Dinner And A Show

Many years ago we went down to the bayou in Lafitte for Eat Clubs at Restaurant Des Familles. It is a unique restaurant literally on the bayou with food that evokes its place. The food is Louisiana through and through, and a pretty delicious version of it.

We have not been there in a very long time, but I have fond memories of it and have been wanting to return since their extensive renovation precipitated by a fire that destroyed the kitchen, though it started above and crashed through. The place was closed for more than a year.

Last weekend we finally made it back to see what they did, and how this event affected the restaurant and the staff. What we found was a place with precisely the same spirit as before, and pretty much the same look, except an open kitchen that is beautiful, and occupied by a hardworking staff turning out the same great food.

The appetizer section of the menu gets me every time, and perhaps a bit more here because of all the local classics. While my mind was at war over the question of crab boulettes or boudin boulettes, my eyes fell on the words Crabmeat Remick, immediately settling the issue. Tom has always been a huge fan of this Pontchartrain Hotel signature, and because of that, I remain endlessly curious about it. Done.

I had already ordered turtle soup for Tom, who has been eating an extraordinary amount of that lately. I know he loves it and we are seeing it all over town right now for some reason.

Softshell crab was on the menu, but a chicken dish was calling to me. I never order chicken in a restaurant unless I can’t find anything else I want, but this was a boudin-stuffed chicken with pepper jelly glaze. Sounded pretty great. It was served with jambalaya, which I had to get at a place like this. Actually, I get it whenever I see it on a menu, which is rare. But at a place literally on the bayou, it had to be great.

Tom settled on fried catfish, which was no surprise at all. I expected it to be terrific here for all the same reasons.

But first, we consumed an entire basket of ordinary-looking garlic bread. This was delightful. Garlic bread used to be all over town, but it is rarely seen now. This unassuming basket was smallish pieces of Leidenheimer French bread lightly covered with melted garlic butter. It seemed a little skimpy on sight but it was a perfect garlic bread, and impossible to stop eating. It was light without greasiness. A deft hand.

Tom loved his turtle soup, and I was thrilled with the Crabmeat Remick. One of the reasons this dish intrigues me so much is that I don’t understand how anyone came up with the idea to pair delicate crabmeat with chili sauce, even a diluted version of chili sauce. And I have no objection to the bacon because isn’t everything made better by bacon?

What I liked about the Crabmeat Remick at Restaurant Des Familles was the liberties they took with the recipe, substituting the chili sauce with a citrusy-mayo sauce, which added just a bit of tart lemony flavor to the crabmeat. It was a beautiful dish with a pile of jumbo lump crabmeat. I could have made a meal out of this.

The fried catfish came as a pile of thin strips of greaseless golden brown fish dusted with cornflour. I subbed out basic frozen fries for jalapēno grits. These had a perfect grit texture with a powerful jalapēno punch. We both liked these a lot.

My chicken was two chicken breasts generously stuffed with an intense boudin flavor. The boudin was very good, and the pepper jelly glaze was an interesting complement to the meaty boudin. I really liked this. The creamy coleslaw I ordered instead of the asparagus (a fancy vegetable just seems wrong with a boudin dish, and I don’t like that fancy vegetable anyway.) was exactly as described. It was a very nice creamy and colorful coleslaw.

The waitress and I got signals crossed, and I wound up having to order the jambalaya as a side. It came in an ample portion and was a tad on the red side, though not overwhelmingly tomatoey. Large shreds of chicken chunks dotted throughout, and this was a very tasty version of the dish. I would have expected nothing less.

Tom had a beautiful bread pudding for dessert, and I was so enthusiastic about the meal I even inquired about the dessert offerings for me. 

When it was discovered that pecan pie was on the list, I ordered it. I imagined a delicious slice of pecan pie as good as the rest of this meal, but what arrived was an enormous pile of pecans in a sweet caramel sauce with vanilla ice cream melting on top. 

When I lifted a forkful of this it had a different makeup than I expected. When I inquired about this to the waitress she said that it’s more of a cobbler. This would have been fine had I not had a fixed image of this in my mind, and I imagine most people love this. Too sweet and too much for me.

Throughout the meal, I kept watch on the bayou, which was about twenty feet away, with a stretch of grass in between. Near the shore was a little patch of eyebones on the head of what I imagined might be an alligator. I kept checking and noticed that there was suddenly another patch of what would be a mouth.

I asked about it and while the manager was explaining that it was indeed a real alligator, it came out of the water and walked to a spot in the grass about eight feet from the building. We watched him sun himself and eat something. I had never noticed that the underside of an alligator is shimmery gold. Everyone at the big picture windows was riveted by this beautiful creature doing his thing in his habitat. What a privilege for us.

The manager calls it “dinner and a show.” It very much is, and I can’t wait to go back for a rerun.