More Than 40 Years of Cajun's Wharf.

There's a lot about the cool Louisiana-inspired eatery along the Arkansas River just outside of downtown Little Rock you should know about - from its history to its varied menu.

Hoo-boy, there's some gator on the menu.

This restaurant has closed.

• GRAV WELDON
• CRABBY: Stuffed crab at Cayenne's Cajun Cuisine

Until I started doing this for a living, my husband and I would take a week each year and travel to New Orleans — where we’d eat. Seriously. We went on a culinary vacation every year to New Orleans, usually in October, a few times in December from 2000 to 2005. That year we decided to go in March for some crazy reason. And then there was Katrina.

We still go down and eat from time to time. There’s just something about Cajun and Creole flavors that just make me happy, a need to satisfy that Trinity and Pope obsession (that Trinity being bell pepper, onion and celery, the Pope being garlic). Even now we try to build a few days in the city any time we’re passing from point A to point B.

It’s good to find flavors like that here in Central Arkansas. I’ve actually been pretty surprised over the years that we haven’t seen more Cajun restaurants in the area. Finding out about Cayenne’s Cajun Cuisine meant I had a new place to check out for my Louisiana fix.

We dropped by on a Friday afternoon and decided to split on our meals. My dining companion would try the buffet advertised that night for $15.99. I would choose from the menu.

• GRAV WELDON

My choice — the Seafood Platter ($16.99), which seemed like a goodly amount of food to share between myself and the girl child. While my companion went for his first trip to the buffet, I was presented with a seafood gumbo with a deep brown roux and a lot of 30-45 count size shrimp (about quarter-size). It contained small bits of crab, green onions and a soft smash of trinity throughout. It was served with a bowl of rice on the side. The gumbo was served hot and was nicely spicy, but mild enough my daughter had no issue with it.

• GRAV WELDON

My dining companion returned with a plate of food from the buffet. The hodgepodge included barbecue pork riblets, fried shrimp, dirty rice and — of all things, a softly stewed dish of alligator. The only gator on the menu is fried alligator bites; this was gator served with a nice blend of Cajun spices, slow-cooked like a roast, with a flavor between pork and chicken. It had a tougher texture than chicken and strung out like a red meat, but it had a lot of flavor that was only enhanced by the goodly amount of fat on board.

• GRAV WELDON

The dirty rice, a side item on the menu, is a real winner. Full of bits of meat and spice, it’s a deliciously hearty side that conjures the bayou in the mind.

• GRAV WELDON

My platter was delivered, and immediately everyone at the table realized I’d receive the better deal. It was a big mess of fried, sure — but it was also varied and full of fresh cooked and tasty morsels. There were several nicely fried oysters at the bottom of the heap. Flat pressed shrimp were properly breaded with cornmeal and fried to perfection. An additional shrimp had been stuffed with a slightly spicy crabmeat dressing and given the same treatment. There was a stuffed crab with a little extra kick to it, a whole mess of fries (mashed or baked potato, dirty rice are other side options) and some dark fried, densely packed barely sweet hush puppies.

• KAT ROBINSON

And there were a couple of delicious white fish fillets… white fish. That did throw me off. They weren’t catfish. I woulda just assumed catfish, but no, white fish. Not that I minded. Catfish can be a little too muddy for me.

The girl child could not get enough of the fish. She ate a whole fillet and got halfway through the other. I was glad I at least got a taste.

• GRAV WELDON

Even with the two of us eating on the platter, we still took about half of it home. Heartier appetites might do better.

My dining companion did manage to try the peach cobbler, but wasn’t all that impressed. It was cobbler. The best things on the buffet were meaty things. If you like some varied fried meats supplemented with a little barbecued hog, the buffet is the choice for you.

Cayenne’s offers its buffet any time it’s open. The prices vary. I hear they have crab legs on Wednesday — I could do some real damage there.

You’ll find Cayenne’s Cajun Cuisine on John Harden Road in Jacksonville — north of the air base. (501) 241-2121 or check out the website.

Love, laughs and lunch at The New Orleans School of Cooking.

I come from a long line of cooks on both sides of my family. But there are some things I never picked up on my own. My grandmother was known for making a mean jambalaya, but all I got from her was how to make biscuits. Growing up in the big city might have been part of that.

Most of what I’ve learned about cooking outside my small south Arkansas culture has been as an adult, through TV and books and cooking classes taken whenever and wherever I can. And just about every time I find myself in New Orleans I end up at the New Orleans School of Cooking. Classes are offered every day on everything from gumbo to red beans and rice and everything in-between.

But I don’t just go for the knowledge. I go for the food -- the school’s food is some of the best Cajun and Creole fare you’ll get in the French Quarter. And I go for the stories.

Kevin Belton’s one of my favorite chefs at the school. When you say someone’s larger than life, you’re usually referring to attitude. With Kevin that applies, but it’s his stature that people tend to recall first. He’s six foot, nine inches tall and in the range of 400 pounds… of what, you might ask? “It’s not fat,” he insists. “It’s credibility. Would you trust someone without some credibility?”

Like the other chefs at the school, he’s full of knowledge and wisdom about southern Louisiana cooking. He’s also full of tales and teasing. I don’t mind that at all.

Kevin will tell you, as will the other chefs, this simple mantra. “Use what you got. That’s the heart of Louisiana cooking. You got this recipe, you don’t have crawfish, use shrimp. No shrimp? Use chicken. Use venison. Got a garden? Use squash. It don’t have to be perfect.”

On my most recent visit, we went to learn how to prepare shrimp and artichoke soup, crawfish etouffee and pralines in a Saturday afternoon class. The classroom was packed with folks from all over the United States. Kevin went through the class, asking each of us where we were from. There were a couple there from Wisconsin, which made Kevin wince.

“Oooh, Wisconsin. You people are mean up there. We teach our children down here by the time they are three to go unlock the car door, put the key in the ignition and to turn that air condition up to high. You have to have that down here.

“I was up there not too long ago. Been working all day and they had this van, it had been sitting all day out there, hadn’t even been started up. Driver gets in, I get into the front seat. He reaches over, turns the lever all the way to as hot as it would go, and then turns on that fan. I was so cold, my eyes were watering.

“How come you don’t teach your kids to start the car?”

As he’s talking, he’s moving through the steps of each recipe. He started with the etouffee. “Now, if you come home some night, men, and you ask your wife what she’s making and she says AYE-too-FAY? You’d better turn around, go get some flowers or something and be ready to apologize. The dish is pronounced ET-too-fay. It means to smother something. AYE-too-fay means to smother someone -- and you don’t want that.”

Kevin shares wisdom in the process of making three or four dishes in each class. He’s not alone. I’ve taken classes over the years with the other members of the NOSOC staff. Michael was my first instructor. I went back in 2008 and took the same class I first took in 2000 again, the class on corn and crab bisque and shrimp creole. I’ve taken all the courses there so far -- I did miss out when they used to make catfish, but they don’t offer that now as far as I know.

Learned a lot over the years. After my first visit I spent hours perfecting my quick-whisked roux. Somehow over the years I hadn’t managed to pick up how to go about making gravy, but afterwards I was making summer sausage gravy, beef gravy, chicken gravy and whatnot.

After my second visit I got more adventuresome. I cooked up a pineapple bread pudding for about 200 people at an event. I started making big pots of chicken-and-chicken-sausage gumbo for gatherings with my friends. I made Shrimp Creole for Paul’s dad.

The methodology of the class is perfect for my sort of learning curve. I’m entertained. I’m educated. I’m fed. It’s a good meal and about as expensive as what you’d pay for a restaurant that serves up that meal -- $24 for the three-course afternoon classes and $29 for the four-course morning ones. And every single time I go, I really do learn something new.

This time around, Kevin showed us how to make a dry roux. “When you whip up that butter, that oil with your flour, you’re cooking it to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. Roux is like toast. Bread is good but when you toast it, it tastes different. Some people like brown toast. Some like it light. You can make it however dark you want to make it.

“Get your flour, and get a pan. Put your flour in the pan at 350 degrees for an hour and a half to three hours. Every 45 minutes or so, break up the flour -- what’s on the bottom is going to cook faster than what’s on the top. Keep it somewhere in your kitchen. When you have company come over, you can have gravy just like that. Just get your butter melted in your pan and whip it right in there.”

The interaction is strong and the chefs at the school are always engaging. The sous chefs come along at intervals throughout the program, checking the refrigerator to make sure the chefs have what they need, dispersing ice tea and Abita beer and lemonade to the class and providing a little comic relief. “Don’t give that lady a beer, Thaddeus,” Kevin directs one young man. “She’s dangerous.” The crowd laughs.

The school, like so many other New Orleans businesses, took a hit after Hurricane Katrina. I went for one of the first classes when they reopened, sitting in on a Thursday afternoon in June 2006 with a friend learning about corn and crab bisque and Shrimp Creole. After that class we talked with Kevin for a while, who recounted to us how the waters had damaged his domicile and how it affected himself and his sons. At the time he had urged us to keep up the talk about New Orleans as a destination.

Five years post-Katrina, people still ask and assume. Kevin shares with the class. “People come down here and they ask, where’s the water? We didn’t keep it as a souvenir! It’s been gone a long time now. We’re pretty much back where we were before, except some of the hotels and restaurants are still working on a skeleton staff. That’s where you can help. You come down here, these places can afford to hire their staffs back.”

And he’s right -- as my subsequent visits to the city can attest. Yes, there are areas that will never be the same. But for tourists visiting the Crescent City, there’s little difference.

He doesn’t dwell on Katrina… few do, any more. He keeps on going, teaching and sharing. He got into the next dish, the shrimp and artichoke soup, with pointers all around.

“The most important thing to remember when you’re making a cream soup is that it’s a one to one ratio. You can make anything out of it. You can get yourself a butternut squash and cut it up and put it in there for a while and get it real soft and blend it on up. Or you can put that butternut squash in the oven for a while and roast it and then put it in the soup. Or an acorn squash.

“But when you make this good soup up, be prepared. You get some friends over and they have this stuff and they know how good it is. Next thing you know, you’ll be going over to someone’s house and they’re like ‘oh, come on in the kitchen and make up that good soup again. We got all the ingredients.’ You won’t need a recipe. See how much cream they have, and however much that is, is how much broth you’re going to put in. They have two cups of cream, you’re going to have two cups of broth. You following me?”

He opened a container of cream to pour into the soup, looking over at my photographer to make sure his camera was ready. My photographer had amused him greatly, taking all sorts of photos along the way. Once he was sure the camera was ready, he poured, continuing the conversation with the class.

“You may go to the store or you may have on hand some milk or some half and half. You have that, make chicken noodle soup. If you’re going to make cream soup, make cream soup.”

“You got friends watching you cook?” he asks as he puts more green onions into the shrimp and artichoke soup. “You can mess with their minds. Do something like this,” he says, dumping the whole bowl of green onion into the soup, then picking out a bit. “ ‘Ah! Too much! Too much!” He laughs. “They ask about something you put in, make up something. Use a name of something you saw on TV. ‘Yeah, those onions really increase your levels of Propecia.’ I tell ya, they will nod their heads knowingly and say ‘yeah, I heard something like that.’ ”

***

Throughout the class, Kevin reiterated what seems to be the school’s philosophy. “The key to Louisiana cookin’ is, use what you got.”

There was a woman in the crowd who mentioned she was gluten-free, couldn’t eat anything with flour in it. Not only did Kevin give her ideas on other ways to make these food (most involving cornstarch or arrowroot, rice or potato flour or the like), he offered to make her up a plate so she had something to eat that wouldn’t mess with her system.

And they’re like that there. I went before and had sat in on one of Michael’s classes on gumbo and jamalaya -- and he was talking about “you may not like coconut, but you should try the bread pudding even though it has coconut in it. You may think you don’t like Andouille, but you should try it, you will like it.” He saw me take a picture of my plate and not touch it and started to chastise me about it.

I quietly told him “but I can’t eat it, it’s pork, I’m bad allergic.”

He looked at me with sad eyes for a moment. “You really can’t eat anything I’m cooking today, can you?”

“I can eat bread pudding and pralines!” I volunteered.

He pulled aside one of the sous chefs that walks through from time to time and had a quick conversation with him. The chef brought out some ingredients, and as Michael continued with the demonstration and telling stories, he whipped me up some shrimp and chicken pastaletta, just for me. Now, I’ve been to a lot of cooking classes, but few have ever made sure I would go away full and work around my allergies. I so appreciate that.

***

Almost ever class ends with the making of pralines. Not pray-leans, prah-leens. As Michael once mentioned, pray-lean is what you do after a night of drinking on Bourbon Street -- you lean against a building and pray someone doesn’t see you urinating.

Kevin will tell you why you can’t variate from the menu. In each class he explains the history of the praline -- how some French guy sugar-coated almonds and claimed they were healthy. “You got something you like no one’s ever tried before and you want more of it, declare it’s healthy.” He talks about how the French came here and wanted their sugar coated almonds and people told them “we ain’t got no almonds here, use these.” And they used the pecans, because that’s what they had here.

He explains why you bring the pralines to softball, not hardball stage. He demonstrates the moment the pralines come off the heat, dropping a little mass of sugar and nut goodness on the paper. “You could wait five years, that praline is never going to set up, never going to harden. Never.” He explains the importance of whipping the air into the mix to bring the temperature down, how if you add a flavor to it that it cools faster and you have to work faster, how you should only make pralines exactly by the recipe because there’s no way you could double the batch and get them out of the pan on time before they hardened up.

He also makes a big deal about using what you cook, even if it doesn’t come out perfect. “You get some pralines that don’t set up, you take and mix them with a bit more butter. Take some Brie cheese and wrap it in phyllo dough. Heat it up and let the dough get crispy and then pour that melted praline sauce over the top of it.”

“If your pralines are too soft, roll them out. Throw some coconut in there, some chocolate or whatever, roll it up and coat it with some more nuts and slice it. Someone will say ‘make that again!’ but you can’t, you were trying to make pralines.”

“I knew this guy, he was going to make this grand meatloaf. He was using his wife’s best cake pan and bragging about it to his daughters. Goes to turn it over and it falls apart everywhere -- he’d been so sure of himself he forgot the breadcrumbs. Turned it out on a plate and told the family it was ‘Ground Beef a la Park.’ "

It’s all goes back to the school’s philosophy. “Anyone can cook,” they tell you. “Use what you have.” And the big thing, they want you to have a good time and come on back… which I plan to do, every time I come through. I may have taken all the classes before, but I always pick up something new. Every single time.

***

You may be wondering why I haven’t shared any recipes with you from my experiences. Frankly, it’s not the same. For one, that’s part of the experience and I shouldn’t take that away from the school. I mean, yes, there’s a book for sale called “Class Act” that features recipes from all the chefs that work at the New Orleans School of Cooking. But there are so many nuances to pick up from each chef that changes the way you see each recipe.

And there’s the dining. I mentioned how good the food is. You’re not going to get small portions, either. Thaddeus helped pass out bowls of the shrimp and artichoke soup around the room, following them up with Abita beer for whoever wanted it. The soup was velvety and deep, those tangy notes of artichoke dancing over the perfectly cooked shrimp, the last item thrown in the pot. The class grew quiet as soup was slurped.

Plates of the crawfish etouffee were dished up, the dark roux being spooned over rice. “You want to try some of that Cajun sauce there on your table with this,” Kevin told us, and he was right. The etouffee, which came out a little under spiced, was perfect with the garlic-cayenne sauce on the table. Others around the ten-top tried a little jalapeno sauce or seasoning salt in theirs. My photographer, who had professed before our New Orleans trip that he didn’t care for crawfish, changed his mind right then and there. “I like these,” he told me. “Maybe I’m just not getting the right mudbugs in Arkansas.”

Seconds were available all the way around, and several people went up to serve themselves more soup out of the big pot on the counter. Kevin stacked the now-set pralines on plates and sent them around the room. They were perfect in the way true pralines are -- sugary, almost crisp, with that pecan flavor shining through. The edges looked firm but had the consistency of brown sugar in the mouth. These are an addiction of mine, and usually when I spend a good week in New Orleans I have to come by the shop a few times to pick up a couple to eat right then in the Louisiana General Store that makes up the front of the business. These can’t be shipped. After a day, they’ve lost that texture and consistency I am in love with. People who ship pralines are doing something strange to them, I’ve decided. They should never taste like caramel.

At the end of class, people slowly filter out. Some have other engagements they head off to. Others, like me, dawdle a bit. On that particular Saturday afternoon I talked with a group of women from Memphis that had been seated with us and shared some business cards, letting them know if they’re ever in Arkansas to let me know and I’d let them know where they should eat. A couple of Canadian women who were also seated with us shared their interest and hung around, too.

Some had Kevin sign a cookbook, others just went up to shake his hand.

He recognized me. “We have talked before,” he mentioned.

“Yes, and you know I’ll be back again, dragging someone else along.”

He laughed and held out a hand to my photographer, who had never been to New Orleans before this trip. “You’ll come back too, won’t you?”

I bet he will. I will. And you will likely return yourself, once you go that first time. It’s an experience you should avail yourself of if you find yourself in the French Quarter. I do recommend reservations, as classes tend to fill up. (800) 237-4841 is the phone number, or check out the website -- it’ll tell you what’s being taught in each class. Consider this my recommendation.

Big Eatin' at Who Dat's.

WHOLE LOTTA CRAB: And shrimp, and catfish, and frog legs, and... 

I’ve had some recent travel in North Central Arkansas, and when I’ve asked people about where to eat in the Searcy area I have pretty much been told this: skip Searcy and keep on driving up to Bald Knob. And while I am sure Searcy must have its own culinary delights, I am glad I followed directions — because otherwise I wouldn’t have eaten at Who Dat’s.
The fact that I haven’t eaten there before is a sad reality and almost inexcusable. As a recent college graduate in the mid-90s, I passed through Bald Knob every week or so when I’d come back to Little Rock from Jonesboro. Somehow I never stopped at any of the Bald Knob restaurants. Honestly, I wasn’t really aware of any restaurants past the ones at the gas stations near the Highway 67 freeway. I coulda been eating this Cajun food for a while now.

I dropped in one afternoon after a day of collecting information up through Batesville and Old Hardy Town. There were few people in at the time, but it wasn’t quite 5pm. The hostess seated me near the food bar.

It took me a long time to figure out to eat. Thing is, I wanted to try a decent amount of items so I could tell you all about them — but there was a part of me that was telling me how ridiculous that idea was. I mean, after all, it was dinner time and the food I was eyeballing was in the $20 range. Ah, what I do for you, dear readers.

I made my decision and my waitress invited me to attend the food bar while I waited. Well, let me tell you what — if I hadn’t already committed myself to the dinner I had chosen, I’d have just eaten the food bar. Indeed, the bar ($6.95 if you order it by itself) isn’t just about salad, though there is a small salad station. It’s like a Sunday potluck buffet at a rural south Arkansas church.

I counted among the available options: white rice, red beans and rice with sausage, smothered chicken with Creole spices, butterbeans cooked with tomatoes, corn on the cob, blackeyed peas, green beans with bacon, barbecue baked beans, home fries, carrots, English peas, baked chicken and corn off the cob. I couldn’t resist picking up some of those butterbeans and a little corn and the smothered chicken. Heck, it’s research, right?
I had no more than sat down at the table when my waitress arrived with my first portion of my dinner, seafood gumbo. The dark roux held secrets of well-tempered crawfish, shrimp and tomatoes in its okra-thickened depths. I found it a little salty but nicely seasoned and decently savory. You can order it on its own, ($3.95 cup/$7.95 bowl) of course.

My favorite food bar item was indeed the butterbeans, sweet with those tomatoes and a reminder of why I love butterbeans so. The smothered chicken on rice would be nicely filling for a lunch… and makes the food bar an even better choice for those watching their budgets.

So I fiddled with my food bar plate a little bit after consuming the gumbo, afraid to fill up since I really had no idea just how much food would be on the Seafood Platter ($22.95). When it came, I was appreciatively impressed. I smelled it before I saw it, the heavy scent of spice and shrimp coming to me shortly after it left the kitchen. The repast was set out on a huge melamine platter: ample portions of fried shrimp, a couple of fried frog legs, three or four pieces of fried catfish… a whole lot to catalogue for you.

The first thing I had to try though was the Crawfish Etouffee. The massive portion of hot goodness on rice was calling to me. It was bespeckled by large chunks of green onion of all things, both as a topping and cooked into the dish itself. I was only put off by the idea for a moment; one taste told me I had nothing to worry about.

The sweetness of the crawfish dominated the dish, the onion added a nice bit of texture, and the seasoning snuck up and smacked me in the tongue a couple of seconds after each bite. I’ve had a lot of Crawfish Etouffee, both here and in south Louisiana, and I can honestly say it’s one of the best examples of the Cajun specialty I’ve ever eaten.

Of course there was more. There were the half-dozen delightful little pink peel-and-eat boiled shrimp. There were three slightly under seasoned but still decent breaded frog legs (yes, they sorta tasted like chicken). A couple of sweet yellow cornmeal hushpippies. A half-dozen light and still somewhat salty flour battered fried shrimp, four lightly flaky cornmeal-battered catfish filets in the four to five inch range, a surprise of half-a-dozen chicken-fried oysters underneath those, and a stuffed crab full of a meaty-sweet stuffing a little heavy on the bread but well balanced with the rest of the crab and seasoning inside.

No, I didn’t eat it all in one sitting. I barely managed to sample each item. In fact, long before my waitress came over and asked me about dessert I’d decided most of the dinner was coming home with me for later. It took two big clamshell boxes to contain what I couldn’t consume right there… and no, I couldn’t sample the bread pudding. I will have to go back.

Who Dat’s has a lot of really big seafood platters on its menu. Some include wilder things like fried gator, snow crab legs, crab cakes and crawfish pie. They also do chicken in a variety of ways. And they do a burger I have to go back for. While I was there, a gentleman about halfway down the restaurant from me ordered up a hubcap burger. I saw it go by, its meat to the edge of the plate under a big, slightly flattened 10” (estimated) bun. Wow. The restaurant also offers overstuffed po-boys, a Chicken Fried Ribeye Steak (how’s that work?) and appetizers like Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp, Stuffed Mushrooms and “Topless” Oysters. I’m gonna have to go back.

If you’re coming from down this way, take the main Bald Knob exit and turn right. It’s about a half mile down on the right. For you Garmin and TomTom users, that’d be at 3207 ½ Highway 367 North. Who Dat’s is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and 4 p.m. to nine or ten for dinner. It’s closed Sunday and Monday, so don’t even bother. For more information, call (501) 724-6183.