Ian McNulty: This modern Lakeview restaurant starts with cocktails, burgers, sense of fun | Where NOLA Eats

Shrimp toast is fun, and it turns out these triangles of crispy bread and soft, sesame-crusted shrimp spread are even better under a gravy-like drape of New Orleans BBQ shrimp sauce.

Frozen drinks are fun, and they’re better when you can taste the fresh ingredients, like the mint in a blueberry number.

Burgers are fun, and so are ice cream sundaes with chocolate sauce and chopped walnuts and a cherry the color of a clown’s nose sitting on top that makes you feel like a kid with sticky hands gripping the footed glass dish.

Fried cheese is just always fun, full stop.

All these things are part of Junior’s on Harrison, and Junior’s is fun.

Here is a restaurant that has not just persevered through the pandemic, but deliciously evolved into what so many people tell me they want when they’re looking for a casual restaurant these days. It feels comfortingly familiar, without relying on the same old script.

The menu reflects modern styles; there’s always something interesting to try, and it’s still the kind of place you can come any time. Most dishes are under $20, and the exceptions are clearly worth it.

The most old-fashioned part about Junior’s is on the cocktail menu, which lists classics next to a long roster of more contemporary spins. That’s a cue.

Start with a cocktail

Like High Hat Cafe on Freret Street or Tavolino in Algiers Point, Junior’s is a casual neighborhood restaurant that understands that when people go to a casual neighborhood restaurant they very often want a nice cocktail to put a bookend on the workday and open up the evening. In this regard, Junior’s has the best cocktail bar in its Lakeview Zip code.

The fried cheese mentioned above are curds, little nubs that have a puffy crust over a gooey, stretchy center. The thing about Junior’s is that right next to this pile of fried cheese you can have a well-crafted chilled seafood dish, perfect for the swelter now.

There are two of them on the current menu. One is a neat square of cubed, cured salmon dotted with peanuts and dabbed with bright, citrus mayo and crusty sourdough to use like crackers; the other is a tuna crudo, Peruvian-style, with a chile-streaked marinade.

When Junior’s first opened, the burger was front and center, not surprisingly. This restaurant was developed by Nick Hufft and Lon Marchand, who first made their names in Baton Rouge with the very popular Curbside Burgers truck, which is now a restaurant.

They opened Junior’s just a few months before the pandemic crashed down. But Junior’s kept cooking for its neighborhood at a time when most of its neighborhood was still working from home. Family meals and takeout were the lifeline for the restaurant and a relief for the customers. The walk-up ice cream window along the side became a takeout hub.

Flavor and range

The double stack Junior’s burger is a fine example of the current smash burger obsession. The patties are a little thicker than the standard but still have that griddled edge, and a seeded bun essentially conforms to the burger like a bready wrapper. Caramelized onions, tucked between the patties and transformed by their company, become a savory jelly by the time you bite through.

The fries on the side are as yellow and crisp as McDonald’s (which counts as high praise in my book). These are a little fluffier though, and you can fancy them up with some truffle oil and Parmesan shavings.

Just as fried cheese can lead to raw seafood here, the Junior’s burger can share the table with dishes that would be at home at restaurants of much more ambitious bearing.

See the blackened redfish, which does indeed taste blackened, a rarity today, not just over-seasoned and overcooked, the unfortunate common result. This one gives that distinctive campfire smokiness over the still-yielding, juicy flesh of the fish, and a buttery green chili waits beneath as each chunk slides off.

A good modern neighborhood restaurant should be there when you want a sandwich and when you want more of a restaurant meal. That range shows here through arancini rice fritters that pull apart with webby strands of mozzarella within, garlicky Korean beef in a pistolte with nacho-style cheese sauce, shrimp tacos and scallops over risotto (the other $30+ dish, along with the redfish).

Reeling in the years

A good modern neighborhood restaurant should also be there whether you want to bring the kids or you want to pretend they don’t exist, if only for the span of a two-cocktail dinner.

Upstairs at Junior’s there’s the lounge that feels like the New Orleans version of a basement den (meaning it’s on the second floor instead of underground), with an analog, hi-fi vibe and a 21+ policy.

Kids might pass through, ogling this adults-only area en route to the wraparound outdoor dining gallery overlooking Harrison. This and the sidewalk tables that gallery covers continue to get nicer in their look and amenities.

The ice cream window, dubbed Gail’s (from another of the operators’ brands), is back to the business of scoops handed down to kids walking up with their parents.

Getting back to what is normal for now, Junior’s seems to have emerged from earlier pandemic phases with more years under its belt than the calendar would indicate.

Those were hard times to work through and cook through. But people remember who was there for them, and Junior’s feels like it has a following it would ordinarily take a decade to build.

But then, when you create a neighborhood restaurant that is both delicious and fun, good things are bound to happen.

Junior’s on Harrison

789 Harrison Ave., (504) 766-6902

Lunch and dinner Mon.-Sat., brunch Sun.