Down in New Orleans

Last night, I met up with friends at NOLA, a bar/restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. There are two parts to the establishment, the restaurant portion and the bar portion, the latter of which still serves the entire menu. We all sat/stood in the bar section, which was pretty small and somewhat tightly packed for about an hour or two after our arrival.

The clientele consisted of a lot of young professionals like ourselves, although there were a few outliers. One party, in particular, seemed to be of the still-in-college-mode variety of young professionals. For a bar as small as this one, there was a high number of televisions—around seven; most featured either the Giants/Diamondbacks game or the NBA Playoffs, though there was one screen in the corner that curiously played a foreign film with subtitles. The lighting struck me as a little dim at times, which I normally find grating, but which didn't bother me as much on this evening.

For the most part, the night's drink of choice was raspberry mojitos. I find raspberry to be pretty much disgusting, but my friends raved all evening about the deliciousness of this particular drink, so I'll just take their word for it.

Eventually, we decided that we should probably eat, especially me, since I hadn't bothered to have any dinner, and we were nearing 10pm. We decided on the BBQ chicken quesadilla, the mushroom quesadilla, a bowl of gumbo (the only New Orleanian cuisine we selected from the primarily NOLA-influenced menu), and the never-failing sweet potato fries. 
For once, the sweet potato fries took a backseat to my entrée, the chicken quesadilla, which was fantastic. There was a good balance of chicken, cheese, and barbeque sauce, without any one ingredient overpowering the dish.

Given that there are an endless number of restaurants to try in Palo Alto, never mind the surrounding cities, I don't imagine that I'll consistently be returning here. But it's definitely worth another visit—or an initial one.