The Most Hipster Restaurant of all time has been opened in NOLA: N7

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I kept catching whispers about N7. When I was in Bywater, I overheard talk about it ("Have you been?"). Someone said it was a secret. Another friend drove by twice during the day, reporting that I must be mistaken about the address. Not even Google could find it.

A few weeks back, I stood outside a high wooden fence on a block off St. Claude Avenue. The gate was discreetly marked in red paint with an "N7" stencil. Three people biked up and entered. I followed, not sure what I would find or whether I'd be asked to leave.

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The "carte" is succinct. A soup. A salad. A few French classics, like steak au poivre or coq au riesling. The only dessert is cheese.

A whisper of Japan echoes through the menu. The salmon is cured with sake. Ginger and soy sauce flavor the mackerel tartare. The drinks list includes shochu.

Half the menu comes in cans, each one pulled open and presented with its cardboard box, some of which are pretty enough to collect.

In America, canned seafood falls low on the list of appetizing choices. We dig out dusty cans when we need a tuna salad or a single anchovy for a dressing. But in Europe, particularly Spain, canned seafood, packed by hand and filled with the best olive oil, are prized as much as the fresh catch.

The canned offerings at N7 include spiced calamari, mussels in vinegary escabeche marinade and small smoked sardines. The list is growing. A few of the cans at N7 can be found elsewhere in America; others are from producers who put them in a box and ship them straight to New Orleans.

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