The Bet-R has always been solid. Good meats, breads, veggies and dairy and an extensive collection of Blue Bell ice cream. Plenty of parking, really nice staff. I stopped in to load up on hurricane supplies (bottled water and Spaghetti-0’s) and couldn’t pass up the hot deli counter.
Sure, there are buffets all over town, but where else can you put together this plate lunch? Dark meat chicken, mac n cheese, crawfish étouffée and corn bread. Yum.
Bet-R isn’t the best at anything, but they are good at so many things that it will always be a go to place for ingredients, supplies, and cooked foods. They have a hot box right by the deli where they leave the leftovers from lunch. I’ll stop by and grab some fried catfish every now and then to slap between two pieces of white bread for a fast dinner. Great place. Great people. And really close to me.
You know how some folks just can’t pass up a yard sale? I’m that way with taco spots, even if they’re a split concept-shared kitchen-strip mall taco spot. I did a few tacos and they were quite nice. The chips and salsa were woefully generic though. Like plastic bag and gallon plastic jug generic.
I think I’ve got to go back at least one more time to try the smoke chile cumin wings from the Bayou Boys side of the store. And I did like the tacos enough to want to try a quesadilla. The meats and sauces were well seasoned. Scared of the salsa, but maybe the guac and pico would be okay. The true find here was the decor. A lot of interesting wall art and near dream catchers.
And here’s an old piece of mine that fits the day’s yard sale theme.
Collegetown Summer Tie-dyed yard sales Worn paperback libraries An entire thrift store’s worth of mismatched plates and cutlery. And here and there only debris left over from the glory days— header and footer of a sleigh bed, pieces of cum stained couch, kitten riddled blinds, I remember a pair of size four hiking boots left to dry on top the water heater forgotten in the scramble to live again somewhere new, somewhere different. She also left a Chinese lantern, the kind that covers a naked bulb above a waterbed– abandoned witness to love and trying to love.
And yes, there are tongue pulled U-hauls
sweating in the shade of mimosas and crepe myrtles
Coughing up beds and clothes and desktops like hair balls.
Everyone must live the dream, everyone must be broken,
everyone must move on. Somewhere new.
Somewhere different.
I have to admit I was a bit leery of corporate ramen, but I wanted to go see the new Spiderman movie and Jinya is right next door to Cinemark in Perkins Rowe. Turned out to be a great move. The place had at least fifty percent bar seating at the real bar, the bar around the exhibition kitchen, and under the windows. There’s a little patio outside (that looks great for people watching) located in the portico of the Cinemark theater. Most importantly though, the bowl of ramen I ended up with was fantastic.
The three boneless skinless chicken thighs were fried perfectly and set in the umami chicken broth along with half a spicy egg, bamboo shoots, nori, green onions, and thin noodles. It was only one of many choices, and there’s a long list of additions you can make to customize any bowl you order. The staff was young, into it, and kept doing that Thank you! in unison thing, along with a couple of other shouts I didn’t really grasp. In my defense, I was really busy with the ramen. The decor was a sharp, upscale take on traditional Japanese style elements. Normally I would call that corporate clinical (or cynical) but this rendition was quite nice throughout the store.
I don’t know why, exactly, but I’ve long had an affinity for one parking spot for two or more activities. When I lived in Culver City, my brother and I would haul our laundry to a spot right next to a pizza parlor. The pizza wasn’t great, but the beer was cold. Same thing here in BR when the ex and I would haul our laundry to the place right around the corner from Chelsea’s in University Shopping Center. Or one better, Igor’s on St. Charles in New Orleans where the bar and laundry are the same business. At any rate, dinner and a movie just got a lot better with the addition of Jinya next door to Cinemark. And yes, the new Spiderman movie is both funny and intense.
This was mainly a nostalgia trip. I’ve been to this Gatti’s before and they have a nice buffet. Pasta bar, salad bar, five or six fresh baked pizza’s laid out for you to choose as many slices as you want. And very inexpensive. You can really throw down here if that’s what you want to do, but I was really thinking about another Gatti’s, the one that used to be on Florida near Sharp where I would meet my high school sweetheart on Friday nights after I was done playing football at Olympia Stadium, or occasionally at Memorial Stadium. She’d wait at Gatti’s with friends while I took the long bus ride home with my guys (we had a lot of injuries my senior year and ended up losing more games than we won) and taking a quick shower and jumping into the Rambler to go catch up with her. We would always order her favorite–Canadian bacon, mushroom, black olive–and gaze at each other over the top of the plastic pitcher of beer we shared before paying up and finding a parking lot to work on our night moves. These guys on Essen went a little crazy with the black olives, and the sauce now seems almost as bright as Chef Boyardee, and the one on Florida seemed a lot swankier (at least to us back then) and wasn’t mainly a buffet like this one is now.
Some memories still taste good, no matter how old they become. She was and still is a fantastic artist, but when she was born again, I just couldn’t take that journey with her. Every now and then I will order up a Canadian bacon, mushroom, and black olive just to think back on those days filled with passion and drama and joy and fear as only the last days of high school can be, but when it’s about the pizza, I’m always going to head over to Fleur de Lis or maybe Red Zeppelin. Then and now. Funny how they only intersect now and then.
I know to some of you it may seem like Highland Coffees has been there forever, but way back when, that same cul de sac off Chimes St was occupied by The Gumbo Place and later The Mediterranean Café. There was a Marine recruiting center next door to a keg store (sorry, can’t remember the name) and back entrances to Godfather’s Pizza and Bank One? Bank of America? Clarke Cadzow, the owner/operator of Highland Coffees and a fervent Northgate historian, left this mural in what was once the patio of the Med Café and it is now part of Highland Coffees.
The patio itself is deep and shady and seems very much a natural extension of the LSU campus across the street. During each semester the place is full of students, staff, faculty and locals all day and well into the night. Highland roasts their own beans, creates all espresso drinks to order and brews small batches of the daily special blends throughout the day. They also have a granita machine which is a tremendous boon during the summer months.
The shop is very involved in readings and local art and music. Clarke usually rotates local artists’ work in the shop every six weeks or so, which makes it an even nicer place to visit–but of course, parking, the one inescapable issue around campus.
I’ve always viewed neighborhood coffee shops as secular churches. They are quiet. People are courteous. And everyone walks in wanting to be a better person. Highland Coffees also has cakes and pastries supplied by a local baker and an extensive list of loose leaf teas and natural waters. I’m a big fan of the iced mocha and granita, and occasionally I’ll get the ham and cheese croissant or break down and get a muffin or a slice of cake. Good place to bring the laptop to set up to surf or write or just answer email and listen to tunes while enjoying top of the line fresh brewed coffee.
I would really, really like to award Koi first place in the nigiri bento box competition because it has that dive vibe that I’ve always loved about sushi bars in Los Angeles and New Orleans (and NO bars in general) so everything seems like a hidden gem, but even though it’s a bento and not just a sushi lunch it doesn’t quite measure up to this year’s winner, Sushi Yama. I love the gyoza dumplings, I love the almost fried rice (bit of egg tossed in) and I like the five pieces of nigiri, but only two of them are high end additions, and Sushi Yama leads with a free cucumber salad and ends with sliced fresh pineapple.
Koi also has a “hidden” Chinese menu, but I’ve never really gotten past the bento box lunch there, or even tried one of the other lunch specials. Guess I need to put that on the list of things to do, places to be.
I didn’t really care much for Hello Sushi when it occupied this space, but Chef Cong has turned it around and made it his own. I usually visit Umami for my favorites and the specials, but sushi week is all about chasing down the best nigiri bento in Baton Rouge. Umami doesn’t have a bento box, but they do have a nigiri lunch special with your choice of miso soup or a side salad, chef’s choice of five pieces of nigiri sushi, and your choice of either a tuna, salmon, or yellowtail roll.
The addition of the octopus is a very nice touch and as always everything is perfectly crafted and just out the ocean fresh, but although Umami is my favorite Baton Rouge sushi bar these days, Sushi Yama still has the lead in the bento box competition, mainly because it is an actual bento and the cucumber salad before, the sliced pineapple after, and the shrimp tempura that comes with put it over the top. The bento is a mix of hot and cold mini dishes and this Umami plate, as lovely and delicious as it is, is still a sushi lunch, not a bento box. Here’s a parting shot to meditate upon. I am always filled with anticipation after I fill whatever container is provided with soy sauce and await the sushi. We all know that anticipation is often greater than the event itself or the resulting memory. Umami is good to me before, during, and after.
This place, along with Umami Japanese Bistro on Burbank, is a very dangerous place to do lunch. One reason for my obsession with the nigiri bento box is that tunnel vision focused on the lunch special is about the only way for me to avoid a $60 lunch trip without sake. There are a couple of other things here you can focus on like the Tuna Blossom and the Hawaiian Salad, but the bento is the best way to keep the cost down. Sushi Yama does amazing specials, as does Umami, and that does help them both to the top of my list of go to sushi spots. I had some Japanese oysters here once that are far and away the best I’ve ever put in my mouth. Sushi Yama starts everyone off with a cucumber salad and ends every visit with sliced pineapple which is a very nice touch.
The bento box starts with miso and features shrimp tempura to go with half a cali roll and four pieces of nigiri, along with house salad and sticky rice.
Another plus is the nigiri is all fresh fish. No shrimp or imitation crab or escalar. Of course you sacrifice half the cali roll for the all fish nigiri and the shrimp tempura, and fried rice would be more fun, but Sushi Yama has the lead in the nigiri bento box race, and also with wall art. These are just a few of the really nice prints and paintings and pieces that adorn their store.
Summer is good for a couple of things. Hunting down the best nigiri bento box in the area is one. Going on Netflix or Amazon Video and rewatching police procedurals is another. Alas, the best nigiri bento of years past will not take first place again. Waka House does still offer a nigiri bento, but it isn’t as well populated as it once was.
The white rice used to be house fried rice with chicken, pork, shrimp and egg. The potato croquette in the upper right compartment used to be two mini-yakitori skewers, usually chicken and shrimp. A sad day compared to what once was, but what has not changed is the wonderful atmosphere and the pot of loose leaf green jasmine tea.
We all want what we once had to be as good as we remembered it to be. We also want to be able to experience it again now. To me the only way to do that is to hunt for music on You Tube, reread classics, and binge old shows when they arrive on Netflix or Prime or some other video service. Two summers ago I went through all the old NCIS episodes. Last summer was NYPD Blue. Earlier this year I found old episodes of JAG (Harm and Mac showed up on the season finale of NCIS: Los Angeles this season) and now I’m digging deep into In Plain Sight, The Closer, and Rizzoli and Isles. One thing you gain from going back to the days of television before cell phones is more of a sense of how long we have been struggling with the same issues of inclusion. Television series have always poked and prodded at our shortcomings. Police procedurals have the advantage of being able to steer the narrative toward any class or subset of the populace. The push to accept non-straight, non-white, non-male people as human has been going on for quite some time. Old television shows illuminate both progress and the lack of progress in any number of areas. I’m pretty dug in with my watch list this summer, but I think next summer I’m going to try to hunt down All In the Family and Ally McBeal. I think that would be a really interesting pairing.
So now it is time to say goodbye to Waka House, perhaps for good. Sherwood Forest is a long trek to a non-scenic area (although Waka remains beautiful inside) and the astounding nigiri bento they used to serve was what always captivated me about the place. There are other places closer to me that I’m more likely to visit, but if Waka is in your area, you should slip in sometime. Enjoy a pot of jasmine tea, the nice wall art and unique furnishings, and top notch sushi.
I’m sure many of you know Phil’s long history in BR, first on Government, then for a short while on Concord before shutting down for roughly a decade before opening up again in their current space in Southdowns. A very long, very illustrious history of good food and good times. These guys know what they’re doing, and like a lot of seafood restaurants in town, they do a great job with the turf portion of the menu. This trip I went with the Macie, half of any poboy with a side salad or a cup of any soup. I did roast beef and chicken and sausage gumbo. Good call on my part.
One of the small details I like about Phil’s is they use ceramic ramekins instead of plastic for sides and sauces. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but it bumps up the experience and avoids the chill of cheapness. Here’s another nice touch:
They leave a few butters out at room temp on the cracker baskets so you can butter a saltine and munch if you show up really hungry. Very old school. No charge. Just built in hospitality. That goes a long way. The roast beef poboy and gumbo were both excellent, and you’ve got to love the option to put together your own lunch with a little variety. I definitely plan to go back this summer to try some of the nice salads on the menu as well. I’m especially interested in the shrimp remoulade since they add fried green tomatoes to it. This version of Phil’s is kitted out as a sports bar. The original was a sports bar too, just not as many televisions.
