Nothing Boring About A Cajun Shrimp Burger

Mason’s Grill
13556 Jefferson Hwy.
Baton Rouge, LA





Mason’s Grill is the embodiment of everything I love about the state of Louisiana -- the best state in America for eating.

End of discussion.

Even at an ordinary-looking non-descript place on the outskirts of Baton Rouge like Mason’s you can find something extraordinary to light up your taste buds.

I mean, this isn’t the kind of place I normally seek out.

There is nothing historic or quaint about it. It’s not some Travel Channel dining landmark.

Mason’s has no divey charm or scary clientele.

It’s just a boring looking restaurant with a big parking lot filled with pickups sitting by the side of the road patronized by local families out for a good meal.

But looks can be deceiving -- especially in the Bayou State where “a good meal” is almost never boring.

There is nothing boring about chowing down on giant dangerous reptiles -- especially the way Mason’s prepares alligator.

While I enjoy my oversized lizards fried as much as any red blooded heterosexual American male, you have to try your gator blackened just once in your life.

This alligator was generously seasoned with Cajun spices, perfect with the tangy New Orleans style remoulade dipping sauce.

Tender, juicy and packing a nice kick, Mason’s blackened gator was like a Mardi Gras parade in every bite.

So does gator taste like chicken?

Well, yeah. Kind of.

Like a swampy, greasy, delicious chicken.

While the gator is top notch, the real reason to come to Mason’s is for their famous Cajun Shrimp Burger.

This burger is epic!

A half pound of fresh ground beef spiked with jalapeno peppers is then sautéed in more jalapenos and Cajun spices.

But I’m pretty sure that is not even half of this burger’s caloric overload.

The burger is topped by a molten lava concoction of gooey Monterey Jack cheese and shrimp.

Yes. Shrimp.

On a burger.

How awesome is that?

Pretty damn awesome as a matter of fact.

And these aren’t those lame little cocktail shrimp I was expecting.

We’re talking big plump local Gulf Coast shrimp. The real deal.

The cheese/shrimp topping was thicker than the half pound burger -- and oozed appetizingly with every delicious bite.

Fortunately, Mason’s uses an industrial-sized sourdough bun fresh made from a bakery in Houston to keep it all together.

Too often these epic sized burger/condiment combinations transform into an epic failure because the buns just can’t stand up to the meat/cheese/grease assault.

But not here. Mason’s has mastered the art of burger structural integrity.

Cooked exactly the way I asked for it -- a nice medium pink with plenty of juices flowing, the burger featured a harmonious yin and yang of sweet and spicy.

The jalapenos in the beef let their presence be known, but never turned my mouth into an inferno of spice.

The jack cheese and shrimp lended a perfect sweet balance to the Cajun spices.

Definitely a Suit757 burger Hall of Famer. For sure.

Along with a side of first rate onion rings, I had trouble finishing my meal. And that’s saying something.

My bartender said most folks don’t finish the burger. And most folks don’t start with a whole appetizer of gator either.

But then again most folks ain’t Suit757.

I’m a professional after all.

The beer selection at Mason’s was decent -- for Louisiana -- a state with among the least adventurous tastes in craft beer.

Proving that Louisianans are all about the food -- not the drink, the local Canebrake from Parrish Brewing Company in Lafayette was just a bland boring wheat beer with a sweet aftertaste.

Canebrake just adds further proof to my theory that wheat beers are brewed for people who don’t actually like the taste of beer.

So much for trying new local beer I’ve never had before.

So I switched to the familiar.

Mason’s sports a nice lineup of Abita beers from the brewery down the road in Abita Springs.

I opted for my favorite Abita -- Turbo Dog.

First of all, it’s fun just telling the bar tender, “I’ll take a Turbo Dog.”

The dark heavy ale is a perfect foil to the Cajun spiced delicacies you can find on just about any menu in this state.

Even at a mundane looking place like Mason’s.

Sure, it would make for a more entertaining story if I could tell you I risked my life walking into a smoky biker bar with heads turning, beady eyes glaring, fingers on switch blades twitching as soon as I swung upon the saloon doors.

But you know what? I’ve been to enough of those places.

Sometimes it’s nice to nice to know a suit doesn’t have to risk his life to get an epic burger.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Shacking Up in the Big Easy

Rivershack Tavern
3449 River Rd.
Jefferson, LA





Everybody loves The Big Easy.

Whether it was a the Sugar Bowl, your buddy’s bachelor party or that all-important “business” conference that just happened to be held one block from Bourbon Street, you’ve been here, stumbled through the grimy streets of the French Quarter and bought the House of Blues t-shirt.

Everybody comes to New Orleans. Everybody has a good time. And everybody leaves with a Goody’s Headache Powder Super Value Pack hangover.

Lord only knows, Suit757 knows the back alleys of the Vieux Carre Better than my home town.

So I always get excited when New Orleans makes an appearance on the old Suit757 itinerary.

Even if I’m only on the ground for four hours -- like today.

That’s just long enough to hop in my rental car, conduct my meeting and go find something to eat before heading back to submit to the TSA crotch-gropers at MSY.

As you might imagine, in one of the world’s great eating cities, I’ve been to all the touristy places like Acme, Felix and Crescent City Brewhouse.

I’ve been to all the popular places like Mother’s, Tujague’s and Galatoire’s.

More times than I can count.

Been there. Done that. Bought the shirt.

What gets me excited now is finding those hidden joints in the seedy neighborhoods outside the French Quarter where the locals go to for good food and beer.

Think about that for a minute.

New Orleans is one of the great culinary destinations on earth. The folks who actually live in this city know good food when they taste it.

I’ll happily defer to their judgment on which local joints are serving up the best authentic Louisiana fare.

The Rivershack Tavern hard by the Mississippi River levy somewhere between downtown and the airport is just such a place.

This is the type of place where if you contribute an old fashioned tacky ashtray to the décor, the bar tender will give you a free drink.

The bar stool I was sitting on was supported by the legs of a golfer.

The bar stool next to me featured the legs of a hooker -- complete with her skirt down at her ankles.

The Rivershack gives real meaning to the slogan, “Tacky, yet unrefined.”

A 100 year old ramshackle dive patronized by bikers, blue collar guys stopping by after their shifts and old guys from the neighborhood hiding out from the misses, you won’t find too many tourists in here.

Or Suits for that matter.

It’s the type of place where everybody knows everybody. Except me, of course.

With such a loyal clientele of drinkers, Rivershack Tavern would probably do good business even if it didn’t have some high-falutin’ chef whipping up creative Louisiana cuisine in the kitchen.

But this is New Orleans, where top notch food is revered as much as Drew Brees -- even in a funky blue collar dive like this.

I kicked off my only meal of the day (so don’t judge my 3pm gluttony) with an appetizer of “Buffalo Shrimp”, a huge plate of generous sized gulf shrimp lightly fried and drenched in a spicy wing sauce.

My entrée of red beans and rice arrived simultaneously.

This classic New Orleans dish is a special reserved for Mondays only.

No Monday morning blues here. I felt damn lucky to snag this quintessential staple of Creole blue collar cooking.

The beans were rich with flavor and creole seasoning and mixed with fall apart braised meat from some sort of tender, tasty animal. I’m guessing pig or rabbit.

Best of all, the dish was topped with a giant link of smoky sausage charred just right with tell-tale grill marks.

At $8.95 this meal was a bargain!

Maybe the food here is just a loss leader to tempt folks into the place for drinking.

Because at $5-$7 per beer, the Rivershack wasn’t exactly giving the alcohol away.

Ever since my visit early this year to the Czech Republic, I’ve been a fanatical advocate for fresh-from-the-tap, unpasteurized Pilsner Urquel, from the Czech city of Pilsen -- the very first pilsner ever invented.

The difference between the skunky, pasteurized Pilsner Urquel crap in the green bottle and Pilsner Urquel on tap is like the difference between Hilary Clinton and Kate Upton in bikinis.

They wear the same label, but the impact on the senses couldn’t be more different.

Following my obligatory unpasteurized draft of Pilsner, I moved on to the local brews.

Nola’s Hopitoulas offered a rare taste of hops here in the bayou where beers tend to be more subdued.

I capped off the afternoon with a bottle of Abita Turbodog, a thick, rich, dark, manly brew that would scare the hell out of your “Bud Light Lime Only” girlfriend.

As I knocked back the last few drops from my Turbodog and paid my tab, I felt proud of myself for venturing out of the tourist comfort zone.

Sure, you can get yourself a hell of a New Orleans po-boy at Mother’s or Acme downtown, but the Rivershack proves sometimes the best food is served to those who know good food best -- the folks who actually live here.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Georgia Coasting

Skipper’s Fish Camp
85 Screven St.
Darien, GA




“Guys, it just doesn’t get any better than this.”

Remember that iconic Old Milwaukee television commercial -- all the dudes sitting around a campfire on the beach, sun setting into the lake, knocking back cold ones?

Yeah. That’s what I was thinking to myself on this sunny spring afternoon as I sipped my ice cold Sweetwater 420 sitting on the back deck at Skipper’s Fish Camp.

Sun shining down, a cool breeze blowing off the Darien River, shrimp boats motoring by and Charlie Daniels and Hank Williams, Jr. on the outdoor sound system.

Ahhh, yeah.

It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Other than the Outlaw Country soundtrack, the only other sounds are the cries of the sea gulls and the
locals at the table next to me calling out their “hey y’alls” to the shrimpers who just tied up to the pilings across the salt marsh.

Darien, Georgia is a fleeting little coastal town, one of the few remaining still genuinely tied to the bounties of the surrounding waters.

The one block downtown consists of four or five buildings.

Just downhill toward the water’s edge lies Skipper’s and a row of shrimp boats -- an increasingly rare sight on the southeastern coastline.

Cold hard economics makes it difficult to cling to this fading, salty way of life.

With diesel at four bucks per gallon, it can cost several hundred dollars to fill a shrimp boat’s fuel tank for a day of trawling the coastal waters.

Even at the $11 per pound going retail rate for local jumbo shrimp, it’s hard to eke out much of a profit.

Worse yet, folks can go to the local Piggly Wiggly and buy shrimp for $3-$4 per pound.

Of course that bargain shrimp doesn’t come from the Darien River. It comes from a shrimp farm in Thailand.

Can you taste the difference?

Absolutely.

No comparison.

Local Georgia shrimp are firmer and sweeter.

Besides, seafood is supposed to come from the sea -- not some Third World farm on the other side of the planet where masses of frankenshrimp swim in their own waste.

But don’t worry about the health consequences of such shrimp factories. The fish food the shrimp are fed is spiked with mass amounts of anti-biotics -- so you won’t get sick.

Some Department of Agriculture bureaucrat would probably try to convince me this is “progress”.

No thanks.

Give me a plate of shrimp that came right out of the deep blue sea in front of me.

That’s what you get at Skipper’s Fish Camp where your meal probably came right off one of the boats docked out back.

A favorite way to enjoy local wild-caught shrimp here in the Low Country is shrimp and grits.

Skipper’s version piles a whole mess of shrimp in a bowl of cheese grits topped with smoky bacon.

I got my local shrimp blackened with a crab cake combo.

With a light peppery seasoning, my shrimp had a nice skillet char on the outside while remaining succulent and tender on the inside.

My crab cake was a Low Country version typical of this part of the coast.

Around the Chesapeake Bay, crab cakes tend to be baseball shaped mounds of moist crab meat faintly held together by mayonnaise and a few traces of bread crumbs.

They do crab cakes a bit differently down here.

Skipper’s crab cake was flattened rather than round, with more seasoning, less mayo and a nice dark crust from the skillet.

I’m not going to start any fist fights over which version I like better, but let’s just say any open-minded “when in Rome” crab cake connoisseur won’t be disappointed at Skipper’s.

Skipper’s sides were a highlight rather than an afterthought.

Collard greens chockfull of pork fat.

Sweet potato casserole mixed up with lots of pecans and brown sugar.

And top notch homemade onion rings. The batter compliments rather than overshadows the thick, sweet, juicy rings of local Vidalia onion.

Of course no trip to Coastal Georgia is complete without sampling some local alligator.

Skipper’s gator bites back as the tender greasy meat is deep fried and then tossed in a fiery hot buffalo sauce.

I had to order several pints of Georgia’s favorite craft brew, Sweetwater 420, to douse the flames.

Yep. Had to.

Drinking beer in the sun on a Wednesday afternoon. Local shrimp, crab and gator.

Nope. It doesn’t get much better.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Low Country Let Down

Desposito’s
3501 Marye St.
Savannah, GA




It’s an eternal search.

I can see it clearly in my mind.

A backwater fish camp tucked away under the Spanish moss draped live oak trees patronized by hard-scrabble shrimpers and watermen downing American beer.

Weathered worn picnic tables out back right by the water piled high with really cheap fresh seafood (because the owner bypasses the middle man by purchasing straight off the shrimp boat of his second cousin Bubba).

As you pull into the gravel parking lot of Desposito’s just across the Wilmington River from Savannah’s infamous Bonaventure Cemetery, the little cinder block dive gives rise to such expectations.

But ultimately, Desposito’s falls a bit short of my Suit757 fantasy fish camp.

First of all, despite the low overhead of this ramshackle little joint, the place isn’t exactly cheap.

Eleven bucks for a dozen oysters. Nineteen bucks for a pound of crab legs. Three bucks for a 12 ounce bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Desposito's sure isn’t giving it away.

Most disappointing of all – especially on this beautiful sunny 72 degree winter day (I thank Al Gore for global warming everyday) – is there is no outdoor seating at Desposito’s.

You sit inside the cinder block walls peering out the painted shut windows.

I know firsthand Coastal Georgia’s infamous sand gnats can be brutal, but I’d love the chance to escape the A/C and take my chances outside on a day like this.

Heck, I’d settle for a screened in porch. Or even a sea breeze through an open window.

Oh well.

But what Desposito’s lacks in seaside ambiance, it makes up for with fresh no frills seafood.

You know it’s a good sign when you walk in and see every table outfitted with pages of the Savannah Morning News classified pages to soak up piles of oyster shells and crab carcasses.

Unfortunately, blue crabs were out of season, but I still managed to create my own Coastal Georgia seafood feast with good local oysters and shrimp.

The steamed oysters were spot-on, especially after a quick dip in Desposito’s own spicy cocktail concoction. Creamy and spiked with a dash of mustard, it was one of the better seafood condiments I’ve ever tried.

My Low Country Boil of shrimp, potatoes, corn and sausage could have used more spice. I’m used to my shrimp being drenched in Old Bay. But these were hardly seasoned at all.

And as a Suit with Irish ancestry, I can tell you there is no food more boring than bland boiled potatoes. Thank goodness for Desposito’s cocktail sauce.

The sausage, on the other hand, was first rate, juicy with a sharp snap in every bite.

The shrimp salad did not suffer from any such seasoning rationing. Sweet with curry and relish and served on toast with lettuce and tomato, this shrimp salad sandwich might be the highlight of Desposito’s limited menu.

All in all, while Desposito’s came up a bit short of embodying the seafood shack of my Suit757 dreams, it’s not a bad place to sit a spell and enjoy the bounty of the local waters.

But I know that magical fish camp is out there.

Some where.

And you can rest assure, my loyal Suits in Strange Places readers, Suit757 will keep searching.

Rating: Would Wear a Free Shirt.