Boo Koo BBQ, Old New Orleans RUMble, and Taceuax Loceaux

The blog has now stuck around for a year, so it’s unquestionably time to get back to the basics. This weekend provided the delicious food and strong drinks to get the blog back on track after a the last few recipes we’ve posted. Equipped with a Groupon and big appetites, we started our night at Finn McCool’s.

Yeah, they pour a good pint of Guinness, but beer was going to play second fiddle to the food being cooked up in the back of this neighborhood Irish pub. Hungry, we had already studied the Boo Koo BBQ menu like Japanese goalies study our penalty kicks, so we knew what we wanted as soon as we walked up to the half door behind the pool tables.

Half a beer and less than half an hour later, we were bombarded by ridiculousness. First up, deep-fried truffled mac and cheese bites with a southern-style comeback sauce- crunchy on the outside with a gooey, cheesey center. Awesome! My only complaint was that only two come to an order. At least we left plenty of room for our mains. Erin, tempted by nachos as usual, got “Da Muthaload Nachos”- a pile of tortilla chips piled even higher with pulled pork, brisket, smoked chicken, and boudin. I decided on the Cajun Banh Mi. This Vietnamese style po-boy, filled with pulled pork, boudin, and hogs head cheese was topped with the usual banh mi toppings (mayo, cucumber, and pickled carrots and daikon).

Wow! Smoky, crunchy, fresh, and creamy all at the same time. The best of Erath and New Orleans East all in the same French roll. And don’t forget, all this grub is coming out of the back of an Irish pub.

As if mounds of smoked meats and deep fried cholesterol weren’t enough, we had already committed to our night’s dessert weeks ago. As we pulled into a sketchy warehouse next to a deserted concrete plant near Elysian Fields, I began to think this event was some type of human trafficking scam. Enticing visitors with an open bar and unlimited desserts, they’d lure us in and then we’d find ourselves bound in the back of a concrete mixer headed for Burma. Scary, but very untrue, that is the trafficking part. As we made our way into the Old New Orleans Rum distillery for their Cocktails and Desserts Summer RUMble, we were immediately met with a stiff, but refreshing, drink from the Bombay Club booth, which was set up in front of a set of the many barrels throughout the warehouse.

After sweating off my first drink in the sultry tin building, we grabbed a frozen drink from the Organic Banana booth and a bowl of rum raisin ice cream from New Orleans Ice Cream to cool ourselves off. As one of the servers floated extra Cajun Spiced Rum over the top of the ice cream, I silently started singing "Yo ho". After “tasting” a few more strong drinks from Juan’s Flying Burrito, and taking a whiff of the random liquids placed throughout the working distillery, the lyrics were on the verge of actually spewing out of my mouth.

Since our time at the open bar was dwindling down, and I was now longing to wear an eye patch, we decided we’d grab more dessert(s) before heading out. While waiting in the dessert line, we inhaled a few doughy rum balls from Bob’s Delectables before getting to the best dessert at this rum-centered event- blueberry mojito cupcakes from Bee Sweet Cupcakes (participants on Food Network’s Cupcake Wars). Cue the chubby cupcake song.

As a last hoorah, and before the Uzbekistan-mail-order-bride/late-2000’s-lesbian-Russian-pop duo DJ scared us off, Erin managed to sneak in a “to-go” rum drink with watermelon from Phoenix.

We thought we were homeward bound like Chance and Sassy, but a tweet from a new food truck (Geaux Plates) rerouted us to Kingpin. We really didn’t need any more food but decided to at least check out the menu. Not entirely impressed, we decided to forgo the mobile offerings and ran into Kingpin (the bar, not the movie) for our nightcap. Once I figured out that I was actually in a bar and not some smoky basement that had been cheaply decorated with cheetah print wallpaper and hubcaps, we were able to enjoy a few pints of NOLA Hurricane Saison while watching a few drunk rednecks (I’m allowed to insult my own kind) play shuffle board with their iPhones.

Drunk gorging (you know, eating a family size bag of Hot Cheetos) and social-media-driven-food-trucks struck once gain. This time it was Taceaux Loceaux and their bulgogi chicken tacos outside Dos Jefes Cigar Bar.


Assembled within the confines of a snatcher van, the Korean-marinated chicken tacos with cabbage, Sriracha aioli, and pickled red onions lucratively ended our Incredible Journey and made it impossible to fit through our door once we finally made it home.

Bicycle Pub Crawl

Hard to comprehend. Funny to watch. Easy to do. Just insert Queen and the rapture into your generic pub crawl and you have the 2011 Bayou Boogaloo Bicycle Pub Crawl.

When I first saw this hilariously themed pub crawl on Bayou Boogaloo’s website while checking out the weekend’s music lineup, I envisioned the ride as a muddled mix of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, The ButterCream Gang, and the scene in Sandlot when Phillips and the opposing team roll up on their bikes. As I rode up to Buttermilk Drop Café and Bakery at 7:00 on Saturday MORNING, I realized that this was no 1990's movie. Outside, there were around 100 bikes lining the adjacent sidewalks with a few riders chugging cheap beers. Inside, bikers, ranging from young hipsters to old tourists, were enjoying the Café’s warm donuts and cool Hennessey sno balls (I can’t make this kind of stuff up).

I knew we were destined for trouble when the coordinator of the crawl showed up a few minutes late on a bike with a radio in tow and wearing a plush beer hat he apparently won from the 1999 Mississippi State Fair.

The guy actually knew what he was doing. As we made our way clear across Mid-City along historic portage routes, our leader, known simply as Peter, occasionally stopped to point out archaic canals, historic homes, and even the oldest fire hydrant in New Orleans (some Mid-City bar should go ahead and make the fire hydrant their new drink). Our pedaling parade arrived at our first destination, Mid City Yacht Club, and I immediately cracked open the first High Life of the day. Even though it was American Craft Beer Week, anything other than carbonated, piss-colored water at 8:00 am would probably have had disastrous results. Not that it really mattered. As soon as we bellied up to the bar at Finn McCool’s at our next stop, I couldn’t not order a Guinness. After all, a few jersey wearing soccer fans had beaten us to the bar and were taking pregame Irish Car Bombs for the Scottish Cup Final. I had never been to Finn’s so seeing soccer fans at a bar before 9:00 am was pretty astonishing . Even more remarkable- free shots for proper spelling at Drunken Spelling Bee.

By the time we had worked our way through Finn’s and then Pal’s Lounge, the path of our bikes was more like the second level of Paperboy.

As our chaotic and meandering bike brigade got within a few blocks of our next stop, I instantly knew this would probably be the destroyer of our crawl. Surrounded by the muffled sounds of a brass band, each rider was greeted with free beer, red beans (some of the best I’ve had), and fudgesicles. Had the rapture happened? Was that the sound of angels striking up a band and singing “Power in the Blood”? Was I standing at the gates of heaven? No. Even better, we were just standing at the entrance of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club- the “frat house” of the Zulu Parade. Zulu had graciously opened up the doors to their club and ushered us into the main room of their Broad Street building. Once inside, the cause of the muffled heavenly chorus we once heard was now revealed. The Pin Stripe Brass Band had already starting playing, and remember, this is still before 11 am.

After finishing our free beer (hey, it was already 85◦ and we were thirsty), we found a spot next to the full size bar located within the main room. Our choices were limited to Budweiser, Remy Martin, and possibly the greatest way to sell liquor- by the ½ pint, without a mixer.

By this point, our pub crawl had completely unraveled and had transformed from a paperboy route into a dysfunctional episode of G-Games, the X-Games spinoff my brothers and I filmed when we were kids. Since we knew the climactic Zulu portion of the crawl couldn’t be topped by the remaining 2 bars, we decided to go ahead and get a jump start on the festivities at Bayou Boogaloo on the banks of Bayou St. John.