Month: July 2019

This is a classy little joint with excellent food and service. The opera they play at lunch is very soothing, to me anyway. The waxed cloth table covers and well worn furniture make for a very comfortable and comforting environment to eat some real deal Italian fare.

They have a whole lot of lunch specials, and poboys, and pizzas at lunch time, along with some higher end classics like osso buco, and veal piccata and Marsala available on the regular menu if you want to splurge mid-week. I wouldn’t argue against it. I chose the five cheese lasagna over the spaghetti with garlic, olive oil, and parsley, and the spaghetti with olive oil, capers, and anchovies mainly because it has been such a long time since I had a lasagna. I would be happy to go back and sample the other two dishes later this week, since I really wanted all three and both veal dishes. I love a menu that makes me struggle to decide what I want. The lasagna was very good. The DiGiulio red sauce is not too bright or too bold. More low and slow and savory. The Caesar salad was well done with homemade French bread croutons, and the fresh baked bread that came with the lasagna almost stole the show completely.

There are a lot of fine Italian choices in town. This place definitely joins Gino’s and Pinetta’s in my top three. Really the only reason I pick one over the other two is entirely dependent on my mood at the time. I like them all, and I always want to go back soon.

This is probably the best grab and go Chinese I know of. They have a few tables, but that’s mostly for waiting for your food to be ready to go. Extensive menu, well executed.

I tried their won ton soup for the first time, and while it was very good, it didn’t quite make it to the level of the one I had recently in Huntsville, so I’ll keep searching. But the shrimp rolls are what always draw me to Nine Dragon. They are outstanding. Now I haven’t been to the sister Nine Dragon in awhile; it shares the shopping center with the neighborhood Wal-Mart at Highland and Lee and is very good in it’s own right, so I probably need to run by there soon. I like to take my take out Chinese and plate it up at my house. Looking better doesn’t necessarily make food taste better, but it does make the whole meal feel better.

One of the greatest things about Inga’s subs is that they are fantastic the next day. I don’t know the secret, but maybe a combination of the oil and vinegar dressing and how well they wrap the sandwiches to go and the bread they use all combine to make a sandwich where the bread is soft, but not soggy, and all the meats and cheeses and condiments are married perfectly into a fantastic treat to pull out of the cooler with a beer when you’re fishing and the sun hits the top of the sky. Yeah, yeah, yeah–I know. A frycook is supposed to pack his own lunch. Make his own sandwiches or shrimp and orzo pasta salad, but sometimes I cheat. And Inga’s is perfect for that.

I spent nine years at LSU pursuing two degrees, so I am very familiar with Inga’s. And Louie’s. And the Chimes and Chelsea’s. The Library, The Bayou, Magoo’s, The Gumbo Place and Calendar’s on the other side of campus. The White Horse, The Brass Rail, The Cotton Club, Mother’s Mantel. Slinky’s, the Long Branch. I miss most of those places since they’re gone and I grew up there. So I’m very happy that Inga’s is still around, although this is the fourth location they’ve been in between The University Shopping Center, State Street, and Chimes Street. Inga was a wizard at taking money to move the shop a couple of doors down, or over to the next block. She sold the place a while back. I don’t know the particulars and haven’t run into her in several years, but the subs are still great (if you order double meat they are almost exactly like they were back then) and again, they are great to pick up the day before you have to pack a lunch somewhere.

This funky place was my last stop before leaving Natchez to head back to Baton Rouge. I couldn’t help but think the whole time that this lunch would be so much better with beer. Reading up on Mississippi tamales, I couldn’t really find a straight answer as to why tamales were so prized in a community with so few Hispanics. There were tales of migrant workers or Native Americans introducing the tamale to field hands (slaves) as an easy to transport meal, but I couldn’t find a clear reason for the Mississippi version to persist when there’s such easy access to more authentic tamales. These were okay, I even got some chili to top them off with to recreate what they call a gringo pie (tamales smothered in chili, onions, and cheese) but I’ve had so many better tamales, it was hard to see what all the fuss was about. All of us old enough to remember Muffaletta’s tamale joint on North miss those more than any other tamales. Fat, greasy, and fantastic with a High Life. And certainly venison tamales have worked their way into hunting camp processing over the years, but the Mississippi claim on great tamales seems as overblown as being the state that birthed the blues. Now they may have caused the blues, but certainly New Orleans and Memphis and Chicago have just as much if not more ownership of the blues. Anyway, still think this place would be a lot more fun with a bunch of friends and a bucket of beer.

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I’ve had some of the best ham and cheese poboys at joints like this, and Andrew’s did not disappoint. Now there’s no place to sit, except for four folding chairs set out to wait for your order to go, so you definitely have to have a place in mind to take your food to chow down, but the ham and cheese is definitely legit.

And the fried wings with shrimp fried rice ain’t half bad either. And both are dirt cheap. Eight bucks for the poboy and six bucks and change for six wings and the rice that comes with. Good deal. They will also put together a power order if you want to pick up lunch for the office.

Thai Pepper is a great place to turn people on to Thai cuisine. Especially at the lunch buffet which has a lot of vegan options to go along with all the standard Thai fare. Pad thai, lemongrass soup, fried rice and spring rolls, coconut soup–it’s really extensive and well prepared. Here’s a look at the buffet, and some plates I was able to put together for a fantastic lunch.

I know it’s really hard sometimes to get meat and potatoes folks to leave their lane, but I’ve found that if they think they are getting a lot of bang for their buck, they are much more eager to try new things. They worry that elitists foods are not filling and are just an attempt to take advantage of them, and they don’t like trying foods they didn’t grow up with, but Thai Pepper welcomes everyone with fresh, well prepped dishes that can help get anyone out of their rut. Opening minds is the first step to opening hearts. Everyone will find something they like at Thai Pepper. Point them towards the fried rice and the lemongrass or coconut soup to get them started down the right path.

I’m sure everyone has at least one Ninfa’s/Tio Javi’s party story. Cinco de Mayo or just a stray Wednesday night that made Thursday very, very difficult, but this is about the food. Very high quality Tex/Mex. The tamales are shredded roast pork rather than ground pork. Almost like carnitas coated in masa. The beef enchilada was made with fajita steak and both enchilada sauces were very good. The chile releno was top notch as well and the rice and beans lived up to the rest of the plate. Crispy taco gringo to round out the Presidente combo. Two kinds of salsa and fresh, hot chips as well.

The bar staff always knows what they’re doing. The decor isn’t particularly special, but they do have a couple of shrine-like niches filled with mementos. Good place to hang, just easy to forget it’s over there on Constitution.

I thought it might be a good idea to hit Doe’s for lunch and give their hamburger a try. Very good call. Good beef and bun, fresh cut condiments, and the house fries were some of the best I’ve had. Super crisp. They have a lot of poboys and plate lunches to round out the lunch menu, and I’m pretty sure everyone already knows about their steaks and shrimp and tamales. After all, they’ve been in town awhile now.

I was pretty intrigued by the Mississippi origin of Doe’s, since I just got back from a trip to Natchez (Vicksburg is next up on the list) and I’ve always liked the combination camp/old home feel of the dining room and the speak-easy cosiness of the attached bar. Doe’s is probably the first place I encountered that took high end product and dressed it as down home fare. The paper towels on the table mark a clear divergence from the path taken by places like Ruth’s Chris and J. Alexander’s. I’m probably headed back real soon to see what kind of job they can do with their country fried steak, hamburger steak, and spaghetti and meatballs. And I’m interested in trying their debris poboy, yet another link between Mississippi and New Orleans. Also the history posted on their website is worth a look. Very enlightening entry in the muddy back story of Mississippi race relations.

The lunch specials at King’s Wok are a whole lot of food for not a lot of money. In fact, add an extra egg roll (or two) and there’s plenty to share with a friend (or two) if you can agree on what you want to eat. The shrimp lo mein was fine, as was the pork fried rice. The egg roll was actually a notch above most places. Seemed a bit fresher and the insides crisper than I’m used to at these mostly grab and go Chinese take-outs.

But I was there because I’d read great Yelp! things about their won ton soup. Unsurprisingly, I was misdirected. A whole lot of noodle in scalding chicken broth with just a hint of minced pork and green onion.

Place was clean, the family was nice, if this is your neighborhood or you find yourself in the area at lunchtime, the food is definitely better than P.F. Chang’s, even if that’s not a very high bar. I did see one thing in the store I’d never seen before. This piece.

Here’s a really interesting spot in riverside Natchez that had excellent wood-fired flatbreads and really good local drafts. The bartender was from NO, actually he once managed the House of Blues down there, and at one point in the evening, he answered another guest’s question with an in depth rendition of the origin of both the Sazerac and Old Fashioned cocktails. History is big here in Natchez, and this place in particular. They’ve kept as much of the feel of a late 1700’s tavern as they could while remaining within the fire code. I’m pretty sure the food now is much better than it was then. People like to romanticize the cuisine of the past, but really, in an era where salt was prized, how good could it have been compared to the incredible availability of fresh ingredients we have today? And even now, that’s not enough for some establishments to put out superior fare.