Big Mike’s BBQ in Houma, LA
Where do you eat in Houma, Louisiana? Just about everyone we asked started with Big Mike’s, so after our swamp tour, we gave it a try.
The place was packed. There are menus near the door; you look at the menus, you go to the counter, you place your order and they give you a number which you place on your table and someone brings your meals to you. The smell is divine.
This is cane sugar country, so of course, the sweet tea is cane-sugar sweet:
Several different seating areas in Mike’s:
The chicken with corn on the cob and jambalaya – delicious!
Pulled pork:
Big Mike’s has it’s own BBQ sauce, rubbing spices, t-shirts, etc>
From Lake Charles to Houma, Louisiana And Bon Creole
Another wonderful day to travel Southern Louisiana and the lowlands. We stop at one of our favorite places, Saint Martin’s Lake.
Near the factory burning cane, I see an old abandoned house. There are a lot of old abandoned houses on the backroads of Louisiana; rich pickings for series like HBO’s True Detectives.
The air was so clear you could see every atom of smoke as this factory burned off chaff grinding cane into cane sugar syrup:
Just in time for lunch, we hit New Iberia, where my friend Dave Robicheaux hangs out. Last time we were here, we went to a wonderful Place, Bon Creole, but we remembered it was hard to find. Even with my smart phone, we drive right past it, and have to go around the block and look again. This is not a place that makes itself KNOWN; you have to know where it is, and you have to really want to find it, LOL!
The interior is a hunter’s dream.
At the table near us, a group of local women are sitting and one is holding court, saying “You never know about so-and-so; she is so SECRETIVE!” and I am thinking that she would call me secretive, too, that I would be very careful about telling anything about myself that she could be spreading to all her friends – and everyone else in the Bon Creole who cared to listen.
Thank God, our food is ready, and I start with my gumbo, thick with shimp. Oops, I forgot, the gumbo comes with potato salad.
And more grilled shrimp – this time on my green salad. So many shrimp I couldn’t eat them all!
Poor AdventureMan! “Why didn’t I just order a 6″ Overstuffed Oyster Po’Boy???” These oysters were the old fashioned kind, fresh, dipped in corn meal and deep fried, just the way he likes them, but no, no, he couldn’t eat them all. I had one, and there were still many left, so many fabulous oysters!
As we were leaving, we stopped two residents who were leaving and asked them if we could get to Highway 90 by continuing down the road we were on, and they offered to let us follow them to Franklin. Franklin is like 25 miles down the road, imagine. They were willing to be so gracious to perfect strangers. We gratefully declined, and used their instructions and our smart phone to get us over to 90, en route to Morgan City and Houma.
Gigi’s in Cameron, Louisiana
Our friend at the Wildlife Center, Sarah, highly recommended Gigi’s, and we were really really hungry when we got there, so it should have been a really good experience, and besides, Cameron is small and I didn’t see any other options.
Interior:
View out towards Gulf:
Have I mentioned, only a thousand times, how fabulous the weather is? It’s seventy-something and like zero humidity. It doesn’t even matter that we are eating outdoors; the weather is perfect.
We order.
Honestly, when did I become a squeamish woman? Certainly not my early years in Tunis, and Amman, when we had to strain the weevils out of our flour and pasta. But as I watched a fly try to get into the ketchup through the tip of the dispenser, I sort of lost my appetite. The other problem is that AdventureMan and I really try to eat sensibly; we’re not extreme, every now and then we have something fried, but the food in Louisiana is rich, we haven’t seen a lot of vegetables, and when our food arrived – so much food – I couldn’t begin to eat it all. I ate about half my shrimp and an onion ring. The shrimp was really fresh.
AdventureMan had fried shrimp and catfish. He said it was really good. He also couldn’t eat it all.
Cameron isn’t very big.
But this is really fun. A $1. ferry!
And guess which parking space we got? And when we got into the space, there were dolphins, lots and lots of dolphins, no, porpoises, and oh, they were having such a good time in the sunlight.
Dolphins are not that easy to photograph . . . .
We keep seeing these wonderful signs to tell us we are still on the right trail 🙂 This ferry ride was a Louisiana Lagniappe (a little something extra!)
Coffee Call in Baton Rouge
We are going to grab a bite of breakfast before we check out of our Baton Rouge hotel, when we catch sight of the line, the very very long line, and people are carrying plates of rolls and cups of coffee back to their room; there is no place to sit and eat because the conference room is all set up for the final meeting of the conference.
LOL, no, we are not going to stand in line for breakfast. I know just the place to go; I found it earlier on TripAdvisor, but with breakfast included in our room, I hadn’t a hope of getting there. But it is nearby, and just what we need! We check out, and head for Coffee Call.
The minute we walk in, we love this place. There are businessmen reading the paper, sipping their coffees, there are families with children who have put several tables together, there are all kinds of people just kicking back and enjoying this place.
We figure out that we have to go up to the front to order our coffee, tea and beignets 🙂 but because we are about to hit the road, we also order sausage biscuits for a little protein.
The beignets are loaded with powder sugar. As we get ready to go, I go into the ladies room to wash hands and find another grandmother, trying to get powdered sugar off her two grandchildren, LOL.
The Coffee Call gave our day a great start and sent us on our way with smiles on our faces 🙂
Jubans in Baton Rouge
So we’ve just had this strangeness with my new reinstated-credit card and my driver’s license, and AdventureMan is HUNGRY, and some very kind and helpful Baton Rouge friends have told us we have to try Juban’s for dinner, which sounds like exactly the place we would love our last night in Baton Rouge. Oddly, it is located in a non-descript strip mall, and the parking lot is so full we have to circle a couple times to find a spot.
When we find Juban’s, we are enchanged. It breathes elegance and atmosphere.
You evidently can dine outside, but no-one was dining outside.
There were a couple groups and a couple in front of us walking in; there were four large groups in various rooms (you can see this is where you schedule engagement parties, good-bye parties, getting-together with old friends parties, etc. This place is geared towards special times.) The groups were whisked away somewhere, and the couple in front of us was seated, and we were seated, almost immediately. We breathed a sigh of relief; we had no reservations, but we had a lovely table.
All around us were people gathered to have a good time. My favorite tables had children at them, and several generations, and the little girls all had dresses on and bows in their hairs, and the men were in coats and ties, and the groomed women wore nice dresses and pearls. At other tables, people were having business dinners, all dressed in coats and ties or nice business attire, the lighting was dim-but-good-enough-to-read-a-menu-by . . . . if we had a menu. We had no menus, and we didn’t seem to have a waiter.
We had plenty of time to observe.
After a good ten minutes, a waiter appeared and brought us two glasses of very very good wine . . . but no menus. He seemed annoyed when I asked for the menu; he was probably annoyed at the hostess, or something, I don’t know, but while he told us we had “the best waiter in the house” waiting on us, he never made us feel welcome in any way. He was entirely correct, in a very rushed, perfunctory kind of way.
We ordered. Food arrived fairly quickly. Our waiter never stopped by to ask how it was, or if we wanted more wine, or anything. It seemed to be an exceptionally busy evening; I didn’t see any of the waiters smiling or chatting cozily with any of the clients, so I wonder if it is part of the training that the waiters be rushed and perfunctory?
AdventureMan was the winner, with his Seafood Pasta. The sauce was intense, and truly wonderful, a sauce I would love to be able to make.
I had a perfectly nice salad and non-fried seafood, the Salad Napoleon. The salad part had taste; the seafood, not so much
:
I did order coffee, while AdventureMan finished up his exquisite Seafood Pasta. Normally, on a night like this, in a lovely restaurant, we might also have dessert, but we were so nonplussed at our non-welcome that we decided to pay the bill and leave.
I would go back, one time. I would give them the benefit of the doubt; it might have been just a very very unexpectedly busy evening and they found themselves short-staffed. I would give them another try, but I just have the feeling that maybe stuffy, rushed service is the norm rather than the exception. Pity, that, because the venue itself is wonderful.
And it was just another little strangeness . . . .
Ninfa-mania in Baton Rouge
Ninfa’s is separate from the Crown Plaza in Baton Rouge, but plopped smack dab in the parking lot, and, as you read in the previous entry, right under our window, well, sort of.
When we had no room waiting, we knew we would feel better if we ate lunch. Mexican is always good with us, and the smells emanating from Ninfa’s were mouth-watering.
It’s about noon, and we walk in the door. There’s a gal at the bar, filling small containers of salsas, but no one at reception, and the gal filling salsas doesn’t even look up. No welcome, no explanation . . . . and it goes on and on. There is no one seating customers, who are lining up behind us and asking us what’s going on and WE DON’T KNOW! Finally, one rushed waiter told us that they were all busy cleaning tables and someone would seat us in a minute.
This was just another chapter on a day every monkey gets his roll in the barrel, and today, we is that monkey.
Soon after, a table was ready and we were seated. From there on, we have no complaints. Our waiter was supurb. He told us we was a former Spanish teacher – I wonder if you make better money waiting tables? I had a couple tacos, and the meat was wonderfully flavored, but . . . very gristly and chewy.
There were two very cool things. One is that when they brought the thin, crispy, fresh cooked chips, they brought three different salsas, a cucumber-y avocado green one, a mild red salsa and a jalapeno one – all good. The second very cool thing was that the tortillas were hand made by the lady you will see pictured below, who was delighted to have her photo taken and grinned from ear to ear.
So an unhappy as we were to learn that there was going to be a rock concert right underneath our window, we rolled with it. When you’re the monkey in the barrel, just roll.
The music was actually pretty good, although holy smokes, it was loud. And it ended right at ten, so we really didn’t lose any sleep.
Ninfa’s appears very popular. I thought the lunch specials were priced a little high, but hey, this is the big city, compared to Pensacola, and it was packed, so they evidently know what the public is willing to pay. The rice is still in the shape of the scoop that scoops it, and the beans were glue-y. I wish they’d pay a little more for their steak, but their marinade is a wow.
Shux Oyster Bar on Palafox
It’s the perfect weather for Al Fresco; the heat has broken and just about everyone had the same idea – head downtown for lunch, find a restaurant with outdoor seating and revel in the moderate temperatures and full sun.
This glorious sunny day was preceded by one of those thunderous rainstorms to beat all rainstorms, but it washed Pensacola clean and left it cool and shiny.
We wanted to try Shux Oyster Bar, and this is the perfect day for it. We shared an order of grilled oysters, no cheese, AdventureMan had a Rachel (a Reuben but with fish) and I had the Crafish GritCakes (or something like that.) We both ooohed and aaahed over the sauces; the Remoulade on the Rachel was phenomenal and the horseradish sauce on the gritcakes got my attention in a totally good way.
Oops, only one left 🙂
Khons Asian Bistro on Palafox in Pensacola
One of America’s best streets just got better with the addition of another great eating adventure as Khons Asian Bistro on Palafox opened a month or so ago with Asian fusion cooking. While most of the diners there were ordering sushi, we opted for the miso soup and hot plates. The waiter particularly likes the fried rice dish, which we considered, but ended up ordering the Cambodian chicken, me in lettuce wraps and AdventureMan with rice.
When our main dishes arrived, he grumped – just a little – because he paid three dollars more, and the only difference was that his lettuce was chopped, and he got rice.
“I paid three more dollars for rice” he mourned.
Not for long. The food was delicious, all the tastes fresh and tasty. Just enough spice. In fact, while I really like spicy, I got a hunk of jalepeno in my soup that nearly took my breath away. Our very helpful waitress said next time she would personally make sure that all the seeds were removed. I don’t mind spicy; this just caught me by surprise.
What I love, in addition to the fresh, healthy, tasty food, is the interior. Khon’s uses a deeply greyed blue, very undersea feeling, and silver. Even the chairs (which are comfortable) have silver seats, and that piqued my sense of fun. I love the scaly backdrop behind the sushi bar; the suggestion of a fish tail. We really enjoyed the entire experience, and we are glad they are there and doing so well. They have a brisk lunch crowd, so get there early.
The Fishing Hole; Elegance on Brent
We were actually just turning around to head back to another restaurant for lunch when we saw the Fishing Hole and decided, as we often do, arbitrarily and spontaneously, to give it a try. We used to drive our son crazy that way (not intentionally) by saying “Hey, we are heading for X” and then part way there, changing our minds. He would yell “No Bait and Switch!” (even as a teenager, he was lawyerly) and we would reluctantly go where we had planned. Now, without supervision, we can do as we wish.
(Our son has actually confided that now, as a grown-up, he and his family occasionally do the same thing.)
The Fishing Hole is on Brent. For those of you not from around Pensacola, Brent is a thoroughfare. It’s not an uptown kind of street.
From the outside, The Fishing Hole looks like a fast food place. It has items painted on the inside window, and it looks small.
When we walked in, we were blown away immediately. We walked into a beautiful bistro-style space and were greeted by wait staff dressed in black, with classic long white aprons, very European. They ushered us into the dining room, which has deep red walls above white wainscoting, with spare design elements on the walls – again, very French in feel, and elegant. The tables are all a deep colored wood, comfortable wooden chairs, and spacious.
The first thing I saw on the menu was a shrimp and crab chowder, of which I ordered a cup. This is a very large “cup” and is served with a little pitcher of sherry, which you can add to your own taste. It was purely fabulous. I would go back again just for that signature chowder.
I also ordered the fish tacos, which were very fresh tasting, very delicious and healthy:
AdventureMan had the Oyster Sandwich, which was equally delicious. He also ordered hushpuppies and oh my word, those hushpuppies were perfect.
Because my fish tacos were so healthy, we decided to split an order of peach pie. When it arrived, we almost fell over. It was beautiful, and it was also huge. The taste was spectacular; it had a crust made of graham cracker and toasted walnuts, and it added a unique and wonderful texture and flavor to an already delicious peach pie. As you can see, the presentation is beautiful.
From that startling entrance into unexpected elegance, to our departure, this was a delightful experience. The wait staff is eager to please, willing to explain the menu and answer questions. The service was impeccable. The food was fabulous. We can’t wait to go back.
They have a FaceBook page; check to see which nights they are open for dinner, and make a reservation. The word is getting around, and this place is packed for dinner.
15 Brent Ln
Pensacola, Florida
(850) 912-6664
10:00am – 8:00pm
Cactus Cantina in Pensacola
The service was excellent at the new Cactus Cantina, located just across from the airport in the old Verona’s restaurant location. The parking lot was packed and the restaurant was hoppin’! The menu has most of the standard Mexican dishes, and the feel is sort of chain restaurant.
The food on the other hand, was a wonderful surprise. I ordered Carne Asada, and when it came, it was ginormous, huge, but it was a lot of very good, lean steak and a LOT of grilled onions and peppers, and there was so much that I took half home and still felt stuffed.
The guacamole was expensive, but there must have been three cups of it, and it was very very good, served in a molcajete, and full of nice chunks of avocado. We also took about two thirds of the guacamole home, there was so much.
This is the interior of the Cactus Cantina:
This is the guacamole:
My carne asada:
AdventureMan’s tamale combination:
Sides with carne asada:
On the whole, not bad at all. There are a lot of Mexican restaurants in the area, and this is another one, a very good one, but nothing that raises it high above the crowd.
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