Will the true Emeril’s banana cream pie please step forward? There are two in play, and embedded in their difference is the story of restaurant evolution and an enduring New Orleans food obsession.
The one at Emeril’s Restaurant (800 Tchoupitoulas St.) is a whole, round, towering pie in miniature, reduced to the size of a Fabergé egg, and looking just as delicate under sinuous curves of cream.
An exquisite delight, complete with its own wine pairing (recently, a magnificently aged Madeira), the pie is included as a course on Emeril’s decadent, bucket-list tasting menu, which starts at $295.
The dessert is also a refinement of a more bodacious banana cream pie that was a fixture at the same address since the day chef Emeril Lagasse first opened his restaurant back in 1990…