Cruising down river road to Bert’s place was almost as good as settling in at the bar and ordering up my cup of seafood gumbo and a debris poboy. Green, green levee on the right, bare stick woods on the left, broken up here and there by a church, a cow pasture, a burnt out trailer. Bert and I go all the way back to Mike Anderson’s on Highland Road. Roberto’s kind of reminds me of that Mike’s. Special food, special people, special history.
I love that Bert pulls no punches. The seafood gumbo has that deep roux and oyster flavor and the shrimp are still so crisp they’re almost crunchy. The debris poboy is packed with sweet caramelized onions and Swiss to compliment the braised tenderloin and the au jus gravy. And the French bread is pressed just enough to hold up to those first three big hungry bites without falling apart.
The skin-on fries brought back lots of memories for me of putting together exactly these kind of dishes in so many restaurants over the years. Every now and then I’ll let myself think about just how many shrimp I peeled, how many catfish fillets I took off the bone, and how many cases of fries I dropped in the fryer then pulled up when they were hot and gold. The goal was always to put the best plate possible in front of the cop, the plumber, the stray college student staying out of the rain right next to me in Roberto’s small bar just off the dining room. Low ceiling, old jukebox, plenty of wine behind the bar. Bartender telling all of us about her career down in New Orleans before she made it back up this way and landed at Roberto’s. For now. And that’s the beauty of sitting for a couple of extra minutes at Bert’s bar, bill paid, keys in hand. You can think about where you are. You can think about where you’ve been. But for that lunch, that moment, you don’t need to be anywhere else or worry about what’s next. Just grab a toothpic, your go-box, and wander back out to the car.
