The bacon maple donuts from Blue Dot had held us over through lunch, so we were looking for an early, somewhat small supper before we went over to Royal Street for Dirty Linen Night. As usual, and almost on cue, we both concurrently thought about meat pies. That’s right, meat pies. I know it’s weird that we were both thinking about meat pies, but the savory, deep-fried, empanada-like pastries that Natchitoches, Louisiana has tried to lay claim to are irresistible. Almost telepathically, we knew exactly where we were going- American Sector.
A part of John Besh’s empire, American Sector is the ‘40s and ‘50s themed restaurant located on the sprawling World War II Museum complex. We walked through the large glass doors at the Magazine Street entrance to find a hostess, as well as the entire staff, fully decked out in the era’s attire.
Since we were here for happy hour, our Lucile Ball-like hostess seated us at the oval-shaped, industrial-looking bar located directly in the center of the restaurant. We took a quick look at the standard menu just to get a feel for the John Besh’s interpretation of this era’s food and found some seriously uncustomary dishes. There’s the down-home comfort food classics like meatloaf and chicken and dumplings on the menu. But the rabbit pate, a beef tongue sandwich, and pork cheeks with black-eyed peas will entice the more adventurous to this reinvented post-WWII -themed fare.
Before the bartender could even begin explaining the happy hour specials, we quickly placed our drink order. The draft list was fairly substantial, with all the local breweries, including the oft-overlooked Heiner Brau, well represented. I decided to go with a pint of Tin Roof Perfect Tin Amber Ale, and Erin jumped the border over to Texas like Slowpoke Rodriguez and ordered a pint of one of her new favorites, St. Arnold Fancy Lawnmower. Any bar/restaurant can throw out a drink special or two for happy hour, but the restaurants in the Besh kingdom trump all other happy hours by including some pretty ridiculous food specials (see the pizza at Domenica and oysters at Lüke). After all, that’s why we chose American Sector on this steamy afternoon.
Before we could even suck down a few sips or our pints, our food was delivered to the bar by a smaller Asian guy who still hadn’t mastered the English language. After a few incoherent mumbles, we ultimately figured out the order was ours. First up, meat pies. The crisp crust surrounded the savory meat filling, which was somehow creamier than any other meat pie we’ve had. I let Erin have the majority of them, not because they were terrible (we even placed a second order of them), but because I was a little more interested in the second part of our happy hour special.
Billed as a slider, these were more like mini sloppy joes than a sack of late night gut grenades from Krystal. These aren’t even your Warren Central Junior High cafeteria sloppy joes or you mama’s manwiches either. Slow-cooked, tender chunks of beef short rib, crispy fried onion strings, and sweet bbq/sloppy joe sauce replaced the customary ground beef and were sandwiched in between a miniature, soft bun. On their own, these tiny sandwiches from this nostalgic restaurant were awesome, but throw in the price of the draft beer ($2.50) and the price of the sliders and meat pies ($0.75/each), and I think we’ve discovered a deal that will aid in our ability to survive these last weeks of summer.
American Sector’s happy hour runs daily from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM and includes:
$0.75 sliders
$0.75 meat pies
$2.50 draft craft beer
$3.00 wells
$4.00 mint juleps
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