Turning A Blind Eye To Felicitous Fun

The Blind Tiger
120 Texas Street
Shreveport, LA

Shreveport has a split personality.

Sure, it is in Louisiana. But it has more in common with its big brother Texas, just a stone’s throw away.

Cowboy hats and crawfish. That’s Shreveport.

Of course a big reason for the Texas flavor is the flood of fun-lovin’ Texans who crowd into the casinos that line the Red River every weekend.

But as I like to say, fun is in the eye of the beer holder.

For some reason I’ll never understand, these otherwise sensible Texans will drive hundreds of miles to take pleasure in throwing away their hard-earned money.

Look, I’ll be the first to state that if you earned it, you should be able to blow it however you want. But Suit757 being a cheap bastard, losing money has never been on my top ten list.

A few of ‘em may even save enough pennies to sample some “authentic” Louisiana cooking. Never mind that most authentic Louisiana cooking comes from the Cajun prairies and bayous hundreds of miles south of here.

But for many of these weekend warrior Texans, Shreveport is the only taste of Louisiana they are ever going to get.

And the Blind Tiger – situated appropriately enough on Texas Street -- is the place to go to get it. Much preferable to the casino buffets of warmed over crawfish.

The Blind Tiger does Louisiana proud, from meat pies to gumbo to catfish to crawfish etouffee to Abita Beer selection. You can’t go wrong.

Why is it that the most ubiquitous beers are the most bland and boring?

See my Suit757 theory on America’s love affair with mediocrity!

In almost every bar and restaurant in Louisiana, you can order yourself an Abita Amber, a notch above Bud, but well within the bland and boring category.

Fortunately, The Blind Tiger has ALL the offerings from Louisiana’s most famous brewery including black-as-used-motor-oil Turbodog and the relatively recently introduced Jockamo, a hoppy India Pale Ale.

Jockamo was something of a departure for the brewery in Abita Springs. Unlike most brewers, Abita has traditionally shied away from boxing themselves into conventional beer styles.

Turbodog isn’t a bock. Or a porter. Or a stout.

It’s just…Turbodog.

But apparently yielding to demands of beer snobs and hopheads, the boys down in Abita Springs decided they needed a traditional IPA. I’m happy to report Jockamo is a very tasty version of the highly hopped brew – and an ideal compliment to good food.

Like my appetizer of traditional Louisiana meat pies. A mixture of finely mashed beef, pork and crawfish tucked into a two-bite-sized pastry, The Blind Tiger’s version of this North Louisiana snack was spot on.

But the meat pies were just a warm up for my “Catfish Grand Bayou”, two perfectly fried and seasoned fillets smothered in crawfish etouffee.

The texture was amazing. Despite being buried under all that messy goodness of crawfish, butter and cream, the fried catfish never lost its crunch.

Each forkful offered up flaky fish, crunchy spiced batter and decadent crawfish etouffee.

It was like Mardi Gras in my mouth!

The side dishes of fried corn and jambalaya didn’t stand a chance of competing with the center of the plate, but they put up a valiant effort.

Did he say FRIED corn?

Oh, yeah.

Picture this. A half ear of corn, battered, deep fried and sprinkled with Cajun seasoning.

I bet even Donald Trump’s toupee would taste good given that kind of treatment.

Located on the most prominent corner of downtown Shreveport in a building dating back to 1855, The Blind Tiger is just a fun, atmospheric place to hang out. Infinitely cooler than the cheesy casinos a block or two away.

Coolest of all is The Blind Tiger logo on the sign out front and plastered on T-shirts in 15 different colors, featuring a cool cat wearing Ray Charles style glasses and belting out tunes on an old piano, frosty beer within arm’s reach.

Turns out, during prohibition, joints like this would put a stuffed tiger in the window signaling to the -- shall we say -- more “fun-loving” of the local populous that there was an upstairs room with drinking, gambling and felicitous companionship to be had.

Seems like liberals and nanny-state do-gooders have been trying to spoil our fun for centuries. But you could always count on the tiger in the window to “turn a blind eye” to the activities upstairs.

Oh, yeah. I just HAD to add one of those cool Blind Tiger T-shirts (navy blue XL, please) to my vast Suit757 collection.

My fried corn and Catfish Grand Bayou may only be figments of my dreams, but my shirt will serve as a reminder that there are still parts of this great country where fun is still legal.

Just look for the blind tiger.

Rating: Like I Said…Bought the Shirt!

Getting Real in Cajun Country

D.I.’s
6561 Evangeline Highway
Somewhere between Basile and Evangeline, Louisiana
Visited August 21, 2010

Beer selection: The usual suspects plus local Abita Amber

Food: Best crabs on earth!


I’m always in search of “the real deal.”

Not some lame Disneyfied version of the real deal. Not some corporate chain version of the real deal.

No. Just the real thing.

I mean, kids walk around these days wearing T-shirts of fake places.

“Eat at Stinky’s Fish Camp”.

“I Got Crabs at Nasty Nancy’s”.

“Get Some Booty at Blackbeard’s Saloon”.

Now, THAT is lame.

There are plenty of real fish camps, crab shacks and dive bars tucked away all across the backwoods and backwaters of America. There’s no need to make it up. You just need to check out “Suits in Strange Places” to know where to show up.

Like out here on a lonely stretch of Parrish Road 97, eight miles from the nearest stop sign, in the middle of the Southwest Louisiana sugar cane fields and crawfish ponds.

I’m happy to say, D.I.’s is the real deal.

D.I. is the nickname of the crawfish farmer who owns the place. He started out inviting friends over for big crawfish boils at his farm. Five bucks, all you can eat.

One thing led to the other and now half of Southwest Louisiana shows up every night.

Or at least it seemed that way on the Saturday night I pulled up in my subcompact Kia rental car.

There had to be 500 pick up trunks in the gravel parking lot. The wait to get a table was over an hour. Good ‘ol boys and gals were drinking beer in the parking lot waiting their turn to dive into the best seafood around. And that’s saying a mouthful in Louisiana.

A Cajun band was pounding out tunes on the band stand at the far end of one of the cavernous dining halls. Old-timers, kids and Cajun beauties in white cotton dresses alike were all dancing and two-stepping to the Cajun beat.

Entirely sung in French, by the way. The real deal.

What threw me off was no one was eating crawfish, the founding crustacean of the joint.

How could that be?

I expected to walk into a room full of head-sucking and tail-pinching and piles of mudbug remainders as far as the eye could see.

After all, I just ate an entire crawfish platter last night at Prejean’s off of I-49 in Lafayette. Tourists like me all from over the country were enjoying crawfish bisque, crawfish pie, fried crawfish, crawfish etouffee and crawfish fritters. And it was all delicious. Bought the damn shirt.

So what was the problem with D.I.’s?

The problem was it wasn’t crawfish season.

Oh sure, touristy places will gladly serve wide-eyed Cajun Country tourists platters of crawfish that have been frozen over from last spring. And to be honest, they can be pretty darn tasty.

But that’s not the way they roll at D.I.’s.

This is the real deal. Remember?

If crawfish are out of season, it can only mean one thing.

It must be crab season!

And that’s what everyone was waiting in the parking lot for. D.I.’s steamed and barbequed crabs.

I’ve spent plenty of afternoons sitting in the sun on the Chesapeake Bay drinking beer and picking my way through steamy piles of blue crabs covered in Old Bay.

It’s more of a social occasion than actual sustenance. In fact, I’m convinced I burn more calories than I consume when picking steamed blue crabs. Of course that is not a problem that lots of beer and hush puppies can’t solve.

So I knew I had to try some of D.I.’s steamed crabs.

But what really piqued my curiosity were the barbequed crabs.

Barbequed crabs???

My waitress helpfully brought one out to sample along with my gumbo while I worked through the menu and my Abita Amber.

D.I.’s barbequed crab can best be described as a steamed crab that goes through the added experience of having the top shell and deadman pealed off and then being baked with a dry mustard rub. Kind of like a South Carolina mustard BBQ sauce if it were in dry rub form.

As you peel, pinch, snap and hammer the crab, the barbeque rub gets all over your fingers, hands, arms, lap (no I wasn’t wearing a suit for this one, thank goodness), and thus rubs back onto the succulent crab meat.

Colonel Sanders couldn’t know anything about finger-licking good until he tried these.

I wouldn’t want to accuse my kind, helpful waitress of any kind of chicanery, but maybe she peddled controlled substances in another life.

Her trick worked.

After my first sample barbequed crab, I was hooked. Bring me more!

Part of what makes a place “the real deal” is when you can get something you’ve never had before.

It’s just that most of the things I’ve never had before aren’t this good! Where have barbequed crabs been all my life? I’ll never eat a boring old ordinary steamed crab again.

The gumbo was delicious as well, chock full of shrimp, crab and oysters.

Not to belabor the point, but gumbo, at a remote backwoods Cajun restaurant in the heart of Acadiana? Do you think it was the real deal?

Yeah, you know it.

But man can not live on crab and gumbo alone. Nope. That was just the appetizer.

I couldn’t come to D.I.’s without trying their famous “Blackened Catfish Supreme” – a big meaty catfish fillet well seasoned and smothered in crawfish etouffee. Which, to a Cajun, sounds kind of redundant since etouffee means “smothered” in French.

Smothered in what? Darned if I know.

I just call it delicious.

Each forkful of flaky catfish perfectly balanced the blackened spices and the sweet succulence of the etouffee.

On the side came a sweet potato drowning in butter and brown sugar, a hush puppy and a sweet beignet – a soft pillowy French version of fried dough.

Oh yeah. This was one crab feast I made darn sure I wouldn’t leave hungry.

As the crab carcasses piled up in front of me and the band played the final notes on the accordion and the room began to clear, I pushed back from the table and contemplated what had just happened.

One of the greatest dining experiences of my life. Once-in-a-lifetime.

Yeah, the real deal.

Rating: What do you think? Bought The Shirt!

National Lampoon’s Cajun Vacation – No Vaccination Required

Prejean’s
3480 N. E. Evangeline Trwy.
Lafayette, LA
Visited August 20, 2010

Beer Selection: Abita Amber, but nothing else to scare the tourists.

Food: Cajun food of your dreams.

Generally in my search for cool, new places to eat and drink, I try to avoid touristy places.

They suffer the same fate as those corporate chains – their food is a race to the bottom – the lowest common denominator that will appeal to the broadest masses.

And if a tourist doesn’t like it, who cares? It’s not like they are ever coming back anyway.

But there can be exceptions to this “no tourist traps” rule.

Sometimes a place can be popular with tourists not because it has broad appeal, but just the opposite. It is a safe, comfortable place to try something unique.

That describes Prejean’s to the tee.

Tourists from New Jersey with minivan and mother-in-law in tow aren’t going to be traipsing through the backwoods and bayous of Louisiana looking for some authentic redneck boiling point or fish camp.

Me, on the other hand? Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.

But not the Griswalds.

They want a quick taste of Cajun food in a setting that makes them feel like they are dining in the bayou, but without the Jurassic-sized mosquitoes, mud-stuck minivan, hepatitis vaccination or toothless roughnecks leering at their daughters.

That’s why they come to Prejean’s.

Conveniently located right on the I-49 frontage road in Lafayette – the mother city of Cajun Country, Prejean’s offers every out-of-towner exactly what they are looking for in an “authentic” Cajun restaurant.

They’ve got the giant stuffed 20 foot gator when you walk in the door, walls and ceiling decorated like a Louisiana bayou, Cajun band sitting up front playing their hearts out for the packed dining room and the requisite display of T-Shirts, coffee mugs, magnets and post cards by the exit, so you don’t have to feel the least bit embarrassed asking for a souvenir.

Heck, they’ve even got a live web-cam so you can wave to your Aunt Anne while you stuff your face with crawfish-stuffed catfish.

No doubt about it, Prejean’s is a fun, atmospheric way to experience Cajun cuisine. And boy, do they do that cuisine well.

Is the food “authentic”? I have no idea.

I’m not from here either.

But I’ll tell you this – I’d come here four nights a week if I was.

Apparently a lot of locals agree. There was a nice mix of tourists and natives on the Friday night I was there.

You could easily identify the locals because they knew all the old timers in the band.

Like the atmosphere, the food at Prejean’s is everything a tourist would expect Cajun cuisine to be – spicy and delicious.

Never mind the fact that crawfish season ended nearly three months ago. Tourists don’t concern themselves with the mating cycles of mud bugs.

But you know what? When they come to a Cajun restaurant in Lafayette, Louisiana, they expect to get them some doggone crawfish.

Prejean’s is happy to oblige.

I ordered the crawfish platter which included crawfish bisque, crawfish pie, fried crawfish, and crawfish etouffee. I also had some crab bisque, crab au-gratin, hush puppies and a smoked corn pastry thingee on the side.

Each dish is smothered in so many delicious spices, sauces and seasonings, nobody’s going to notice that the crawfish were frozen rather than fresh.

Where do I start?

The crawfish pie was a life changing experience. I’d always wanted to try one and here was my chance.

It didn’t disappoint. It was a small little pie crust topped by a toasted brown-yellow layer of cheese. Inside was a delicious mixture of baked crawfish, cheese and spice.

Let’s put it this way, Prejean’s crawfish pie is now on my list of the top things I’ve ever eaten in my life.

The fried crawfish were excellent too, with just enough seasoning in the breading to keep them addictive.

The etouffee was also delicious, a rich orange sauce smothering the crawfish and white rice. Not spicy at all, but very tasty nonetheless.

The crab bisque was unbelievable. Thick, spicy corn chowder loaded with crab. What made it so decadent was the massive quantity of melted butter floating in every spoonful. It had to be the richest soup I’ve ever tried.

I’m not sure authentic Cajun food necessarily always has to be spicy, but that’s what the tourists expect. Prejean’s really delivered with the crab au-gratin, by far the most mouth tingling dish on the table. It was a casserole of crab, melted white cheese and lots and lots of spice.

Regrettably, I couldn’t even finish it all – a rare occurrence for me, and a tragedy in this case.

But I’ll be back. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ll gladly stand in line with the tourists for food this good. And just think, I won’t even have to get my shots first.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!