HERBE SAINTE
Hoppen Hierarchy:★★★
District: Aksarben
Casual Cajun & Creole Cuisine
Perfect For: Breakfast/Brunch; Drinks; Upscale Dining; Happy Hour; Date Night
Standout Dishes: Etouffée; Jambalaya; Leige Waffle
There’s something inspiring about Cajun cooking. Even if you’ve never been to New Orleans, you somehow feel like you’ve visited the region after wolfing down a bowl of excellent shrimp and grits or munching on a po boy. This is transportive food.
Herbe Sainte does a great job of exposing diners to Cajun/Creole cuisine. With a warm atmosphere, fun vibe, and fully stocked bar, this Aksarben restaurant radiates the liveliness of the Crescent City. And while not all of the dishes are 100% hits, most will give you an authentic taste of the Bayou.
The atmosphere alone makes Herbe Sainte worth a visit, and it beckons anyone in the Aksarben area looking to enjoy happy hour or a drink. Diners have the option of sitting at traditional tables, sidling up to the bar, or parking themselves on one of several couches for a more casual group meal. The low lighting sets the mood for a fine-dining experience, but the vibe is laid back and relaxed. This is the kind of restaurant that could be used for a fancy date night or a casual outing with friends. When the weather is favorable, the restaurant also offers comfortable patio seating.
With classic and seasonal cocktails, beer, and wine, Herbe Sainte is a good solution even if you’re just looking for a drink. But if you want to explore Cajun cuisine, this is a wonderful place to start.
The Jambalaya, a classic New Orleans rice dish, finds the perfect way to bring out the best in all its components: crawfish, andouille sausage, bell peppers and onions. The sausage provides a nice fatty, spicy bite, while the crawfish brings the seafood element any jambalaya needs to be successful. The rice is cooked well and the peppers and onions add freshness.
The Etouffée, which features a bed of fluffy rice smothered in a slightly spicy, tomato-based roux, is another fan favorite, and for good reason. The tomatoes add just a touch of sweetness, and the crawfish are perfect, tender morsels. Onions and red peppers add some texture to tie the dish together and make it a perfect representation of New Orleans.
A few of the entrees feel like they could use some buttoning up. The grits in the Shrimp and Grits might benefit from a bit more body, as they’re rather loose, but the blackened shrimp are perfectly cooked and add a peppery kick, and bacon collard green bring fat and vinegar.
The Shrimp Roll employs a mayo-based shrimp salad, bread and butter pickles, and an onion marmalade, supplying this sandwich with a heavy hit of sugar. But the crusty roll helps tamp down the sweetness, as does Herbe Sainte’s house made hot sauces.
The entree portions aren’t enormous, but that’s OK at Herbe Sainte—it allows you to save stomach space for dessert, which is where the restaurant showcases some of its best work. The King Cake Bread Pudding is a contender for the best bread pudding in Omaha, as buttery, flaky croissants are melded together with a syrupy custard. A sticky bourbon and brown sugar topping serves as sweet concrete for the construction, and the vanilla king cake icing adds that New Orleans flair. This dish has a ton of sugar, yet somehow, it doesn’t push the sweetness boundary too far.
For a more subtle dessert, the Peach Cobbler is an excellent modern version of a classic. The biscuit portion is a bit dense, but heaviness is balanced by cooling vanilla ice cream and chunks of caramelized peaches.
New Orleans is famous for its crawfish boils, where a bunch of crawfish, corn, sausage, crab legs, and more are simply dumped on a table and shared family-style. While Herbe Sainte doesn’t offer that exact experience, a fun way to experience a wide swath of the menu is gathering several friends and sharing a variety of apps. Among what you can expect:
- White Cheddar Clam Dip: While the clams are rather muted, this is an excellent version of a southern Spinach Artichoke Dip, but with more gooey, cheesy goodness.
- P&E Shrimp: The plump crustaceans are cooked to a pleasant tenderness and served with horseradish and cocktail sauce strong enough to enliven one’s sinuses.
- NOLA Shrimp: Put this butter, cream, and white wine sauce on anything and it’ll be a hit. In this case, Herbe Sainte’s buttery, toasted baguette serves as an excellent delivery device.
- Cajun Crab Cakes: Though the portion size is small, Herbe Sainte uses jumbo lump crab and favors more of it than binder, giving these cakes a pleasant meaty texture.
Herbe Sainte adds a Cajun twist to breakfast on the weekends with its special brunch menu, where it adds a Southern spin to breakfast classics to produce dishes like Bananas Fosters French Toast, Cornbread & Gravy, and Cajun Eggs Benny.
The Etoufee Scramble introduces the creamy, rich roux to crawfish, bacon, and bell peppers for a warming AM specialty. But the highlight of the brunch menu is the Liege Waffle. These waffles protect a tender interior with a crispy outside, and they’re studded with pearl sugar, which adds both texture and pops of sweetness. They’re delicious enough on their own, but if you want an extra hit of sugar, Herbe Sainte’s honey butter and bourbon maple syrup are happy to fill every deep crevice of the waffles.
No Cajun meal is complete without a few staple side dishes, and Herbe Sainte does them well. Order the Cornbread is you enjoy hearty, sweet muffins stuffed with small chunks of jalapeno and corn, which create a nice sweet/heat combo. And the Dirty Rice, with well-cooked grains, vibrant Cajun seasoning, and healthy chunks of ground sausage, complements any entree well.
Herbe Sainte doesn’t nail every Cajun dish to a T. But while there are minor tweaks to be made here and there, the restaurant captures what’s most representative of New Orleans culture.
It’s inviting.
It’s fun.
It’s indulgent.
And it enjoys a good adult beverage or two.
If you’re looking for a place to introduce yourself to Cajun cuisine, Herbe Sainte is one of your best options in the city.