Ralph’s On The Park (900 City Park Avenue, 504-488-1000) sits just across from City Park. With a main dining room, bar seating and multiple function rooms upstairs, there are plenty of different ways to experience this fine restaurant by Ralph Brennan. For me, I find the main dining room to be a more formal experience, but still relaxed (business casual). The bar, on the other hand, is simply relaxed (jeans will fit in just fine). In the bar area, you can opt to eat at the bar or at one of the tables set up near the window. Taking a table gives you the best of both main dining options, the informality of the bar and the fine service of the main dining room. After a rough week with work, we weren’t quite up for spiffing up on our Saturday, so the bar it was.

One feature of the bar is that it is very dimly lit, while this is done in part for ambiance and in part to permit the guests to see out into the park across the street, it also means that it was impossible to get any of my pictures to come out. However, I have a fantastic secret I discovered that I will reveal to you somewhere in the wall o’ text below.

Ralph’s menu doesn’t change very often, but they have many renditions and the occasional special. The website does a great job of providing you a preview of what’s on tap, just in case you needed help getting your mouth watering. Of course, one can’t just dive into dinner, there are drinks to be had first!

One of my guilty pleasures is trying various specialty drinks at different restaurants. You know that little menu that has a bunch of really weird/gross sounding drinks? Yeah, I like to order those. Some of them prove as nasty as they sound, whereas others have been magical discoveries. Tonight, Ralph’s showered me with one such fantastic discovery–the Canton Side Car. Made with Canton ginger infused brandy and served in a glass rimmed with sugar, the drink is refreshing with a slight ginger bite. One of the few drinks both Cupcake and I thought was delicious.

For our starter, Cupcake and I split Ralph’s crawfish cakes, heralded by the menu as “Sautéed crawfish cakes and housemade seafood sausage served in a warm corn broth with fingerling potatoes.” The chef has also mixed some shrimp into the crust, so that the cake’s outside is neither to crunchy or too soft, giving a nice balance to the cake. A fantastic dish that was quickly devoured. Although it is only on the Lenten Specials menu, I was assured by our waiter that it would be making the transition to the full time menu as crawfish season hits full stride.

For my entrée, I went with the painted hills hanger steak. As consistent a dish as you can find at Ralph’s, the hanger steak is cooked to medium rare and sliced, served with french fries, a cucumber/onion/carrot salad and a Korean style BBQ sauce for dipping. One of the greatest things about the hanger steak is the Ralph’s team understands medium rare steak and cooks it up perfectly.

Cupcake followed the Lenten specials menu and got the Crawfish Fritto Misto, but she’ll tell you all about that herself here.

To polish off the evening we went with selections from Ralph’s homemade sorbet and ice cream. Picking from ingredients that have hit their stride in terms of freshness or just something that piqued the chef’s curiosity, Ralph’s usually churns out three flavors of homemade ice cream and one sorbet. Cupcake got the coffee chocolate chip ice cream and I ventured into the strawberry-ginger ale sorbet. Without a doubt the coffee chocolate chip ice cream was one of the best coffee ice cream’s I’ve ever had, and coffee ice cream is my favorite. The chocolate chips were nice little squares of chocolate that invaded the coffee, but sought to compliment it, not overpower it. The sorbet was good, but only the strawberry flavor came through. The ginger ale’s contribution was to make the sorbet an even lighter experience than normal. My one complaint with the sorbet was the size of the ice chunks, they were more of the Yankee snow cone variety than the normal smooth consistency you expect in a sorbet.

Great food coupled with a fantastic and attentive waitstaff (Markus and Barry–I recommend them if you can get them), Ralph’s was a great escape for the evening. Now for that surprise I promised: Ralph’s gives 40% off the entire wine list (sans a handful of super expensive wines) on Wednesday’s. This includes their extensive list of over 40 wines under $40.

Don’t forget to check out Cupcake’s take in She said.