Stephen Arceneaux, the proprietor of a terrific new restaurant called La Louisanne, has a handlebar mustache, a twinkle in his eye, and an accent straight out of the bayou. The location, last home to the ill-fated Greek Fisherman, isn't perfect, but most of the food is, with recipes straight from Arceneaux's mother.
Cajun food enjoyed a huge wave of success during the late '80s, but fizzled during the '90s because of overexposure and pretenders mangling the genre. (Think Denny's and blackened fish.)
Upscale New Orleans restaurants like Commander's Palace aren't Cajun at all, despite having let Cajun influences seep into their kitchens. The whole of New Orleans, in fact, once looked down on Cajun food. The indigenous cooking in the Big Easy was instead a mix of classical French, Caribbean and exotic Creole, a sort of New World meets Old Cuisine, done posh and elegant.
Cajuns are Acadians, Huguenot French who came to Louisiana by way of Nova Scotia, where a colony of them still exists in that province's extreme south. The Cajun cooking we love is a peasant cuisine, served fiery hot.
Bayou country is home to alligators, Tabasco sauce, boudin (a fatty pork and rice sausage) and zydeco music, popularized by artists like Dr. John. You'll find these last three at La Louisanne. The gators, I guess, decided to stay home.
Arceneaux, who describes himself, as do most Cajuns, using a colorful epithet referring to the backside of a raccoon, is waiting for his liquor license, at which point he plans to turn his new venture into a full-fledged supper club.
Until then, Vegans will have to content themselves with the best and most unashamedly Cajun food in town: crawfish etouffee, boudin balls and gumbos you will taste 10 miles down the 215.
The place doesn't look like much, yet. It is spacious, nondescript and a bit dark, with half the space filled with tables no one sits at and a stage where no musicians play. A few light fixtures are strung with Mardi Gras bead necklaces, and there is a violin pasted onto one wall, lonely for a fiddler. On my first visit, my waiter was Bulgarian, of all things. Vegas, ya gotta love it.
I sure love the food. Boudin balls are the real thing, not sausages where the filling oozes out of the casing the minute it is pierced, but rather fried balls of pork butt and rice, with the secret ingredient, chicken livers, added in for good measure. One of these dense gut-bombs is a snack. Two are a meal.
The house gumbos, chicken and sausage are wonderful, stocked with rice and surprise flavors. The two are roux gumbos, based on a flour and oil paste, so be warned, they are not for anyone who's dieting. And both are redolent of the Cajun holy trinity of bell pepper, celery and onion, which are sautéed before starting anything serious in most Louisiana kitchens.
There also is an exemplary seafood gumbo not to be missed.
There is an abundance of fried seafood, like Gulf oysters, catfish and crawfish tails, the latter available steamed, in an enormous bowl with corn on the cob and boiled potatoes. Fried seafood goes best with a dab of remoulade, a pink sauce best described as mayo with a kick. (Hint: try some on salad.)
Side dishes are fine as well, especially red beans and rice, loaded with spicy andouille sausage and boiled shrimp, which are great with the Cajun seasoning sitting on every table.
The real revelation here, though, is the blackened stuff, preferably snapper, or surprisingly, chicken. Don't try this at home, but if you do, open that patio door. During my last lunch, when I had the kitchen cook a blackened chicken breast for me, the chefs practically smoked the place out.
They use an iron skillet, lots of butter and cayenne pepper, and heaven knows what else. The finished product comes to the table with a mouth-searing crust that makes the entire trip worthwhile. The blackened entrees, by the way, have a pile of jambalaya on the side, rice mixed with shrimp and sausage. Not bad.
There are lots of other choices. Etouffees are thick, roux- and butter-based sauces, terrific with crayfish and shrimp. The Creole, best with shrimp, is a tomato and cayenne pepper sauce that the kitchen will do as hot or mild as you request. There is also an entire menu of po' boys, those N'Awlins' sandwiches stuffed with fried oysters, shrimp, crawfish or soft shell crab, and served with a pile of sweet potato fries.
If you expected a respite at dessert, forget it. Bread pudding is light and eggy, but a rich vanilla cream sauce more than makes up for it. Bourbon Street pecan pie is one more delicious option, and so is a sugary key lime pie.