Sunday, July 7, 2013.
Keith Young's New Seafood Shack.
I read in some book about improving one's marriage that when you see the woman undertaking jobs more traditionally performed by men, there's a problem. I don't know if that's true. Almost all the relationships I've had involved gender role reversals, but I've never noticed any problems because of that. (Unless you count the three women I dated who went to the other team after we broke up.)
Mary Ann has always been a rather forceful person who decides quickly what is to be done, and sticks with the plan. Although she had a rough moment today when the scaffold she brought in to paint the house got stuck in mud, I think she is actually having a good time, and holding no ill will at my sitting at my comfortable desk writing about food and working on a website. Both of which are probably more in the feminine realm. But I grew up in the feminist revolution, and women in traditionally male roles seems perfectly normal to me.
And besides, ever since I broke my ankle two years ago I'm afraid of ladders.
I must really sound like a wimp sometimes.
A thunderstorm made Mary Ann give up the project for the afternoon. Besides, she was hungry. She wanted to go to Crabby's Seafood Shack, as she has since it opened about six months ago. I demurred because it wasn't open long enough, and was jammed all the time. The perfect candidate for waiting it out.
But what with all that painting, and my not giving her flowers for her hard work, I had to go along with her wishes.
We arrived at Crabby's just in time to get one of the last tables. By the time we left, there would be some twenty people waiting. Keith wasn't there, but he already puts in more than a good day's work at his steakhouse up the road. I don't think anybody working at Crabby's knew me, which is the way I like it.
We started with a pile of thin-cut onion rings. One of the things Mary Ann and I agree on (very few things, she says) is that thin-sliced onion rings are incomparably better than those cut thick. Here was another proof of that. Next we had a bowl of seafood gumbo and salads--all good.
Mary Ann and I split a three-way seafood basket, with oysters, shrimp, and catfish. The first two were big and good, but the catfish took all our attention. On our way home, we talked for two or three miles about how good the catfish had been, and how much it resembled the superior catfish that Chris Vodanovich fried at Bozo's for a million years. Coated in cornmeal, the little fillets were truly golden in color, crisp on the outside, moist inside, well seasoned.
Mary Leigh is not a seafood eater. (The only sign that she's not really mine, controverted by thousands of other pieces of evidence.) So she had a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, which she liked. I envied her the bowl. Next time I come here, I will ask for the fried seafood in one of those, instead of the wax-paper-lined baskets that are becoming so popular lately.
Mary Ann thought it necessary to have a platter of jambalaya. She loves that dish, but is rarely satisfied with what she gets in restaurants. (There's something else we agree on.) I don't think she liked this one a lot. But this is a seafood house, and I think their specialties will prove to be other things. I hear nothing but raves. And if a place can put out catfish like this. . .
The restaurant has a country quality to it. Fits right into the sleepy little town of Madisonville.
Crabby's Seafood Shack. Madisonville: 305 Covington. 985-845-2348.
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