At least I think that's the name. It's a local restaurant up in D'Iberville that we went to a couple months back. It was...Ok. I've eaten worse. If you know me, you know how much it hurts to admit that; I like to think that I've got a mildly refined palate and admitting that I've eaten some food that most professional chefs wouldn't feed to their dogs is shameful.
Ok, lemme say what I liked about this place, that should help me gather my thoughts.
First of all, the atmosphere was very home-y. It felt like the restaurant in my home town; we called it The Cabin, because the outside looked like a log cabin. It was just a little place that we went to because we felt comfortable there. That was how this place felt; there are murals of the sea and swamp land on the walls, nets and boat gear and stuff like that on the walls, just a really charming place. I guess that's the word I'm looking for: charming.
The charm ended when I picked up the menu. It's mostly seafood; that's not a problem, I like that. In a place this close to the Gulf of Mexico, I expect to see seafood and would hope that they're buying locally. The menu is not large; I cannot remember everything on it, but it was a relatively small menu. We all ordered different things, like we usually do at a new restaurant, but we all started with salads, again normal for us. My problem with the salad may seem like a minor thing, but the surrounding area needs to be taken into consideration.
This restaurant is a stone's throw from a large farmer's market. I know, because I work with a lady that habitually goes there to buy and sell. The salad at this place was obviously out of a bag. Now don't get my wrong; I'd rather have bagged salad than no salad at all, but it was that really plastic tasting lettuce that only seems to brown under refrigeration like a week later. I expect better out of a restaurant that's maybe 100 yards from a farmer's market. Maybe they have a good reason, but I doubt it.
Next. I only remember what my mother and I ordered. I'll start with hers, because it pisses me off significantly less. Basically what she got was what in a better restaurant is called a chophouse steak or salisbury steak. Simply put it was a hamburger smothered in gravy and, get this: served over rice. Lemme say this now: I love rice, but seriously, this dish should have been served with mashed potatoes. I hate mashed potatoes, but honestly this needed them. The rice may not have irritated me too much, but it was undercooked, which I'll get to in a second.
I ordered...oh god it kind of makes my stomach roll to think of it...Blackened chicken and shrimp creole. I've made shrimp creole. It was damned good stuff too. I've also made blackened chicken, and it was also damned good. But you know what? It never crossed my mind to mix the two. If done properly, this probably wouldn't have sucked so completely and utterly and pissed me off. Words cannot describe how completely ASS this dish was. I'll start with what didn't suck. The sauce was flavorful and actually pleasant. It was almost as good as mine :-D.
Now the downside to this dish that could have been great but just wasn't. The chicken, as well seasoned as it was, was horribly over-cooked to the point of not just being dry but rubbery. Seriously, there are rubber balls that aren't as rubbery as that chicken was. The rice was undercooked to the point of being crunchy. Like I said, I love rice, but nothing irritates me quite like crunchy rice.
I've saved the worst for last: the shrimp. Oh sweet buttery Jesus the shrimp. Have you ever had really overcooked shrimp? Know how it's kind of stringy and rubbery? Yeah. Nasty. On top of that, you know how every cookbook and chef tells you to devein the shrimp? Because the vein down the shrimp's back isn't really a vein but the digestive tract? Yeah, whoever was cooking didn't know that, because the shrimp wasn't de-veined. Pardon my French but TABARNAC! There is no reason for this kind of high class ineptitude.
Ok, there is one reason, and it was broadcast in big letters on their marquee: Now hiring cooks.
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