I usually don’t get excited when I hear about a new restaurant opening in D.C. Let me rephrase that. I never get excited when I hear about a new restaurant opening in D.C., but last Thursday my friend Danielle aka Black Snob, reminded me about the opening of TruOrleans Restaurant, located on the H Street gentrified corridor of DC.

TruOrleans Restaurant, located on H St & 4th in N.E. DC, is the brain child of James “Tru” Redding, areal estate and restaurant mogul in the DC area. According to their website, “TruOrleans is a concept that evolved out of Mr. Redding’s love of Cajun food and a close relationship to several chefs in Louisiana”.

I’ve always loved Cajun food, but I truly fell in love with it while I was visiting New Orleans and had an opportunity to take a class at The New Orleans Cooking Experience. It was there where I learned magical words such as, The Holy Trinity, Roux and Court Bouillon. According to Chef Chiqui Collier, these were MUST haves in any Cajun dish. There were several meals that I learned how to cook and after the classes, I was sent home with a recipe book that I still have today.

So back to me being excited about a restaurant opening, for the first time ever.

I got excited when I took a look at TruOrleans Restaurant’s website, I saw those magical words listed at the bottom of their menu as part of their glossary: The Holy Trinity, Roux and Court Bouillon. My appetite quickly was in the mood for Cajun! For the rest of the day that’s all I could think of. I made sure to let Danielle know that I would join her for dinner at 5pm.

At 4:45pm, I arrived at Danielle’s house, and thankfully she’s right around the corner from the H St location of TruOrleans. Within a few minutes, we were one of the few people standing outside of the restaurant waiting to be let in. What I found interesting at first was the fact that they were still unloading alcohol and beer to the first floor bar. I thought to myself that it was odd, and seemed like they were a little unprepared, but I was hungry, I didn’t care about drinking.

Once we were let into the restaurant, we were informed that it would be about 30 minutes before we could place our order because they were still ‘setting up’. Umm….ok. I guess things like that could happen on “opening night”. We made our way to the top patio area of TruOrleans, which looks pretty awesome.  Unlike a lot of restaurants in DC, the tables were not on top of each other, they were spaced pretty well.  We decided to sit towards the back area of the restaurant, which had a mix of couches and regular seats/tables. We were greeted with beads at the table, a flat screen on the wall and ceiling fans. From the talk going on in the area, you could tell everyone was eager to eat.

Eventually the waiter made his way to our table, taking our drink & appetizer orders. He informed us that he wasn’t set up in the system, so he wouldn’t be able to take our full others.  Ok, we’re fine with that. It’s still ‘opening day’. So we ordered our drinks and waited patiently.

Now, sitting to the left were the locals. Now, some of you know how rowdy some of your “cousins” can get.  Let me not sugarcoat it. You know how GHETTO some people can be, and in this case…there were a table of 7 of the most ghetto women ever. They immediately demanded service. Talked over just about every one in the area. I knew eventually it would get interesting.

30 minutes later, we eventually got our drinks. But to TruOrleans credit, they did pass out comped bottles of beer.

30 minutes later, we were finally asked what we wanted for appetizers.  Gator Fritters, Crab/Crawfish Pistolettes & Gumbo is what we decided to “taste test”.

An hour later. Still no appetizers. An hour later, I was trying to be patient. I can’t say that for your “cousins” sitting at the other table. After several rounds of drinks, the natives were getting rowdy because they hadn’t been served their food.

The servers were clueless.

They were taking the wrong food to the wrong tables. People were not pleased. Every time we saw what looked to be our food pass right by our table, the more impatient we became.  Eventually we stopped the waiter so we could place our main course orders because we assumed it would take even longer if we waited to do so after the appetizers.

To make an already long blog post shorter,  It took over 2 hours to have our meal served.  The only items worth mentioning that actually had taste were the Pistolettes and the Gator Fritters.

Crab/Crawfish Pistolettes @ TruOrleans Grand Opening July 15th

Gator Fritters @ TruOrleans Restaurant Grand Opening July 15th

We decided to order two main dishes so that we could split them, so we ordered the Stuffed Catfish with Crawfish Etouffe over Rice & Fried Chicken with Dirty Rice.

Tastebud Fail Dot Com.

Stuffed Catfish with Crawfish Etouffe over Rice @ TruOrleans Restaurant Grand Opening July 15th

Fried Chicken w/Dirty Rice @ TruOrleans Restaurant Grand Opening July 15th

Never in my life have I ever had bland Cajun food until my experience at TruOrleans.

I’ve had better Dirty Rice from Popeyes. Never-mind the fact that I didn’t even bother tasting the chicken because even after the waiter’s 2nd try in bringing us a plate of white meat, he still ended up giving us dark meat. Danielle assured me that it was pretty bland.  The amount of disappointment I was experiencing was made worse because I knew the bill was coming. Eventually.

Let me not forget to mention that the restaurant informed people at 7pm, that they were shutting down the kitchen.

No more food orders were going to be allowed. They were essentially only open for bar business.

This is not acceptable (Gordon Ramsay voice). People were outraged, although the only people who voiced their outrage LOUDLY and GHETTOLY (yes I just made that word up) were your cousins sitting at the other table. You just can’t take some people anywhere. But apparently, being hot ghetto messes means that the manager will comp your drinks and only ask that you “take care” of your waiter. By “take care” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean for them to only leave a $7 tip after he comped them at least 5 rounds of drinks and shots.

2 1/2 hours later. We finally get our bill and $92 later, we realized that we just wasted a lot of money on a subpar meal.

As we left TruOrleans, we saw a lot of unhappy people. People waiting to be served. People waiting to be let into the restaurant.  All we could do was shake our heads. Maybe we’ll return. Maybe we won’t. Thankfully there are a few other restaurant choices in DC when it comes to Cajun food. TruOrleans  grand opening on H St taught me one valuable lesson, and that is to wait a few weeks after a restaurant has opened, so they can get their act together.