Ian McNulty: Local flavor with a sense of escape in the patio at this Gentilly restaurant (2024)

This is the shoulder season for outdoor dining in New Orleans, a time when the supper hour can moderate down to a pleasant temperature after a hot day. It's also a time when a restaurant space that feels like an escape from that hot day can be a blessing.

Afrodisiac is a restaurant that satisfies on both counts. It's a true hidden gem in Gentilly with a verdant patio just waiting to be discovered. I revisited it recently as part of our "Eating with Ian" online video series, and I've been thinking about how good it was ever since.

Afrodisiac was a food vendor this year at the French Quarter Festival in April, where many more people got a taste of its cooking. More rewarding still is a visit to the restaurant, a cottage-sized mom-and-pop with a big heart that opens to a large, terraced patio fringed by ginger and palmetto.

Restaurant founders Kay and Shaka Garel started out with a food truck and a menu blending his roots in Jamaica and hers in Louisiana. That truck was crushed by a falling tree when it was parked outside the couple's home during Hurricane Zeta in 2020. But soon a wave of community support helped buoy the business, and by 2022, they opened their restaurant in Gentilly.

It expands on the food truck menu and adds a bar for a casual, welcoming Creole/island fusion restaurant that feels just right for New Orleans.

Crawfish étouffée fries are a fun place to start, and the buttery BBQ shrimp are ignited by jerk flavor. The first peppery bite pops on the palate and then keeps coming, not overwhelming, but robust and riveting.

But the big hit are the turkey necks, a dish Afrodisiac served at French Quarter Fest too. You have to commit to turkey necks and really get in there between the ridges of bone, and these delicious examples paid off with juicy, smoky, peppery morsels.

For entrees, the oxtails in a rich, dark gravy is another you’ll want to take down to the bone.

The shrimp stew is bright and soulful, like back-of-the-stove cooking. It blends Louisiana flavor and island vibrancy beautifully, with plump shrimp mixing it up with smoked sausage and potatoes in a curry sauce.

Afrodisiac tastes like the islands, and that goes for the bar too. I like the Three Little Birds cocktail (with rum and lime and agave) and a rum punch that’s potent and not too sweet.

The restaurant presents a blink-and-you-missed-it storefront from the street, but once you walk inside, it keeps going.

A mural of African beauty and Louisiana food bounty by Lionel Milton adorns one wall. A pattern of iridescent irises covers another. Little touches of personality and color appear across the small dining rooms leading out to the patio.

You’d never suspect this patio waiting back here, but once you go to Afrodisiac, you’ll always remember it.

Afrodisiac

5363 Franklin Ave.,(504) 302-2090

Wed., Thu. 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Fri., Sat. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Note: the restaurant's hours change frequently, check its status via instagram.com/afrodisiacnola.