Off menu but right on target

Sometimes the best dishes at a restaurant are off the menu, and you often have to scratch your head wondering why. In the case of Le Creolé, that dish is the crab cake ($14). As for why it’s off-menu? Well, it seems they just like it that way. The crab cake is one of their top-selling items despite its lack of menu space. It’s almost always available, and the restaurant relies on their servers and word-of-mouth to promote it. The crab cake itself is a little different than most—beginning with a quarter pound of sweet jumbo lump blue crabmeat tossed in sauce ravigote to act as the binding agent. With no breadcrumbs, the cake, composed of little other than crabmeat, gets placed in a ring mold to shape it properly. Instead of being battered and dropped into a vat of hot oil, Le Creolé’s crab cakes are pan-seared on each side with nothing further added, finished in the broiler and plated with remoulade and buerre blanc sauces. Each bite contains an impressive amount of crab and a sweet, spicy and savory flavor combination. You can also now enjoy the crab cake in Le Creolé’s cocktail lounge and multimedia-equipped private dining room. You won’t regret asking the server, “What’s off the menu?”

18135 E. Petroleum Drive
lecreolebr.com