered, to the time the door was held open for us on the way out. We were very happy to find the waitstaff took their cues from us as to how stuffy to be. We asked if it would be terribly uncouth to take some photos, and they assured us it would be quite alright. From then on, the staff was very congenial with us.

The Soups 1-1-1 offered a taste of the Turtle Soup, the Gumbo Ya Ya, and the Soup du Jour (butternut squash). The Gumbo Ya Ya was my favorite. It’s a chicken gumbo, a little spicy. The squash soup had a little too much nutmeg for my taste, but had a nice texture. Turtle Soup was something new for me to try. None of us particularly cared for it, though it is one of the most popular things on the menu. Our waiter told us that if they were out of turtle soup, they didn’t open the doors!

The entrées we ordered: 1) Onion-Crusted Fried Chicken Salad. Chicken pieces lightly battered and fried, served on Bibb lettuce with a bleu cheese dressing. The chicken was light and fell apart tenderly in my mouth. The cucumber relish was outstanding. 2) Commander’s Blue Crab Cobb 2002. Local jumbo blue crab, avocado, romaine lettuce, chopped egg, smoked bacon, and Gruyere cheese with a creamy anchovy dressing. The "best crab I’ve ever had," according to my friend. 3) Roasted Chicken Dixie. Boneless chicken served in a shrimp, tasso (a highly seasoned smoked pork), and mirliton (a squash found growing wild and in backyards throughout southern Louisiana) dressing. Extremely tender, flavorful chicken, this plate was practically licked clean. 4) Colorado Lamb and Blue Cheese Pie. Braised lamb in a rich sauce, served in a pastry shell. The lamb was very tender and, again, not a bite was wasted.

Now we get to the really great part: dessert. We ordered 5 desserts between the 4 of us. They also brought out an extra one that they were thinking of adding to the menu. Two of us ordered the Creole Cream Cheese Cheesecake, with housemade Creole cream cheese, white and dark chocolate lattice and caramel sauce. Heavenly! We also tried the Pecan Pie a la Mode, Double Chocolate Fondue Cake served with orange caramel cream, Praline Parfait, and the trial dessert, a light citrus concoction that was very smooth and refreshing.

Service here is impeccable! Read my free form entry on the magic words to use to ensure great service at a restaurant. They were inadvertently uttered here, but were highly unnecessary!

If it weren’t for the spectacular cuisine, Commander’s Palace would be on its way to joining this unfortunate category of restaurant relics. This would be a terrible shame, but if the restaurant doesn’t tone down the references to its Las Vegas incarnation (shouting at you from the walls and the menu), overhaul the décor and try to work on the cheese-factor in the service, annoying aspects of the dining experience may come to overshadow the pleasures of its justifiably famous cooking. The colored balloons shooting up from the tables seem to convey forced jocularity rather than genuine festivity, and it’s simply embarrassing (rather than charmingly kitschy) to have a French waiter dropping phrases like ooh-la-la every time he passes by your table.

What saves the Palace from becoming a place you would only take your aging parents is the food, which is admittedly excellent. The addictive garlic-parmesan bread which kept appearing at our table during the fabled Commander’s jazz brunch was the perfect companion to the rich, thick gumbo I had as a starter—as good a rendition of the New Orleans classic as I’ve ever tasted. Complementing the soothing tones of the jazz trio who played charmingly but didn’t drown conversation were delectable Bloody Marys, brought to the table in virgin form, where the waiter topped them off with ice-cold vodka. My main course was an iron skillet seared gulf fish (in this case mahi-mahi) with a peppery outer crust served over a succotash of limas, corn, tomatoes, black-eye peas and earthy chanterelles. The cuisine is obviously prepared with a sure, experienced hand, and I left feeling as if I had some of the best gourmet Creole the city has to offer. But with such a range of magnificent dining choices in a place like New Orleans, I’m not sure I would return for dinner, unless someone else was picking up the gargantuan tab.

The atmosphere was excellent, as well as the service. We spent a very romantic and enjoyable evening there. The waiters were excellent and the captain was great. The display of the food was superb and the taste magnificent. They made you feel like royalty.

Both lunch and dinner include a prix fixe menu which allows mixing and matching of some of their regional specialties.

Their menu changes seasonally but always contains popular specialties. For lunch starters I tried the "waiter recommended" turtle soup with sherry, while hubbie had crawfish bisque and homemade biscuits-both yummy! Their absolute best dishes are reputed to be the regional Creole favorites and I couldnt agree more.

The dinner menu provides suggestions from their highly touted wine list to accompany each entree. I highly recommend their Cosmopolitan cocktail (the best I have ever had anywhere!).

A must have at both lunch and dinner... Their FABULOUS desserts (you won't want to share yours). Their world-famous bread pudding souffle is remarkable but so are their Mississippi Mud Pie, Southern Pecan Pie and Chocolate Molten Souffle. For a dining experience that will evoke the true atmosphere of "N'Awlins", Commanders is the "Palace" to go!