As a student at LSU eons ago, I don’t know that I ever set foot in The Chimes. But in 2011 when I passed a spot on the highway at Claiborne Hill and saw a sign announcing the imminent arrival of a location of The Chimes, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was first smitten with its location on the river. I had no experience with the food, but Tom was instantly disgusted with the prospect. He was still eating across the lake, and ML and I indulged our less-than-gourmet proclivities over here.
I was thrilled with the look of the place from the very beginning, especially the long elevated deck to the shores of the Bogue Falaya River. It must have been really expensive to build on those wetlands, but I’ll bet they paid it off the first year, so insanely popular it has been since the day they first opened the doors.
It is definitely my kind of food, but the words of the corporate chef still ring in my ears. He told me they had to step up their game for the North Shore palate. At that time, I didn’t have the proper respect for the palates of my North Shore neighbors. It wasn’t until an upscale and adventuresome Mexican restaurant expanded to five locations that I felt I had maybe underestimated the local tastes.
The menu at The Chimes is enormous, and in Tom’s later years, we spent many a lunch there with ML. I will always fondly remember those lunches. Tom grew to appreciate the food at Chimes. He loved the chargrilled oysters,
the hamburger, and the red beans and rice in particular. But his absolute favorite was the fried catfish, or a fried oyster poor boy.
As much as I hate to admit it, The Chimes does a lot of things very well. They make all their salad dressings in-house, and they use olive oil. The crostini here is delicious, though no one ever knows what I am talking about when I say crostini. They call them croutons. ML always gets the Club salad, and I like the jambalaya. The spinach dip here is some of the best I’ve had in a restaurant. It is served with deep-fried bowties.
The place is packed every day, and they are open every day. They stay open till 2 am, and the bar remains busy until then. A few years ago, Allie Cousins of salad dressing fame and I had lunch. She turned me onto the crawfish cheese fries, and my world was never the same. The Chimes has always used a high quality frozen French Fry. I respect that. But those fries covered with a crawfish cream sauce and cheese, then topped with fried popcorn crawfish is a decadent treat in this downscale food world.
That’s the thing about The Chimes. It is downscale food, but an exceptionally good version of it. The place has now been open for 15 years, and it is showing its wear. A good power wash is certainly in order, but they never close. The wetlands beneath the building are overgrown. They used to have goats to keep the place manicured, but I think they gave up on them. They would get out of the fence, some were eaten by packs of wild dogs, and I think overall it was just too much trouble. There was at one time a boisterous rooster that would walk the deck yelling at patrons. I don’t really want to know what happened to Roux.
All these years later, Mary Leigh is still a dedicated regular, but she goes with other people. This week I had to return because I am caught up in World Cup fever, and I wanted to watch a game. I still haven't seen any of it, but I have been enthralled with the side notes of the fever: IG posts from visitors from across the globe, experiencing America for the first time. Their thrills about things we take for granted, like free refills on drinks and a gallon of milk, not to mention Buc-ee’s, have entertained me every day. So I needed to actually tune into the tournament before it was over.
The best place on this side of the lake to watch any sporting event is The Chimes, so I resolved to go and to try new dishes. The night we went, the semi-final game had already concluded. We sat on the back porch and saw a well-overgrown basin beneath the deck. Goats have been on the property to keep the grass from growing over, but they seemed overwhelmed by the project. It was nice to see them there, since they seem to come and go.
I took the menu and determined to order completely new things I had never had. It was National Mac’n’Cheese Day, so I had to have some of that. ML warned me that I probably wouldn’t like it. I remembered that the last time I was there, I noticed some crab claws and vowed to get some on a return visit. This was that. And I remembered that I had been shocked to see crab and brie soup on the menu. Crab and Brie soup was first introduced to a grateful audience by Dakota, a mile away in distance, and much farther in status. I added that to the order. Boudin eggrolls were also on the menu, so we got some of those. And we added the spinach dip as a shared entree.
The Crab and Brie soup wowed me. It was wonderful. Mildly salty (which means very salty for you), this was everything one would want of such a soup. It was delicate, creamy, luscious, and pretty darned full of crab. I loved this and could have stopped there. It was filling and really satisfying.
Things went south with the boudin eggrolls. I have had some great boudin eggrolls around town, and these fell far shy of anything special. They may be the worst of the lot. They were sort of limp and a tad greasy. But inside, there was not a lot of filling. One bite of these did me.
I was also surprised by the crab claws, which were plentiful, but I wish they weren’t. Sometimes I find crab claws tough. Maybe this is overcooking them? This has happened to me twice, and it is an unpleasant sensation. I have also said that crab meat is such a delicacy that it needs no overwhelming spice. Too many other flavors destroy the delicate taste of the crabmeat. This is a travesty to me. This one broke all the rules. The sauce was thick and really spicy. And the meat was tough.
The Mac’n’Cheese arrived, and it looked fantastic. Creamy and crusty on top with a nice taste of the cheese, this was piping hot and garnished with scallions.
I dug into it to discover shells and an odd flavor, much too strong for this dish. We called the waiter over to ask what the odd flavor was, and his response was a question. “You don’t like it?”He continued. “Usually, when we get that question, and we get it a lot, it means the person doesn’t like it. There is no in-between with this. People either love it or hate it. The extra cheese flavor is smoked Gouda.” Another attempt to fix something not broken. To re-invent a wheel that needs no re-invention.
The spinach dip at Chimes is maybe the best I’ve encountered in a restaurant. It is creamy and delicious all by itself, but it’s the dippers that count. They use fried bowtie pasta. Usually, this can go either way, with the pasta sometimes being limp and greasy. Honestly, that’s the way it usually goes. But this evening the bowties were smaller and really crispy, almost like a chip. They were terrific. Stiff and sturdy, these were ideal dippers.
This meal of five menu items was bounded on each side by something fantastic. The three middle dishes were less than ideal. We have had overall really good food at Chimes. And it is a hopping bar that stays open to the wee hours of the morning. It’s a great place to watch sports contests. It’s too bad we arrived for the World Cup too late.