Bistro Daisy Restaurant in Uptown New Orleans

831 Magazine Street (Uptown)
New Orleans, Louisiana
(504) 899-6987

Dinner only, Tuesday through Saturday
Entrees $21 to $30

The skills Anton and Diane Schulte developed at Peristyle and showcased at La Petite Grocery are now on display at Bistro Daisy, the quaint restaurant the couple opened in August inside an old shotgun.

Chef Anton's talent is for reprogramming bistro cuisine with his own personality and fresh local ingredients. Diane's is for placing a gentle hand on the controls of dining rooms that regularly brim with customers. It will be fun to watch their new restaurant flower.

More from Tom Fitzmorris' review of Bistro Daisy in the New Orleans CityBusiness:

Commentary: Bistro Daisy's husband-wife duo produce dining bliss

Husband-and-wife restaurant teams are rare for a reason, and most married couples know the reason.

Some couples work together brilliantly, including Gunter and Evelyn Preuss (Broussard's), Frank and Marna Brigtsen (Brigtsen's), Greg and Mary Sonnier (formerly Gabrielle) and Anton and Diane Schulte.

The Schultes are a young couple with the added complication of a young child. They first turned up at Peristyle in the Anne Kearney hegemony as the operating team when La Petite Grocery opened. A disagreement with the owners over style motivated the Schultes to move their act 18 blocks up Magazine Street.

They took over the former Ristorante Civello, applied a bit of paint and hung a sign outside calling it Bistro Daisy after Anton Schulte's mother.

It's a trio of small dining rooms with a high ceiling, wood- plank floors, a real fireplace with a fake fire and big windows. It has the smallest parking lot of any restaurant I know. Civello blamed lacked of parking for its failure but you can usually find an on-street spot within a block.

The restaurant's name has a frivolous sound but this kitchen does its work in earnest with lofty standards for its raw materials.

In my most recent dinner, I was surprised by two such ingredients in a single dish: wild-caught redfish from North Carolina and sunflower sprouts from the Washington Parish farm of Tommye and Gerard Maras. This was a spectacular dish with a lemony beurre blanc and some red onions being the only other major ingredients. The sprouts, new to me, had big, tender leaves and a marvelous flavor that was completely unexpected.

The chef uses Louisiana ingredients widely throughout the menu, but the food doesn't taste Creole or Cajun. Schulte has a light hand with salt and pepper, far below what the typical New Orleans palate is accustomed to eating.

Three standout starters. The oysters are poached instead of fried or baked and sent out in a soupy sauce of their own liquor with the very different Herbsaint liqueur, fresh spinach, fennel, garlic and bacon. Although most of that is present in many versions of oysters Rockefeller, this dish doesn't have that flavor and sure doesn't look anything like it.

What comes out is nearly a soup, reminiscent of the way mussels are served but without the shells. After the oysters and vegetables are gone, you will need a spoon, or at least some bread so the juicy part isn't left behind.

Speaking of, they buy their bread from the nearby La Boulangerie. The little French-style round rolls are irresistible.

Speaking of mussels, they have those with a broth that varies only slightly from the French classic. It comes with a nice, spicy rouille.

The third starter of note is a take-along from Peristyle: jumbo lump crabmeat served with roasted beets and aioli. Crabmeat and beets don't look or sound right together, but they most emphatically taste right.

Soups run as specials. The puree of yellow bell pepper with goat cheese and a few herbs hit the spot.

A pasta entree of ravioli stuffed with wild mushrooms, pancetta and mascarpone cheese with leeks and sage bitter on the outside of the envelopes, makes a very good first or second course when split two ways.

The entrees are only a half dozen plus a couple of specials. This short list nevertheless covers all the bases. The roast chicken is covered with porcini mushroom dust — an offbeat but good idea, made by grinding dried porcini in a food processor and using it like flour as a coating.

The sauce is a thyme-flavored demi-glace, and that's just plain good. So is the pork chop, sent out with some pulled pork shank meat and choucroute, with the biggest flavors of anything I've had here.

I visited the kitchen for a few minutes, and while I was back there I saw a half-dozen filets mignon going out. They looked good, with a demi-glace, lyonnaise potatoes and a bit of Roquefort cheese on top. That last touch is about the only thing I've seen here that smacks of trendy, but nobody's making you eat the cheese.

The wine list fits on one page and includes a decent selection. A lot of customers here bring their own and pay the corkage fee, but there's no need to do that.

Desserts include a flame-crusted-to-order creme brulee, a warm apple galette with apple sorbet and a pistachio baked Alaska that's so solidly frozen in the center that you need a chisel to eat it.

Bistro Daisy's prices are a pleasant surprise. Entrees are almost all in the low $20s, with appetizers and desserts mostly in the single digits. Indeed, I'd call this one of the most attractive values in the gourmet category.

Bistro Daisy has only been open a couple of months — a short time before a review — but the Schultes picked up where they left off at the Grocery. Even the service staff, a group of very agreeable young women, is polished already. The food gives them much to be sharp about.