Saint Lawrence (New Orleans, LA)

Onion rings are coast-to-coast in this great land of ours. My limited travels (at least, with the purpose or intent to consume and review onion rings while there) have only taken me to three states; Michigan, Colorado, and Georgia. Today, I can finally add another to the pantheon, that of Louisiana. Before my journey, I hypothesized that the unique culinary and cultural makeup of New Orleans could potentially provide flavors and concepts that could revolutionize my knowledge of onion rings.

With the short duration of my stay, and the fact that most of my time was taken up by a conference, I was only able to get a brief smattering of the wide-world of onion rings in New Orleans. Time is a cruel mistress. 

Here's a review of onion rings from Saint Lawrence in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thanks to Sola Cepa superfan (and budding onion ring expert) Aaron for joining me.

Presentation and Appearance: 3.5/5

The striking contrast between the plain white plate, and a small metal cup filled with remoulade, and the over-the-top, thick breaded, wild and untamed onion rings is a bold choice, but I think it works. They're stacked in a cohesive heap, making it easy to pluck one off of the pile for further review. 

The onion rings are almost larger-than-life, exploding with what some might deem excessive amounts of batter. Clearly hand-battered, the onion rings make an appealing bite. One can easily see the specks of pepper mixed in with the batter, indicating a strongly seasoned bite to come. They are not perfectly smooth, either, with bumps small and large of oozing batter showing. 

Despite the boldness of the presentation, there are a handful of cracks one can see on closer observation. The batter does not fully cover the onions inside, with a plethora of gaps showing in what ought to properly be beautifully golden circles. They also show just a hint of being overdone. 

Taste: 4/5

As predicted, the batter is an immense outpouring of flavor, the likes of which are rarely seen in onion rings. Soft and fairly flaky, it contains an impressively spicy and flavorful blend of spices, which, in my ignorant Yankee mind, seems Cajun, or close to it. Batter is almost universally overlooked by onion rings as a vehicle to deliver taste, but Saint Lawrence knows better. The spicy aftertaste stayed in my mouth long after I finished the rings, another testament to their intensity. 

It's almost as if all the flavor potential typically reserved for onions (in an onion ring) were shifted to the batter. The interior onion making up the structure of these onion rings was weak and dry, cut far too thin to sustain any degree of onion flavor after being subjected to the fryer. 

The metal cup of remoulade dipping sauce was a near-perfect complement to the Cajun spices in the batter. It provided a solid kick of additional spice, without being overpowering, while showcasing a unique semi-solid texture, perfect for spreading and dipping the rings. The orange-red color no doubt contributed to my impression, contrasting wonderfully with the golden brown rings. Despite the shortcomings of the light onion taste, the batter and the remoulade dipping sauce make up for it in spades. 

Texture: 2.5/5

For all the strides made in flavor and presentation, these onion rings lacked a truly great texture. The batter, while amazing in taste, was too lightly applied, and too flaky, to sustain itself under pressure. The scourge of slippage (wherein the batter falls off a stable onion in an onion ring) showed itself time and time again, as the delectable flaky batter fell onto my plate, forever separated from its transcendent pairing with the onion. 

Speaking of onion, the texture of the onions in the onion ring were more or less non-existent. In several rings, they bordered on burnt, and were at the very least browned and overdone, shriveled to elude any inner texture. It had lost any character of hardness or strength, and was, at best, soft, with nothing else. The onion rings as a whole were soft, with the only crunch coming from the overdone knobs of batter that fled the safety of the onion. 

Value: 3/5

For certain calibers of onion rings, one expects a price point that is higher than would be found in a careless, mass-produced cluster. For $8, I got a decent sized mound of big and flavorful onion rings. While they had some problems with texture, and I missed the strong onion taste so essential to onion rings, the batter and the remoulade dipping sauce made them a delightful bite. 

That said, the thin (if broad) cut of the onions made them a somewhat less than satisfactory lunch. 

Total: 13/20