Taste of the Town : A Bite of the Big Easy in Brew City

When I drove downtown last night I had no idea I was about to come face to face with the craziest bowl of jambalaya ever to cross my path.

Instead of the chicken, duck, sausage and shrimp being mixed with the rice at The Bayou, they were arranged on top.

Interesting but good. And totally different than the way I’m used to having it served.

My introduction to jambalaya came from a Texan named Tim.

Tim grew up on the Texas/Louisiana border and reportedly obtained his infamous “six beer” jamb recipe from some of the Acadians in his area.

For the uninitiated, the length of a jambalaya’s prep time is often measured in the number of beers that can be consumed. The reason a maker of Tim’s jamb recipe has time to polish off a six pack was simple: The roux alone takes three hours to make.

It’s a really dark roux, unlike any others I’ve ever seen. But he swears by it. And it did lend a certain depth of flavor to his jambalaya that other recipes don’t quite match. However, due to the length of time needed to make the roux and the fact I am not much of a beer drinker, I haven’t attempted to duplicate the results.

I did however, make several pilgrimages to the Big Easy in her pre-Katrina days for the express purpose of catching great music, and of course, eating. Jambalaya, po’ boys, muffulettas, gumbo, pecan encrusted snapper… you name it, we had it. Full of flavor and always served up with a friendly comment and the quintessential laissez faire attitude.

Every once in a while, the craving for a little taste of Louisiana hits me hard, and since I’m no longer a quick drive away from her hurricane battered shores, I have to either break out the cast iron pot and my preferred jamb recipe (from F&M Patio’s owner in New Orleans), or go the easy route and head to a local place that dishes up the goods.

Last night I opted for the latter, meeting up with Scott after work at The Bayou, a recently opened Cajun restaurant. I’d been anticipating the food all day having checked out the online menu and spotted Butter Poached Lobster Tacos with “Bayou Vampire Blood” hot sauce, arugula and mango… who could resist?

The colorful duo of tacos arrived artfully arranged on a small ebony platter, and despite trying to consume them in a delicate manner with knife and fork, I ended up going finger-food style. The cool mango and arugula created a perfect foil for the spicy sauce covered lobster, and had there been a couple more on the plate, could have been a meal all by themselves.

But no. I had to have the jambalaya, as well. The big bowl of poultry and seafood adorned jambalaya with a side of fried okra. This too, I found a bit perplexing; the entire pod of okra had been dipped and fried. Kudos to them for going to the trouble to make the stuff look so nice, but hey, jambalaya and okra are a comfort food of sorts in some parts of the South, and we don’t really care about the presentation of comfort food so much as we 1) want it to taste good, and 2) want there to be a lot of it.

(I know in some places less is more, but not in my book. More is definitely more.)

Anyway, I proceeded to cut up the chicken, duck, and Andouille sausage, peeled the shrimp, and mix them up with the rice while Scott chowed down on his pasta sprinkled with goat cheese.

I’d tried to get him to order the Blackened Redfish or the Pecan Crusted Grilled Pork Loin, (I wanted to sample some, you know) but he just wasn’t in the mood. So slowly, his pasta disappeared over the course of the meal, as did my jamb.

Turns out, it was just as tasty even though I had to do my own mixing. Now if only I knew how many beers went into it…