From blackened catfish, grilled peppercorn-crusted hanger steak, crawfish tails, jambalaya, and fried shrimp to bananas Foster, there’s a delicious array of both gourmet entrees and bar food at Oddfellows Bar & Restaurant in Hoboken.
The spacious eatery a block from the Hoboken train station has a large bar, a quieter room for sit-down dining, a billiards room, and an outdoor lounge – four rooms as diverse as the menu that serves the patrons.
The restaurant was opened in 1993 by Jerry Maher, who also owns the upscale American eatery 340 Grill on Sinatra Drive. Oddfellows was named after a historic site in New Orleans created by a benevolent society, the Independent Order of Oddfellows. The restaurant offers everything one would find at any New Orleans eatery, including gumbo, po’ boy sandwiches, and delectable desserts.
There are four kinds of eggs Benedict on weekends.
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Wandering past the establishment on the way home from the Hoboken train station does not give one an idea of the full palate Oddfellows has to offer. Far from merely a place to slurp down a Hurricane at happy hour (4 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday), it’s also a great place to take a date who wants more than the traditional dinner fare.
Appetizers
The dining room at Oddfellows is tastefully decorated with images from New Orleans that line the brick walls. It was relatively quiet on the night I dined, a Tuesday at 6 p.m. Customers started to trickle in as they arrived home from work.
Any meal at the restaurant starts with a basket of warm, sweet cornbread and butter. Next came the appetizers. General manager Dawn Dimonde started me off with three of their most popular: New Orleans style barbeque shrimp, Cajun popcorn, and crab puppies. The menu also lists chicken fingers, catfish fingers, calamari, and several types of gumbo.
The Cajun popcorn was my favorite – fried crawfish tails with homemade tartar sauce. They were delicious and had the texture of shrimp. I loved the sauce and asked what was in it. Get ready: there are eight ingredients, including Creole mustard and sweet relish.
The crab puppies were little crabcake balls and could be dipped in chipotle remoulade. The shrimp were barbequed, but they didn’t taste like barbeque sauce. Instead, they came surrounded by a liquid sautee of butter, beer, Worcestershire and pepper sauce. The sauce was mildly tangy and spicy. They also came with some slices of bread to dip, so they’re perfect for a small group.
Appetizers ranged from $9 to $11.
Entrees
There is a very wide selection of entrees on the dinner menu.
The salads range from $14 to $16 and include a hanger steak salad, sesame shrimp salad, Tchoupatoulas chicken (grill-smoked chicken paillard, grilled vegetables, shaved parmesan, mesclun, and lemon-pepper vinaigrette), and chicken or Caesar salads. Everything had a unique New Orleans twist.
They also offer a list of “traditional New Orleans fare” entrees, including various types of jambalaya (rice with seafood, sausage, or chicken simmered in stock and seasonings), etouffee (simmered in a rich sauce over rice) and gumbo (a soup that’s less thick than the etouffee).
One can order a trio sampler of three Cajun dishes for $19. I enjoyed it, and it was well worth trying. I especially loved the chicken and andouille jambalaya. The sausage was smoky and tasty, and the chicken was tender. All of the Cajun food warmed my bones.
The menu also had “Delta Feast” options, a group of entrees from the South. They ranged from Southern Fried Catfish to baby back ribs to Cajun shepherd’s pie to stuffed chicken breast. Those entrees ranged from $15 to $19 and often came with side dishes.
There was also a list of my favorite: po’ boy sandwiches. As the story goes, during the Depression, a street vendor offered a complete meal for a nickel. He threw meat, lettuce and tomato on a loaf of French bread. The destitute christened the sandwich a “po’ boy.”
The taste is anything but po’. I ordered a fried shrimp po’ boy, which I especially loved because it had the aforementioned homemade tartar. It came with “jazz fries” (criss-cross fries) and homemade slaw. There is something great about enjoying fried shrimp on a sandwich with creamy sauce.
Other po’ boys include fried catfish, crabcake, crawfish, BBQ pork, and grilled or blackened chicken. These sandwiches range from $12 to $13.
Finally, Dimonde encouraged me to try their popular burger, the “Big Easy” burger. It was three-quarters of a pound of beef on an English muffin. I ordered mine smothered in cheese and mushrooms. It came with jazz fries and homemade slaw, and was as good as any burger I’ve had. The range of toppings can even include a fried egg.
There’s also a garden burger for the healthier among you.
Finally, the menu lists more than a dozen Southern side dishes that you can order for $5 each. They included red bliss mashed potatoes (which I tried and were heavenly and surprisingly sweet); corn, okra, and tomato ragout, creamed spinach, macaroni & cheese, BBQ baked beans, soul vegetables, and butter mushrooms.
Don’t forget dessert!
A sign on the table said not to forget dessert, so how could I?
The desserts were $8 each and included: Molten chocolate cake, triple chocolate mousse (dark, milk, and white on chocolate cake), warm bread pudding, vanilla cheesecake, and bananas foster. Bananas foster is a traditional New Orleans dessert in which the chef flambes bananas in rum, banana liquer, and brown sugar. A dollop of cool ice cream makes the dessert complete.
I tried the bread pudding, which I loved. It was served on a plate of sweet vanilla and chocolate sauce, with slices of strawberry. The pudding was warm like it should be, fruity and full of sweet filling and raisins. Even though I was full, I couldn’t stop eating it. I loved the texture.
Louisiana brunch
Let’s not forget that they serve lunch and – on Saturdays and Sundays – brunch.
The brunch is as special as their décor and their dinners. It includes four kinds of eggs Benedict: smoked salmon, Canadian bacon, hand pulled roast pork, and Acadian crawfish. These toppings all join the poached eggs drizzled with Hollandaise over English muffins, with Lyonnaise red bliss potatoes on the side. The dish ranges from $10 to $11.
Also available: steak and eggs, French toast, three-egg omelettes with many toppings, and some other egg dishes.
Brunch is served Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
A special place
Jerry Maher began the restaurant because of a relative of his who was from New Orleans. The party grew from there.
“[People come for] the food and the friendliness of the staff,” Maher says. “We get so many New Orleans transplants who come up here and they come and try the food and we get so many positive responses from them.”
Just like the real New Orleans, there is something special going on at Oddfellows every night. They run specials on certain nights, including “martini night” one weeknight and a free Stella Artois glass on another. Friday and Saturday nights have DJ’s starting at 9 p.m. At other times, the restaurant hosts karaoke and a dart league.
Starting in late April, they’ll have a “crawfish boil” one weeknight each week, in which they boil crawfish in the pot in the courtyard and sell it by the pound. “There is a special way to eat it,” Dawn Dimonde confirmed. It involves twisting it, sucking out the juices from the head, and eating the meat from the tail, but you can ask someone there to show you.
Best yet, like many of their specialties, the crawfish is shipped from New Orleans. In fact, it is shipped the morning of the boil! (Maher said it is more expensive to order them now because it took them longer to hatch due to the tough winter.)
Happy hour runs from 4 to 8 p.m. each weeknight with $2.50 beer pints and $5 New Orleans hurricanes. There are also drink specials for Sunday football.
The restaurant includes nine televisions to enjoy.
And last but not least, their biggest event each year is, of course, the party that surrounds the week of Mardi Gras in February.
Just the facts
Oddfellows Rest Lousiana Bar & Restaurant is located at 80 River St., across from the Hoboken train station. It can be reached at (201) 656-9009. They can host private parties and are open several days a week. See www.oddfellowsrest.com for more information.