Uppermost Upperline

I’ve never been good at picking a favorite. I have a spectrum of favorite colors, a shelf of favorite books, and a complex system of favorite animals that involves size, biology, habitat, and whether the species is extinct. (I’d hate to short-change something really cool merely because it no longer, technically, exists.) But let me tell you—hands down, going away, flying colors, Upperline is my favorite restaurant. 

It was love at first sight; the attractive but unassuming Uptown New Orleans building, painted a cheery yellow (see above re: favorite colors), looks like the kind of place a local would have to tell you about—though we’ve been busy telling, apparently, as Upperline has a Susan Lucci-level tally of James Beard Award nominations. The interior reveals further glories. A sleek bar with a heavy-framed oblong mirror behind it recalls the only two truly attractive American design styles, Art Deco and Mid-Century Modern, while the walls of all three dining rooms are liberally festooned with local art, most of it chosen by owner JoAnn Clevenger herself. Even the small middle dining room, whose large windows look out onto trees to give the room a cooler, cozier feel, has paintings attached to the window frames. When I arrived for a recent visit, there was a new painting by the front door: a portrait of Gerard Crosby, bartender for twenty-four years, at the bar.

...the kind of place a local would have to tell you about—though we’ve been busy telling, apparently, as Upperline has a Susan Lucci-level tally of James Beard Award nominations.

Restauranteuse, raconteuse, and local legend Clevenger had a number of adventures before opening Upperline in 1983. She fought a florist’s cartel in court for the right to operate a flower cart and later opened the still-going-strong The Abbey, a twenty-four-hour Decatur Street watering hole that I’ve been to more times than I can remember. (I can’t remember many of them.) Clevenger credits The Abbey’s initial success to the fact that it was one of the first, possibly the first, places in the city where you could get the Sunday New York Times. Later, she would design costumes for One Mo’ Time, a New Orleans-themed traveling show, accompanying productions to Europe and Australia and even getting the chance to see performers wearing her costumes shake hands with the Queen. Now, she stands at the host’s station of Upperline most evenings, usually wearing a bold silver brooch shaped like a parrot, remembering even occasional guests like me. She identifies a [Central] Louisiana upbringing and the associated work ethic as the key to her varied successes. South Louisiana’s all about fun and free-spiritedness, neither foreign to Clevenger, but when it’s important she shows up to the meeting on time like the Alexandria-born entrepreneur she is.

South Louisiana’s all about fun and free-spiritedness, neither foreign to Clevenger, but when it’s important she shows up to the meeting on time like the Alexandria-born entrepreneur she is.

I’ve started every meal I’ve had at Upperline with a Dorothy Parker on the Bayou, a spicy gin cocktail garnished with three cinnamon Red Hots candies; they nestle in the vertex of the martini glass to produce a sugary-sharp final sip. The menu is arranged by courses, on the (reasonable) assumption you’ll want to eat a lot and try multiple dishes. This only helps somewhat, and most dinners here devolve into a complex game of horse-trading worthy of the Congress of Vienna: “I’ll get the oysters if you get the fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade, and we can share. No, I want all the turtle soup. Get your own.” (And this is just appetizers and soup-and-salad courses.) I’ve gradually been working my way through the entrée selections and have swooned over the lamb shank, the hot and hot shrimp (which comes with two different spicy sauces, hence “hot and hot”), and the drum meunière, but in the end my heart belongs to the duck. Offered as a half or quarter, with your choice of ginger peach or the very slightly superior garlic port sauce, the duck is sublime, and I’m not ashamed to say I turned my body to the wall so I could pull the last bit of meat from the drumstick with my teeth. The duck comes with whipped sweet potatoes, served in a tiny skillet; I heard a diner at an adjacent table say, “Oh, I don’t normally like sweet potatoes, but these are wonderful.”

I filled out my entrée with an à la carte order of sautéed greens. If you have a child who claims not to like vegetables, feed it the greens from Upperline and the squash from Dooky Chase; if the child still doesn’t like vegetables, you can send it to the convent with a clear conscience. It was not made for the delights of this world.

At least my dessert decision was easy. Upperline is so good that it creates a sense of community, the inverse of the bonds people form when they go through natural disasters together, and I had heard a woman say to more than one table on her way out the door to try the sundae Eugene, which had apparently been a transcendent experience she didn’t want anyone there to miss. The menu description was simple—vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, toasted almonds—but given Upperline’s transformation of greens, which are after all just leaves, I knew I would be in for a treat.

I was in for two. Clevenger arrived shortly after our desserts did and complimented my choice. (You heard it here first: JoAnn Clevenger approved of something I did.) The sundae is named after a friend who lent her the money to start Upperline; it’s a tribute not just to him but to the simple tastes of childhood. As Clevenger explained it, a simple chocolate sundae is a pleasure of childhood almost everyone has nostalgia for—“probably the only other thing like it is hot dogs”—but it’s never as good as an adult, because tastes mature but store-bought chocolate syrup doesn’t. Enter the housemade chocolate syrup, which tastes as good as you remember because it’s much, much better.

Clevenger went on to confide that she was expecting a proposal in the restaurant that night, and showed us a dessert menu she’d worked up with the groom, full of inside jokes and with “Will you marry me?” as the final option. (I’d certainly marry anyone or, hell, anything that took me to Upperline.) A new menu at Upperline is a rare sight, with the menu remaining largely stable over the years—the same man has made the gumbo for almost a decade, and the waiters can tell by diners’ expression if sauces are as they should be. Like the hot dogs and sundaes of childhood, Upperline’s cuisine will linger in the memory long after its traces have faded from the palate… but unlike those first taste delights, Upperline  has always been this good—and will be so for years to come.  

This article originally appeared in the February 2019 issue. Subscribe to our print edition here.