Weddingbee

* Warning: Photo-heavy post!*

With all the pictures I took of Muriel’s, you’d think this is where our reception would be. Dear friends, I really had high hopes for this place. I mean, look at the view from the balcony!

Yes, Muriel’s is a restaurant right on the northeast corner of Jackson Square, with a view to die for. See St. Louis Cathedral…

now imagine the building on the next corner to the right.

Yup…Muriel’s.

I’d heard mixed reviews about the food, but had heard nothing but great things about the ambiance and the three private rooms upstairs.

It’s all drama as you walk in the private entrance (only for wedding guests, so you don’t have to go in the main restaurant). At the base of the stairs is a perennially-set table, for the resident ghost, Pierre Antoine. As you go up the stairs, there are (check this) Gregorian chants leading your way…I couldn’t help but giggle as I thought about that ’90s hit by Enigma, “Sadeness”

…Ok, sorry about that. Where was I? Oh, so once you’re upstairs you get to the three private rooms. Their website lists about 5–6, but it’s a bit misleading. You can’t exactly rent out the balcony without an adjacent room, nor the “Seance” room without a larger room, etc. We looked at the “Cotillion Room” because I refuse to pay for anything with the word “Plantation” in the name (there are the ‘Plantation’ and ‘Small Plantation’ rooms…no thanks).Here’s the Cotillion Room, with my fat butt in the photo:

As you can see, it has beautiful molding and lovely columns…very ‘Age of Innocence’ looking. You can also see that the large dining tables take up ALL of the space. As we’re going for a more relaxed, cocktail reception vs. a sit-down dinner, we tried to envision the space with hi-boy tables instead. It seemed like that would work…until we heard the numbers for the tables. We would only have seating space for 20 people…maybe. Plus there would be no separate dance floor area, and with the buffet on one side, it definitely sounded like there was no way people could fit and be any kind of comfortable. They promised us the balcony, but 1) if there was another party in another room, we would share the balcony with them, and 2) if it were too cold or rainy…well you know the drill. I was totally demoralized, and our site manager knew it. She then proceeded to show me the Seance and Soiree rooms, that we could rent out in addition to the Cotillion room for extra seating.

(this pic sucks but its the best that Mr. ST took!)

Now these rooms were cool. Dark, loungey, they had a really funky vibe that I knew our friends would love. Problem? They’d probably love it so much they wouldn’t be in the main room, and it would be impossible to keep wrangling people over to watch first dance, cake cutting, etc. I don’t want to play cowboy the night of my wedding, thanks.

Still, as always, we were still holding out hope for Muriel’s…that is, until we went downstairs and had our tasting. Two big boo-boos: first, we had to pay for our tasting, which was basically the regular prix-fixe menu with a 15% discount, which is just…well, icky. Especially because we had just eaten a nearly complete meal at Cafe Amelie, and were hardly hungry enough to justify two dinners. Second…

The food was pathetic. We liked the goat cheese crepes, and Mr. ST liked his creme brulee, but the rest of it was totally tasteless and generic. I mean, look at that sad excuse for a bread pudding right there… bread pudding should NOT BE SQUARE. Maybe if it were anywhere else in the country, but in a city with incredible bread pudding, this was a travesty.

One of the major reasons we want to get married in NOLA is the amazing food. Lack of seating, fine. Small-ish rooms, fine. But don’t mess with my bread pudding!

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