Simply French

It took a long time for me to understand Tom’s enthusiasm for Cafe Lynn. It started in the humblest of environments, a reboot of an old Burger King in Mandeville. I actually much-preferred that location to its present one, in a strip mall.

The free-standing original space had a French feel to it, and it took a Herculean effort on their part to achieve that. It was quite charming what they did to the place, turning a decrepit Burger King into a restaurant that could have been in a French country inn.  But they had to move because it simply wasn’t large enough to accommodate the richly-deserved fanbase they developed. And the building was in terrible shape. They moved to a strip mall that I find way more interesting than most. In crawfish season it is hopping because drive-thru crawfish is there. And I like to shop while I wait for food at next-door-neighbor outfitter store Marsh & Bayou. 

The restaurant is nice and well-appointed enough, but I prefer to sit outside at one of three unadorned tables facing the parking lot. Not a lot of atmosphere here, either. But Tom has always been about what is placed before him, and at Cafe Lynn that is likely to thrill. We are pretty boring in our attachment to things on menus but we do venture out here. A bit.

On our last visit Tom got an oyster salad that was so terrific, and so cheap, I couldn’t believe it. The salad was enormous, with a dozen large, crispy, greaseless and golden brown bivalves bordering the edge of the plate. Filling in the rest of the plate was a mound of spinach leaves tossed in a Blue Cheese dressing with a blanket of Bleu Cheese crumbles. In the center was their signature mound of grated carrots, which always adds a welcome pop of color, flavor, and vitamins to any salad from this kitchen. I like when Tom has a salad like this. He will eat the oysters first and a bit of the salad, but there’s plenty enough for me. This enormous salad was a steal at $17.50.

I will sometimes get the duck here, or Chicken Grenobloise, but I always gravitate back to the Crab Claws in Garlic Butter. This garlic butter is outstanding among its peers, and believe me, I have had a few others out there. Aglio e Olio is one of my favorite things to eat, and the butter instead of oil here just makes it richer. Redolent with herbs and parsley, I decided the first time I had it that it begged to be tossed with pasta, so I asked for a bowl of plain pasta. After finishing the meaty crab claws piled high in the dish, the leftover sauce was dumped over the pasta and tossed. The extra parm that I requested was then also tossed, and I couldn’t be happier with my own entree creation.

Tom has often said about terrific restaurants that maybe they should charge more for the quality of what is placed before a diner. This is the first restaurant in all that time that makes me understand the sentiment. It’s so very, very good.