Dang’s is probably the best Vietnamese joint in BR, but it is way, way out there if you live anywhere near the river, and Drunken Fish is very good with a split between traditional Vietnamese and a really good sushi bar, but the newcomer in the area, Pandan, more than holds its own. Being right next to the college they are all in on the bubble tea fad, and I should have tried one, but it is very difficult for me to pass up an iced Vietnamese coffee and that is one of my markers for Vietnamese places. I was not disappointed.
Maybe it is just the super sweet condensed milk that put it over the top for me, but the coffee base is strong and rich as well and the combination is very, very satisfying and goes well with all Vietnamese food. I went with the pork spring rolls and the pork banh mi on this initial visit and while it took a while to come out I’m pretty convinced it was because they use a parbaked french bread bun and finish it fresh in the oven. Melt in your mouth and the pork in both dishes was hot off the grill which means the spring rolls were also made to order.
I will definitely return to try the rice and vermicelli dishes and the pho. I am also intrigued by the Poor Man’s Noodle Soup. They also offer tea cakes and pastries and on the way out the door I asked about their king cake and they told me it had to be ordered in advance because it came from New Orleans. I will definitely have to get one to start the festivities at the shop!
For a couple of bucks you can park at the Galvez Parking lot on Main Street downtown and it will put you right in the middle of a lot of interesting eateries. Just tried the Jambalaya Shoppe for the first time and I will definitely go back to try the gumbo and crawfish pie at some point along with some of the lunch specials. Amazing how a place can work into your rotation on the first trip. Jambalaya like barbecue is hard to take to retail since prep time is so long that you really have to have a good grip on what you might sell on any given shift to make it profitable. These guys do a really good job. The flavor base of garlic, onions, chicken and sausage and salt is strong. They do go easy on the red white and black pepper so the base product is richly flavored but mild, but everyone knows you can turn the music up at the table with hot sauce and added seasoning but you can’t turn it down. No one in the restaurant business wants to spice out their customers. Think about the over-spiced crawfish you’ve had–all heat and no real flavor. Mostly that happens in someone’s backyard. They used to get that all wrong in California when I was out there. They thought blackened seasoning was all about the cayenne when really it’s about balancing salt and herbs with peppers for the fullest flavor profile you can manage. Jambalaya is the most obvious example of Spanish influence on our cuisine. Jambalaya is much closer to paella than pilaf. Way back when at The Gumbo Place is where I first learned to make a jambalaya and that one was very heavy on herbs like basil, sage, and thyme. It definitely gave it it’s own twist. We also turned that one off at the slurry stage when the meat was browned and cooked down with the garlic, onions, bell pepper, and celery into a kind of wet paste. This is where you would add stock if you were going to cook the rice in the pot, but at the Gumbo place we stopped there and reheated the slurry for the line a half gallon at a time and mixed in cooked white rice and held it on the steam table. When I would cook jambalaya for parties at another restaurant I would start the day before and move past the slurry stage to add the stock and bring it back to a boil to the point where you would add the rice and turn it down tightly covered to finish it. Instead I would turn it off and put it in the cooler to reheat to the same point the next day while I was getting everything else ready then add the rice 45 minutes out from the start of the party so it would be hot and right on time. I hated cooking jambalaya on site because their was always at least one asshole that would come up and tell you how you were doing it all wrong, and jambalaya takes at least three hours do right which means it took at least that long to shut all the “experts” up by serving the jambalaya. Since jambalaya is such a deep flavor dish the best way to improve your recipe is to gather the very best ingredients you can. One of the reasons our on site jambalaya took so long was that we started with hen meat which has a deep flavor but really has to be stewed to break it down. It was also a three meat jambalaya with Boston butt, boneless skinless hen meat, and smoked sausage. Once you had that one boiling with the stock in it you had to let it roll for an hour before you added the rice just to get the hen to its shredding point. This is also where Prudhomme’s layered seasoning concept is very important for building depth of flavor. You season a little bit throughout the process instead of all at once. The other benefit of that method is that it allows you to adjust, adjust, adjust until you zero in on exactly what you want. You really need to use the best possible stock and rice you can get your hands on as well. Or you can head over to the Jambalaya Shoppe for a very good plate of jambalaya with a roll and two sides like white beans and potato salad for under ten bucks. Very good deal when it’s cold and nasty outside and you want something to warm you up quick.
(The next day ended up being just as wet and nasty as the day before so I headed back to the Jambalaya Shoppe to try the chicken and sausage gumbo and the mini crawfish pies. And I am very glad I did.)
A few years ago I began a quest for the best nigiri bento box in Baton Rouge. Like any other food quest, best diner burger, best grilled cheese, a decent carbonara–the quest is ongoing. As of now, Koi is second to Waka House, but it is easier for me to get to Koi for lunch than either location of Waka so that makes it de facto number one in my book, even though the Waka bento comes with baby shrimp and chicken yakitori sticks and a house fried rice that blows Koi’s away. There are a lot of sushi places now, and that is a very good thing because you can pick and choose where you want to go for whatever mood your are in and what kind of experience you want. Koi is right across the street from Kaminari Sushi and Hibachi which is a buffet style place with everything pre-made and laid out with a few hot dishes and a build your own hibachi grill. Both are good lunch spots and Kaminari is cheaper but Koi has far better sushi and dumplings. And every buffet I’ve ever been to outside of Caesar’s Palace in Vegas has that vague whiff of an EBRP school cafeteria. The mass produced food (which doesn’t mean it isn’t tasty) the cooks and servers who act like autoworkers, the grabby, jostling atmosphere of the line and the tables jammed too close together sometimes bring back that gnawing anxiety of being in high school. But then again, sometimes you are pressed for time and just need to chow down on something good to eat without a server between you and your meal.
For a few bucks more, Koi will upgrade the salad from iceberg to seaweed and the soup from miso to clear. Worth it to me and no problem to them. You being there is why they offer the lunch specials anyway so they are always happy to see you. This is true for every restaurant open at lunch besides the fast food joints. They want the business and will go out of their way at lunch to get you what you need. Same thing on week nights. Restaurants survive off of weekend sales, but they thrive when they build lunch, happy hour, and week night crowds. So Koi is my go to for the nigiri bento. Drunken Fish when I want to mix Japanese and Vietnamese. Umami is my favorite, and I will write them up soon since I got a hundred dollar gift card for Christmas. He is very good about importing Japanese fish to try.. Waka House is a must for lunch if you are out near Sherwood Forest and Coursey for store one or Highland and Lee for store two. And Koi does offer a Chinese menu as well and is right by campus which makes it convenient for week nights before or after a play or choral recital or jazz ensemble at LSU.
My favorite Emeril Lagasse slogan is Kick it up a notch! Of course for Emeril that is followed by his favorite slogan BAM!!! where he dusts whatever it is in more of the seasoning that he wants to sell you. I agree with the notion of adding something to make it better, but not necessarily that it is always more seasoning. I know I go on and on about our access these days to foods that weren’t readily available in the good old days, but it is very nice to go to the Whole Foods or Fresh Market and always be able find lamb and duck and rabbit. Maybe one day we will be able to count on finding fresh eel and abalone like you can in Houston and Austin. I certainly hope so. Anyway, I marinated this lamb steak over night in some syrup left over from a jar of fig preserves and added Lea & Perrins and roasted garlic olive oil and garlic salt/garlic powder/onion powder/black pepper and fired up the gas grill and went 5 minutes a side on high.
The television shows Chopped and Chopped After Hours have really helped me to look at leftovers as opportunities. The contestants and even more so the judges when they take to the kitchen in Chopped After Hours demonstrate how you should look at the pantry. Coming up with a bunch of ideas really quickly, weeding through them to find the one you have the time and resources to execute, and continuing to improvise and adapt when things go south. In addition to teaching the lesson of running constant scenarios, even as you are working on something, they really drive home the notion of re-purposing packaged foods. And so we come to this dish which came together for breakfast because I had some leftover beef tenderloin and had bought some sliced baby bellas to add to a packaged porcini risotto I’ve been wanting to check out.
I didn’t really want to go the ramen route, so I decided to use the instant noodles and save the flavor pack for another time. Tossed it right into the drawer with all the tiny plastic pouches of duck and soy sauce that probably won’t ever be used but I can’t bring myself to throw away. So, beef, mushrooms, noodles. Check, check, and check. I put the leftover beef and a handful of mushooms in a pot with 2 cups of Swanson’s beef broth and fired it up while I scrambled some eggs and chopped some green onions. Let it roll for a minute or two when it came to a boil just to get the mushrooms right then added the noodles and told Alexa to set a ramen timer for 4 minutes (not really ramen, but Alexa didn’t need to know that). Set the eggs and green onions in a bowl and poured the beef and broth and mushrooms over it and Voila! breakfast. But it didn’t have to be breakfast. This quickie would be good for any meal and takes so little time and effort to throw down and goes equally well with coffee, coke, or an America pale ale like Parish Envie.
Duck breast with dirty rice, garlic green beans, and pepper jelly
So I’m sure you know about the seafood at Parrain’s, but the turf part of the menu is loaded as well. Now you might have to play around with the temperature on the duck breast to get it just how you like it. The one pictured is mid-well, an overreaction on my part to the mid-rare being a little under for me, but both versions were tasty. I will probably go with medium next time. In addition to the duck, they have a deep fried Cornish hen described on the menu as “Like a little fried turkey served with dirty rice” and it is just like a fried turkey, marinated and juicy inside with the skin crisped. And you get the whole bird to yourself so there’s no fighting over the pope’s nose or who gets a wing.
They also offer a really nice bone in pork chop.
And of course the filet and ribeye that most seafood restaurants add to the menu.
So why am I talking so much about the meats at a seafood restaurant instead of the fried shrimp and catfish and alligator and the black and bleu tuna over linguine Alfredo that you love so much? Because all of your peeps and clients aren’t from here. And while a lot of them will be Mardi Gras excited to get a chance to try all the Cajun dishes they’ve heard so much about, some folks just aren’t that adventurous and won’t want to venture past the meat and potatoes they are comfortable with. Parrain’s is your answer for taking that kind of mixed crew out to lunch or dinner. Even your Iowa and Montana folks will find something to get excited about on this menu. And you can count on the Parrainians to execute everything on that menu at a very high level. A good place to keep in mind for the holidays or if you have people coming in for a football game or just passing through on the way to Mardi Gras or Jazzfest. And like I’ve written before, the charbroiled oysters can’t be beat.
It’s amazing how hard it is to find a hot ham and cheese poboy around town these days. Ham and cheese and hot sausage and roast beef used to be the staples for anyone who did sandwiches. Pretty much everybody still rolls a roast beef, but the ham and cheese and smoked or hot sausage have faded away. Years ago when I had taken a break from school and hired on as a rodman for a survey company, we would be all over south Louisiana surveying swamp land that would eventually become subdivisions and every Pak-a-sac, Quick Stop, Fred and Judy’s convenience store would make their own ham and cheese, and sausage or roast beef poboys and we would file in, collect a Schlitz tall boy and order our sandwiches, then go outside and sit on the tailgate or just cop a squat on the sidewalk leaning back against the wall and chow down before firing up the mandatory after food cigarette. Mandatory for the time anyway. Jed’s is making good on their promise to be a local hangout. Jawing with the barkeep about the bad weather heading our way kind of felt a little like those old days. And the poboy locked it down. Just as good. Just as much exactly what I needed right then and there. I had an unsweet tea instead of a Schlitz tallboy and I had to give up smoking ten or twelve years back, but I enjoyed that thirty minutes thinking about everything that happened back when you could get a great ham and cheese poboy like Jed’s on every other corner.
Good idea to make a shrimp stock to braise the eggplant in before adding it to the trinity for shrimp and eggplant casserole. Maybe cut the stock off a little earlier and use yellow onions instead of red as the color got a bit dark and brought the color of the finished dish down a bit. Tasted good. Didn’t look as good as it could have though. Eggplant is just as much a flavor sponge as yellow squash and zucchini. Maybe think about trying to do a hamburger or ground pork dish with eggplant. Maybe use eggplant instead of pasta for a lasagna-like casserole?
The whole beef tenderloin came out perfectly for me using the blast at 500 degrees and let finish in the oven for an hour method. I think next time I might go five minutes a pound at 500 instead of three to make it more attractive to family. Left alone I might have just sliced it up for beef sashimi, but everyone else likes it at least red in the middle. You can tell them to throw it in a skillet or fire up the grill as much as you want, but that doesn’t sway anyone. I did tell them to stew the leftovers in a brown gravy for badass roast beef poboys later. Luckily, I saved some for myself at the house to snack on and make killer sandwiches. Bread, mustard, sliced tenderloin. Yes.
The piece de resistance though was the homemade garlic bread. Great idea. Fired up the bread maker and got a perfect loaf of white bread from it the day before. Sliced it wide while it was still hot and painted it with garlic butter. Used one stick of Kelly’s Irish and some squeeze garlic and added some of the meat seasoning mix. One part each garlic salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. Had that on hand because I really wanted to do the whole tenderloin the right way, with olive oil, L&P, the mix, and a final dusting of Zatarain’s and black pepper. Wrapped the bread in foil and just left it on the counter overnight, then when I got to the camp I brought it up in the oven (still foil wrapped) at four hundred for ten minutes. Could have unwrapped it to crisp it, and would have worked fine tossed on the grill in the foil as well. Something to keep in mind for next time. Or any time really. But it was really hard not to eat half a loaf then and there.
All in all a great xmas spread. Little brother got busy with jambalaya and crab stuffed corn muffins and nailed momma’s buttermilk pound cake. He also baked chocolate chip cookies. Never go wrong with those. I think next year though, given the time and money, I will keep a better eye on the weather and crawfish availability. Had I paid better attention to both this year, I would have boiled a sack and left it at that.
We all have our own priorities for choosing a restaurant to visit, our own markers for authenticity, our own considerations of the moment. If we have kids, we want to know both kids and parents will be welcome and comfortable, not bored and fidgety and stressed. If we are leaving the kids at home, we want to go somewhere where we don’t have to deal with other folk’s kids–because that’s the whole point of the evening, right? I have my own set of priorities, and, as you might have guessed, number one is food and menu, followed closely by the physical space and all the little elements of style that tell me what the owners intend. When I try a new place that identifies as Mexican, I look first to see if they serve tacos lengua and if they serve carnitas in any form. Blue Corn actually exceeded my expectations on both counts. The carnitas was very good, and the lengua was the best I’ve had in Baton Rouge. Taqueria Corona on Magazine St in New Orleans is very close, and I would have to try them head to head to be certain, but right now, having just been to Blue Corn, I would have to give them the edge as offering the best lengua I’ve had in Louisiana. If I was standing just outside the door of Taqueria Corona having just enjoyed their tacos lengua and enchiladas camerones, I might be singing another song, but I was very excited to encounter perfect lengua and a very fine carnitas at Blue Corn.
tacos lengua (left) and tacos carnitas
I have cooked beef tongue at home exactly once. It is a pain and takes forever and you have to find at least one other person as crazy about lengua as you are to make the time and effort worthwhile and also so you aren’t eating tongue all week. Good luck with that. And that is probably why it took so long for lengua to make it to menus in Baton Rouge. For the longest time, customers absolutely would not step outside their comfort zone. I haven’t really seen it here outside of bodega style taquerias until now. LaFonda never had it, Superior Grill doesn’t offer it, and sadly, our own tastes and limitations are why we miss out on so much authentic cuisine from other cultures. And it feels like every dish that crosses our borders gets attacked by Wisconsin cheese. Traditional tacos are not topped with tomato and iceberg lettuce and grated cheddar., but onion and cilantro with a slice of lime on the side. Now we are starting to see some Mexican cheeses incorporated in authentic Mexican dishes. Queso fresco and cotija are much more common now, but they generally aren’t glopped all over everything. I love cheese, but not if it buries everything else on the plate.
Rajas con Queso y Elote– Pan fried poblano pepper, crema mexicana, queso fresco, fresh corn & onions
Blue Corn seems dedicated to being the real deal. I know that’s a pretty huge claim after one visit, but they are very new, and absolutely nothing went wrong while I was there. That’s a little outside the norm for new restaurants. There is a whole lot on the menu I want to try, and it was refreshing to be able to choose the rajas con queso y elote as a side on my two taco lunch combo. Now the one downside I have to mention is no bottled Mexican Coke. But they did have Jarritos soda, and it was very good. I see this as a good place to gather with friends. Food’s great, there’s a patio, they have tequila flights, the art is impressive, the inside is almost as open and airy as the patio, and the staff treated me special. My biggest fear about going back is that I might not ever be able to make myself try anything new and just get the tacos lengua every time I go there. Such is life! Here’s a gallery of inside and outside Blue Corn photos.
Where to start? I love this place. The food is well thought out and impeccably executed. The drinks are original and bold with surprising flavor combinations and served in ceramic buddha and tiki glassware with metal straws. They have not one but two sake flights featuring a traditional selection and more modern brews. I guess I would recommend the Drunken Noodles to start with, but you really can’t go wrong with the food. The noodles are fresh made right in front of you. The raw bar takes a little different approach to nigiri and sashimi than you are used to seeing in Baton Rouge and again, the execution is flawless and the freshness and quality top of the line. But what really stands out is the exquisite care the owners took in creating an environment and ambiance that works so well with the food and drink menus. The architectural layout, the unique wall planters, the back to back raw and noodle bars, and the brilliant juxtaposition of old Eastern monochromatic prints on canvas and new Eastern neon creates a mood that encourages the experimentation the whole place is built on. If you are into Asian cuisine at all, you will be surprised and delighted with what you can discover at Soji.
I could go on and on about the wagyu beef dumplings, the brilliant cauliflower side, either of which could be a light lunch by themselves. I’ve tried all the ramens and would not be able to pick a favorite, they are all so good but that is the point. I’ve never been disappointed and don’t expect to be and that is a remarkable achievement for such a young restaurant concept. The integration of food and drink and style at Soji is a wonderful example of what a restaurant can be, and also of why so many restaurants fail. You can have a perfectly cooked, high quality prime ribeye with a delightfully fluffy loaded baked potato slapped down in front of you by a surly server in a crusty apron who takes forever to replace the original silverware at your table with something marginally cleaner while the steak and potato dinner cools and you try to talk to your guest above the overly loud pop music playing with commercials in the brightly lit dining room where the crumbs and worse on the floor are all too obvious–I know you follow me on this one. A restaurant is an enterprise that has to get everything right, not eighty percent right or ninety percent right. For the night to be perfect, the management and staff need to perform perfectly or apologize profusely when they fail to achieve their goals. That, I think, is what you will pick up on pretty quickly at Soji. The staff and exhibition cooks seem relaxed and happy to be there and happy to serve you and as you all know, that is not universal. The physical space is immaculate, you can tell someone cares about the lighting, someone cares about the volume, someone cares whether you have a good experience or not. Again, not universal. So my advice, freely given, is to give Soji a try, and when you do, try something you’ve never had before. That will be easy to accomplish with these food and drink menus.
