Stepping into the darkened interior of Oddfellows Rest in Hoboken is like being transported back to New Orleans. The fans swirl lazily. A pretty bartender serves drinks. There is a pool table in the back room decorated with battered license plates. Two businessmen, nursing beers, enjoy an old-fashioned dart game. The atmosphere is utterly relaxing.
The restaurant’s owners, Liz Sterling and Jerry Maher, take great pride in their creation. In fact, the restaurant has been such a success over the last seven years that they have decided to open another Oddfellows Rest in downtown Jersey City on Sept. 12.
“It’s Southern hospitality,” said Sterling, a native of New Orleans. “A very relaxed atmosphere with great food.”
The restaurant’s name comes from a New Orleans cemetery. In 1847, the Independent Order of Oddfellows founded a famous cemetery there called Oddfellows Rest. In later years, the cemetery would include a busy bus stop that Sterling would pass routinely.
Still, there’s more to the restaurant than a unique Big Easy charm. There’s also tasty bayou food.
Relaxing out back
On my first visit, we decided to take advantage of the unusually warm spring weather by sitting in the restaurant’s courtyard out back. Taller buildings surround it, but the mood is set by a simple old-fashioned streetlight adjacent to a faux New Orleans-style cottage and a fisherman’s net that adorns the brick wall.
After perusing the menu and discussing the merits of the restaurant’s four-hour-long Happy Hour, as opposed to the two hours that some competitors offer, a friend and I ordered a sampler of their appetizers: crab puppies ($6.95), Cajun popcorn ($7.95), fried crawfish tails ($7.95), and catfish fingers ($6.95). I also tasted the shrimp and crawfish bisque ($5.95).
The bisque, a thick blend of pureed shrimp and crawfish with corn and the slightest bit of cream, was delicious. It was so rich that it could easily be a quick fix for a light lunch. The sampler is a fried seafood lover’s dream.
All the pickings are lightly battered and served with a homemade tarter sauce. The crab puppies, “an offspring of crabcake,” are fluffy balls that dissolve in one’s mouth. The more toothsome catfish fingers and Cajun popcorn are good enough to leave one wanting more.
For the entrees, there was much to choose from. Dishes included gumbo ya ya, Gonzales duck and alligator jambalaya, and pecan crusted catfish Creole Meuniere.
I decided on char-grilled catfish ($13.95) with the candied sweet potatoes and collard greens. My fellow muncher opted for the rustic chicken cordon bleu ($13.95), served with saut