Galliano Truck Plaza and Casino

One of the great aspects of my job is getting out in the wetlands of Louisiana. Not only does it just get me out of the office, but it also allows me to observe some exceptionally distinctive landscapes.

If you know me, then you know the best part of my trip is not staring at cypress stands; it’s getting out and eating the food of South Louisiana. My projects are assigned to me, so sometimes I end up in the middle of nowhere in St. Helena Parish with nothing to eat, and, Occasionally, I’ll get assigned a project on the North Shore, where the eating establishments are endless. Then, there are days like Wednesday.

I was back in Larose for a third trip to an extensive mitigation bank project. The two previous times, we grabbed lunch at a truck stop/casino, which now seem to be located in even the most remote parts of the state. This time, we passed on that truck stop in Larose to see if we could find anything further down Bayou Lafourche. We passed a Subway and a Quizno’s, but neither of us thought a sandwich would satisfy our mounting hunger. As we wandered aimlessly around Galliano and Golden Meadow, hunger pains finally got the best of us as we pulled into Galliano Truck Plaza and Casino. Yep. That’s exactly what I thought-another truck stop. It’s not like truck stop food was new to me. From tater logs to chicken livers, from Wesson Truck Stop to the Country Buffet in Pickens, I know my way around the cardiac cuisine of the road.

I inspected the menu, which consisted of most of the usual suspects: greasy double cheeseburgers, oversized onion rings, and crispy chicken strips. Yet, there were also some things I should have expected, but still caught me off guard.

The second I saw the mini hot dog PLATTER, I was reminded of my college lunch staple of Betty’s corndog nuggets and rotel cheese dip. However, my corndog daydream was hastily interrupted as I focused on something written on the chalkboard next to the counter- boudin bites. Being that I have only seen these on 3 menus throughout Louisiana, and the fact that they were only $1.00 , I had to get an order.

While shoveling the freshly fried boudin balls down my throat, three guys walked into the empty truck stop diner with their Cajun Reeboks on. They walked directly to the order counter and in some sort of broken Cajun French- English asked, “what you got to eat?” At first, I assumed they couldn’t read the menu, but when the waitress sharply replied, “shrimp and crab fricassee”, my last boudin ball hit the plate. What the hell, was there some kind of secret menu like at In-N-Out Burger, and what truck stop has a fricassee? The three men sat down, and just a few moments later, an older man decked out in his navy blue coveralls came out from the kitchen holding 3 massive bowls of the fricassee. Even though I had just devoured a whole order of fries, a cheeseburger, and almost all of the boudin bites, I started to salivate at the site of the fresh potato salad and the overflowing bowls of stew filled with right-off-the-boat-shrimp and a massive whole crab. We asked the waitress if we could possibly get a to-go box of this secret stew to take home. As she looked at us like we were Phil Berquist, she explained that the old gentleman from the kitchen is one of the shrimp boot guy’s parraine. Every Wednesday, they let him use the kitchen and to cook whatever he wishes. The worst part, the down home Cajun dishes that he slings out of the truck stop’s kitchen aren’t made available to general customers. Instead, they are reserved for his kinfolk and his family’s friends, and only on Wednesday afternoons. After letting out a few "got dang it"s, we left the Galliano Truck Plaza and Casino empty handed. Places like this make me never want to depart from culinary-centric South Louisiana.

The Grocery and Broad Street Brewhaha

I had just settled into the recliner for the 11:00 games when I got a call from Burge to meet up with Mims for lunch (apparently calling people by their last names stuck, even after college). Mims was here for what seemed like the 10th time in the past 4 months to do “research” for Saveur, and since grilled fish doesn’t reheat well, I decided to skip the leftover grilled cobia and smoked red snapper tacos we made the night before, and take them up on the poboys at The Grocery on St. Charles.

After scanning through the handwritten menu on the chalkboard, I decided to go with the New Orleans style roast beef poboy. The sandwich lived up to the “New Orleans style” nomenclature. I’m still not sure how or why, but excessive gravy and mayonnaise forms a ridiculously awesome and artery clogging sauce on French bread. As I was finishing off the last few bites with a much needed fork and wandering why I didn’t get my sloppy poboy pressed (The Grocery’s specialty), I heard something I was not expecting to hear.

I’m usually on top of things when it comes to the ins and outs of the goings-on in New Orleans, so when Burge said something about a free beer festival in Mid-City, I was about as confused as Henry Rowengartner when Chet Stedman gave him in-game advice during the Giants game. Between habitually checking out GoNOLA.com, snagging a copy of The Gambit at Rouse’s, and clicking on the Internet Explorer favorites tab that take me to the guys over at Blackened Out and The Beer Buddha, I feel like I always have a halfway decent notion of the happenings throughout the city- especially the free and cheap ones. We drove through Central City, and finally made it to Broad. Even though Burge’s cousin was working the festival for Lazy Magnolia, we didn’t have any real directions. If we wouldn’t have spotted the oversized, inflatable Abita bottle, we would have never found the festival. As we pulled into the overgrown parking lot of a rundown and abandoned grocery store, we began to wander what we had gotten ourselves into. After we followed the crowd up a ramp to a hidden parking lot on top of the sketchy building, we finally caught glimpses of what lied ahead. As we walked under a sign that read “Broad Street Brewhaha” and fixed our eyes on the beer tents and trailers, I began to feel better than Julie Gaffney did when she made the game winning save against Gunner Stahl.

After sampling pints of NOLA Irish Channel Stout and Abita’s new release in their Select series, Rye Pale Ale, we set up shop at the Lazy Magnolia booth. While sampling an Indian Summer or two, I began to reminisce about being the first person to track down Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan in Starkville and people looking at me crazily when I pulled out the party pig. If only I could get paid to talk about beer, especially a Mississippi brewery all day.

We finally drug ourselves away from the Lazy Magnolia tent and Mid-City and headed back Uptown. As if we hadn’t gotten our fill of local craft beer already, we made a detour by Breaux Mart for a party pig of NOLA Blonde. We emptied the miniature keg by the time the Alabama- Mississippi State game (if you watched it, then you know why). With an empty keg and more sorrows to drown, we walked over to The Bulldog for a few pitchers of Dead Guy Ale, which were very appropriate for our degrading state of consciousness. From what I can recollect, the rest of the night was set in the French Quarter, and involved some whipping of the hair back and forth, and a 4 mile walk.

Cafe du Monde and Cheesecake

No matter the age, you can’t resist the character of the historic French Quarter while sounds of brass bands fill your ears. How can anyone resist the charm of Magazine Street's shops and restaurants while being engulfed by the smell of Lilette or Slice? Who can resist being blanketed by confectioner’s sugar at Café du Monde? I know a certain 4 year old visitor who couldn’t.

With the in-laws and one of the nieces in town for the weekend, we decided to give them a whirlwind tour of some of that French Quarter character near Jackson Square. I’ll admit, the city’s oldest neighborhood is touristy and a bit overpriced, but it’s something everyone should experience at least once. We started by navigating our way through the usual weekend traffic on Decatur and snagged a table near the iron railing Café du Monde. After getting the niece to finally try what she called “beignet doughnuts”, we polished off her creamy hot chocolate and exited the bustling outdoor dining room.

As soon as we stepped back on Decatur, the St. Augustine Marching 100 had just fired up a free show at the amphitheater directly across from Jackson Square.

Even though the sound of brass resonating through the historic square made me want to pick up tuba playing as my second job, we quickly continued our tour of The Quarter in hopes of making it back to the house for the Alabama- LSU game.

My initial hopes were crushed. Three hours, and two overpriced stuffed animals later, I was finally back in my recliner. We just made it back for the start of the second half, but my time in the recliner on a windy Saturday afternoon was very limited. As soon as the game ended, we were off again.

This time, we set off for Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro. I know, going here is like going to Taco Bell in Cabo, but when you're dealing with a 4 year old and a mother-in-law that doesn't eat any seafood and is fairly picky about anything "different", you are pretty limited in New Orleans. The Cheesecake Bistro provided us with an extensive and diverse menu ranging from fried seafood platters to steaks and creole pastas. I kept the niece entertained by "driving" a boat through something she kept calling blueberry land until the fare arrived, which took almost 40 minutes. Normally the wait wouldn't have bothered me, but in a place that reminded me of a somewhat upscale New Orleans version of Applebee's or Chotchkie's, I at least expected a quick turn around time from the kitchen. My ricotta stuffed ravioli with crawfish cream turned out to be pretty tasty, and Erin's Chicken Marsala wasn't half bad either. Because the portions were huge, and we had cheesecake on our mind (I mean, we are in Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro), we decided to pack up the leftovers, and order two slices of cheesecake to go.

The chilly Saturday night ended up being a night that most 4 year olds can only dream of- one slice of fudge brownie cheesecake, one slice of bananas foster cheesecake, and Toy Story 3.

The Great Pumpkin

I don’t know why we do it to ourselves. It seems like every other weekend we’re forcing Gatlin into the car and making the long 5 hour drive to Starkville. This particular trip was worse than usual because I was still recovering from a freak freeze tag accident from the weekend before. I’ll just say that it involved me flying through the air like I had just slipped on a banana split. But, at least this time, we could let the windows down while blaring Stranglehold without suffocating from the humid Mississippi air. As we pulled into Starkvegas (don’t act like you’ve never called it that) late Friday night, the car’s thermometer read a cool 45 degrees. Football weather had finally decided to show up in the South.

After a quick preview of this year’s basketball team at The Hump Saturday morning, it was time to get over to The Junction and take advantage of this autumn atmosphere.

Even though I was 300 miles from New Orleans, I felt like I was still in south Louisiana as I quickly disposed of jambalaya, shrimp and crab gumbo, and crawfish dip. I then followed a trail of candy like James Woods down to the heart of The Junction where I stumbled upon a makeshift SEC graveyard directly next to our seemingly reserved tailgating spot. With all the hype surrounding this season, we got to share our recent scary stories with a few more folks than usual. After a few are you afraid of the dark stories, the day quickly transitioned to Halloween Eve night. We exited the stadium to find that the combination of the Bulldogs’ 7th win and the toxic fog surrounding our tent had transformed tailgaters into Werewolves of Fever Swamp (including Dr. Beavis/Mr. Webster).

Halloween finally arrived and the biscuits and gravy at Huddle House before the ride back to New Orleans turned out to be more of a treat than a trick. We made it back just in time to prevent seat soiling and began to prepare for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. In an attempt to entice him to our personal pumpkin patch, we left out a large bowl of acorn squash and tasso bisque, and a poboy stuffed with pulled pork that I brined in apple cider, Steen’s cane syrup BBQ sauce, Munster cheese, and thinly sliced granny smith apples. We made sure to be as “sincere” as we could while watching the Black and Gold take on, well, the Black and Mustard Yellow. Erin even created a runway of pumpkin spice candles to ease his finding of our house. But just like Linus, the anticipation of the Great Pumpkin’s arrival was too much for her. We awoke the next morning, and swiftly ran into the living room. No toys. No candy. Not even a rock. We couldn’t find any evidence of the Great Pumpkin except for a half empty bottle of homemade pumpkin pie vodka. I’m blaming the dog- I knew he doubted the Great Pumpkin’s existence. Just wait until next year, Charlie Brown. You'll see.

NOLA Brewing Irish Channel Stout Release Party

NOLA Brewing is releasing Irish Channel Stout tonight, the newest brew in their ever-growing line. NOLA describes the seasonal beer as "an American style stout that has sweet malt flavors of caramel and chocolate, complimented by a crisp bitterness produced by roasted barley and American Hops."

If the Irish Channel Stout is half as good as Hopitoulas, this warming stout will be a welcome sign to soon arriving fall-like weather. The event will be held at Le Bon Temps (4801 Magazine Street) and will feature $4.00 pints of the stout as well as live music by Colin Lake. If you can't make it to Le Bon Temps Roule at 6:00, Avenue Pub will be tapping 2 kegs of the stout at 10:00.

Irish Channel Release Party
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
6 – 9 pm
Le Bon Temps
4801 Magazine Street
New Orleans, LA