Sunday, June 7, 2009

Hiatus...

Ash and Al are on a hiatus from their alphabet guided food journey right now. We hope you enjoyed our reviews thus far (though they were slightly sushi heavy) and that we've given you a few ideas of some new places to try in the metro area. Ash, or Al, or the two of us will be back eventually, bringing you more opinions of local culinary delights. After all, we still have 19 letters to get through! :)

R is for RTs

http://www.rtsrestaurant.net/

Type of restaurant: Creole/Cajun

I had: Shrimp Norman
He had: Seafood in a parchment
We had: Jack Daniels shrimp

Thoughts: RT's is ridiculously close to my house. So close in fact, that we walked there. It's an unassuming place at the end of a strip mall (but as we know, there are great finds in a strip mall!) next to some check cashing type place. For some reason I had just never ventured over there to try it out, so one night we decided to give it a go. The inside is just as unassuming as the outside. There are green vinyl booths and four person tables, striped wallpaper and ceiling fans. Clearly decor is not high on the list for the proprietors of this restaurant, but who cares? The food is great! We started off with an appetizer of Jack Daniels shrimp, basically shrimp sauteed in a butter and Jack and served with some type of liquor-y tomato cream sauce. It was super yummy. Allister's seafood in a parchment was just that; assorted seafood in parchment paper with a buttery garlic and white wine sauce. It was served with rice and when the sauce mixed with the rice...YUM! My Shrimp Norman was fried gulf shrimp served with crab etouffee and rice. A-mazing!! It was one of those dinners where there was very little conversation besides "oh my God, this is so good!"

Overall opinion: RT's is clearly a hidden gem. The food there is so good, but there never seems to be a huge wait (I drive past here multiple times each day). It's location across the street from the Birchmere makes it a good place to go before a show. On Mondays they also have a special, two entrees and a bottle of wine for $29.99 which seems to be a pretty good deal. The staff was really attentive (although there weren't too many people in there anyway) and the bartender was very friendly, giving us recommendations and generally chatting with us. I should also add that RT's has quite an extensive bar. Pretty much anything you can think up, they have. I will be giving this a shot for happy hour in the near future...and it won't matter how much I drink because I can always walk home :) If you're looking for good New Orleans style food in the metro area, definitely hit up RT's!