Russellville: Taco Villa is Consistanty There.

When it comes to dining like a local, and being a RussVegas local, that local Tex-Mex joint you visit is Taco Villa. And for those of us who have ever spent time at the little brown shack on 4th Street, the flavors at this place will always bring back memories.

Burge's, Smoked Turkey That Took Over The World.

The original Burge's location in
Lewisville. (Kat Robinson)

Most restaurants begin with a concept or a family dream.  Burge's began with a backyard smoker -- and a whole lot of friends who loved what came out of it.  It took nearly 10 years to get to a restaurant, but what was created there has endured generations.

Brothers B-B-Q: Larry's Place in Heber Springs.

Sometimes fate puts you where you need to be. For Larry Cordell, that place was Heber Springs. And for Heber Springs, that’s a blessing paid out in barbecue and good will.

Minute Man: Smoke on the Burger.

This is one in a series on historical restaurants in the state of Arkansas. For a look at the Arkansas restaurant timeline, click here.

At the end of 56th Street, the cut-through to University Avenue, there was a Minute Man restaurant. It was on the south side of the intersection, across from Zimmerman’s gas station, and from time to time if we could afford it I could have a nice, mean and hot burger on a toasted bun. And if I was really good, I got ice cream.

There was also a Minute Man on Broadway, and it was there through my high school years. I recall going in as a little girl with my mom. They had just introduced their first kids meal called the Magic Meal (this is the late 70s) and my first one had come with a little green army man. The second one, my mom pulled out the burger and I took a bite and started to cry. There was a piece of gristle inside, or maybe some hard cheese or something – and I thought they’d put the little green army man on the burger and it had melted.

My memories of Minute Man come from childhood. Today they’re all gone, save for one lone holdout in El Dorado – too far for me to grab a #2 on my lunch break. You remember the #2, right? The smoke burger? Char-grilled and dolloped with a liquid smoke goo, never equaled by Sonic (funny, I don’t think they offer a smoke burger any more, either). I can still recall that exact slightly woody flavor.

UALR Center for Arkansas
History and Culture

Vernon Rodgers and Wes Hall.
(UALR Center for Arkansas
History and Culture)

The original location at 407 South Broadway in Little Rock was a low-slung building sitting out back of a parking lot. Raymond Merritt remembers it was originally the Lido Minute Man, but I was born significantly later and only remember it as Wes Hall’s Minute Man. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says Hall opened the place on May 26th of 1948 as a 24-hour coffee shop with three partners that he

Courtesy Raymond Merritt

eventually bought out before franchising the operation.

It grew, first to Hayes Street (named University Avenue by my time) and then onwards and outwards, eventually spreading to seven states with 57 different restaurants. And the ideas it seeded out spread through the fast food industry. That Magic Meal? It came along before McDonald’s Happy Meal. The #12, known as the “Big M,” was a great double-pattied burger that came along

The #12, or Big M. UALR Center for
Arkansas History and Culture)

before the Big Mac. And about half the burgers if you ordered them as they came (which really was the deal before Burger King started telling people to “have it your way” in the 80s), came with a smattering of “relish sauce” on the bun instead of mustard or mayo – relish sauce being very close to the Thousand Island-type sauce slathered on the Big Mac today. Oh, and if you wanted the lettuce and tomato on a burger like they’re all about served today, you had to order the #6 – the salad burger.

Minute Man was also one of the three restaurants to receive Raytheon’s experimental Radar Ranges. We’re talking a microwave oven – in 1948. While McDonald’s chain restaurants had their fried pies back then (IMHO superior to the baked pies offered today), Minute Man had the Radar Deep Dish Pie – a pot pie that if you were smart you ordered when you got your food so it had enough time to cool on the inside as to not burn your mouth. I only ever remember apple being offered, though the menu Merritt has on his website also shows peach, cherry and strawberry – “Served with Real Butter CREAM 5 cents Extra.”’

Courtesy Raymond Merritt

My mom and I moved to Little Rock in the mid-70s, and I grew up half a mile away from one of the University Avenue locations. It was absolutely as far as I dared to walk from the house, being on the other side of Geyer Springs Elementary by about three blocks. One of those most poignant childhood “fails” I recall was when the place started serving hard-scoop ice cream out the window. I was thrilled to get an ice cream cone with two scoops, side by side in what I believe was called a Sweetheart Cone. I remember going up to the window and waiting while my mom sat in the car. I paid for the treat (I think it was a dollar), turned around and promptly faceplanted on the concrete. Saved most of the cone – except for the very bottom. There was a rush to finish the ice cream before it melted out onto my lap, I remember.

Courtesy Raymond Merritt

By the time I was driving, the Minute Man still open in Little Rock was a block up from the original at 311 South Broadway. The building, if I recall correctly, was painted a pungent green. The interior was dark, and it was often quiet… unless you went at the lunch hour, when generations of traditionalists and Boomers squeezed in for a pick-up order or to quickly manage to consume a burger and fries. It closed for good in June of 2002 to make way for the new Federal Courthouse expansion. By that point, most of the other franchised restaurants had also met their demise – with the exception of that lone El Dorado holdout. Wes Hall didn’t live to see the end of that dream – he passed away a month beforehand.

The El Dorado Minute Man location. (Roadfood.com)

Will the Minute Man ever come back again? According to a posting on Roadfood.com’s forums, the El Dorado restaurant is still serving the same recipes up (I know it also serves cheese dip and burritos, which I don’t recall from the original) – and there was as of December 2012 someone considering opening a new Minute Man in Little Rock. I’m sure if the recipes are followed, that old smoke sauce is brought back and the prices are reasonable, the crowds will follow.

One more note. There's a man who's claimed to have raised me... that'd be the newscaster known as Craig O'Neill. One of these days I'll tell you why. For now, here's a link to the report he did for THV 11 (my old station) about Minute Man and its place in Arkansas history.

Burl's Country Smokehouse: Cinnamon Rolls As Big As Your Head.

This is one in a series on historical restaurants in the state of Arkansas. For a look at the Arkansas restaurant timeline, click here.

Early Arkansas travelers knew a thing or two about "fast food."  While drive-thru restaurants wouldn't appear in the state until the 1970s, the earliest travelers were usually prepared for a meal along their route.  It would usually include shelf-stable items such as hard biscuits and jerky.

A traditional meat counter inside Burl's. (Grav Weldon)

Once the automobile became king and our highways saw pavement, long-distance travelers got used to having a stopping-in place.  Almost every major highway traversing the state through the wilds and the forests had at least one smokehouse to stop at.  And at these you could always find some marvelous baked goods, made-to-order sandwiches and of course... jerky.

There are plumbed facilities
within the store. (Grav Weldon)

Burl's Country Smokehouse didn't start up til 1981, but it's still carrying on that roadside tradition.  The complex on the north side of US 270 between Hot Springs and Mount Ida on the outskirts of Royal in the Ouachita National Forest is a strange collections of buildings that include old cabins, barn-like structures, an apparent depot, a "jail" and even an outhouse.  Inside the main building, under wood-beamed rafters, there hangs the scent of smoke.  The residue of more than 32 years worth of smoking fine meats has left an indelible mark here.  Wander the store and see everything you might wish out of a country cupboard:  Amish jellies, sundries, souvenirs and... jerky.

Ham hocks, hog jowl and smoked bologna.  (Grav Weldon)

That jerky I keep mentioning is different at Burl's than just about anywhere else.  Unadulterated with a traditional marinade, the folks at Burl's instead let the smoke do the talking.  Without that addition of pepper or spice before the smoking itself, the jerky retains a flavor of nothing but smoke and meat, much like you'd encounter at fireside all so many years ago.The sandwiches come piled high with your choice of meat -- pork loin, beef brisket, Genoa salami, turkey, Canadian bacon, pastrami, corned beef and roast beef.  There are cheeses involved, and you would be well advised to choose one that has had its smoking treatment.  The Swiss and the cheddar are both of impeccable quality.

Yes, that big.  (Grav Weldon)

But Burl's big claim to fame might come in the cinnamon rolls offered at checkout.  Wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, the rolls are compact spirals of pastry and sugar and spice in a package as big as your head -- or at least as big as mine, as you can see here.

Burl's ignores the conventions of a traditional roadside attraction with seasonal hours -- instead, it's open throughout the year.  Drop in on your way to dig crystals next time you're in the area.

You'll find Burl's Country Smokehouse at 10176 Albert Pike (Highway 270) way out from Hot Springs.  No website, but you can always call them at (501) 991-3875.

He Came To Arkansas.

Chef Lee Richardson left New Orleans for Little Rock… and decided to make Central Arkansas his home.

Lee Richardson is not an imposing man. He is not intimidating. The quietly spoken guy in chef’s whites does seem more focused and determined than the average individual, like one of those golf greats taking care of business on the course.

Richardson’s home court is the five kitchens of The Capital Hotel in downtown Little Rock. These self-designed kitchens produce the amazing four-star dining delights of Ashley’s; the top notch everyman’s grub at Capital Bar and Grill; amazing cakes and pastries for big to-dos and plate dinner service for functions in the hotel’s parlors and ballrooms and meals for hotel room service.

I sat down to talk with the chef one Friday afternoon in June. He was in the process of setting up a big outdoor dinner at the Historical Arkansas Museum a couple of blocks away. While we were talking my photographer was in the back, shooting food while the team worked on a meal that would be served to a hundred people in near-100 degree heat. The meal was less than two hours away, yet Chef Richardson was as cool as a cucumber. This is a guy who has his ducks in a row.

“So I have to ask,” I started, “why are you in Little Rock?”

For a moment there was an odd grin that came through the stern discipline that Richardson exudes. The question seemed amusing.

“Well, there was Katrina. It required Katrina to come up here in the first place, and without that I might not have gone away from New Orleans.”

Richardson was Chef de Cuisine at John Besh’s famed Restaurant August in the Crescent City when Katrina struck. He’d started his career with a traditional apprenticeship at Emeril Lagasse’s NOLA and moved on to ventures with Chefs Kevin Graham and Anne Kearney. He departed for a two year stint in North Carolina before returning to New Orleans.

“After the hurricane, John (Besh) and Viking pushed me towards this place. The Stephens Family tagged on to help. They’ve been very helpful.

“When I arrived, I saw a lot of good things. I met Jody Hardin and saw what he was doing. Jody shared products from all over the state -- strawberries, chicken, lamb, eggs, Honeysuckle Lane cheese. I wanted to use these things. There was Peter Brave’s shrimp when he was working that operation. There was War Eagle Mill grains. These things were all part of the state. Coming here allowed me to see that it was here -- everything a chef needs.”

“Arkansas is perfect. It’s not just another part of The South.”

The persuasion worked. Richardson moved his family to Cammack Village and started working with the Stephens family to build up the restaurants that would mark The Capital Hotel as a destination for dining.

“The generosity of the Stephens family provided the opportunity to do something special. When I got here, the hotel had been gutted. They got plans, they had ideas of what they wanted to do. Three months after I got here those plans were discarded and we started anew.”

Richardson outlined what he needed and wanted. He took an integral part in designing not just the rebuild on the kitchen for Ashley’s but in the expansion of the kitchen for Capital Bar and Grill and the addition of three smaller kitchens that service the large meeting spaces on the first and second floors.

The restaurants opened in November 2007 to a lot of noise and commotion from the old stalwarts of Arkansas foodery. There were some comments on the update of Ashley’s, but soon both restaurants fell into good favor with customers and the media. Richardson’s New Americana cuisine took off and became an instant classic.

The chef had an idea of what sort of direction he wanted to take with the restaurant, but it took time to determine what would actually make it on the menu.

“I really didn’t have a menu as such in mind until right when we opened. What were the signature things going to be? They pop up, they develop, they happen. Like pimento cheese and soda crackers in lieu of bread and butter. We decided we had to have bar snacks to give away. At the start we were doing the smoked pecans as our giveaway and selling the fried black-eyed peas. We turned that around later.

“What I wanted here was a sense of place. To pull that off, we had to learn what this place was about. In our kitchens, everything is handcrafted. All meat is hand cut, hand ground. We do everything -- fish cooking, baking, chocolate work, soup, smoking -- we feed our staffs with an in-house soup kitchen.”

“You make everything,” I asked.

“Everything, except the hamburger buns -- which we just can’t make any better than what we get -- and the French bread, which is flown in from New Orleans.”

“I can understand that… but why do you make pickles?”

“I make pickles because I like to make acid,” Richardson said.

That gave me a laugh.

Richardson’s dedication to local food doesn’t just stop with local. He also believes in the seasonality of produce. What’s fresh is likely to be what’s on the menu. For instance, on that particular June day strawberry fried pies were one of the special dessert items at Capital Bar and Grill. You won’t see a strawberry any other time of the year, though -- at least, not a fresh one. And certainly not a chocolate covered one. As Richardson tells it, that can get under the skin of some customers.

“I won’t let people have chocolate covered strawberries for New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day. Covering a strawberry in hard chocolate and freezing it is a horrible thing to do to a strawberry. Now, a little warm dark chocolate?” That grin, again.

What’s in the future, then? The chef says he hopes the chefs that will train under him will go out and begin their own restaurants and spread the quality he’s been able to achieve at The Capital Hotel. But to bring more attention to the cause, it’s going to take an effort that will reach far from Arkansas. “We’re going to have to make a big splash nationally. Then we can get Arkansas on board with what we’re doing here.

“Historical relevance is so important to our past. We are trying to get back to the land, and continue to lose our culture. Cooking local means cooking Southern. Southern food is humble. In New Orleans, the soul and heart goes into found things. Ideas about cooking there and here came about in a different time when people had help in the kitchen. More cooking happened. We got away from that, but food has to form that way. I feel pretty sure that this generation of parents are concerned about food, and more parents are sharing that experience with their children.”

The chef’s wife and daughter are flourishing in the new environment. Richardson says he’s planting roots here, that Arkansas has become his home.

“Arkansas could have been a place to just fall off the map. But I‘m doing good. I like it here.”

I have to say, I’ve met a lot of chefs in this job. Richardson has a spark I’ve seen in only a very few. He’s highly analytical, able to separate the emotion from the act of cooking when it comes down to brass tacks. You can still see the amazement in his face when he talks about food finds. But you can also tell he thinks about every portion of the meal, from meat to condiments, side dishes to dessert. He has a sense of balance and proportion. Little Rock is lucky to have him.

Caribe, A Love Story.

Building on the love you share with someone can be one of the greatest experiences of your life. But what happens when one part of that equation is lost?

Bonnie's in the Delta.

When is a burger joint not a burger joint? When it’s the heartbeat of a community. I found a place in Watson that serves as the lunch plate of a whole town.

First discovered it while traveling in the Arkansas/Mississippi River Delta this past summer, on my way out to Rohwer. It looked inviting, with its Coca Cola banner over the front porch and plenty of cars out front. But I’d just eaten breakfast and was not quite ready for lunch. I bookmarked it for a later visit.

So come March, I’m preparing a trip to New Orleans and decide that it was time to take that side-route and check out the little place facing the railroad track on Highway 1.

My traveling companion and I dropped in around 10:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning with an appetite. The lone woman in the kitchen told us to sit wherever we liked.

I never did ask her if she was Bonnie. She didn’t look at us like we were crazy when we took photos and we didn’t bother her none. She came over and offered us a choice of breakfast or lunch. There was no menu, just an ancient board on the wall that appeared to have gathered dust and yellow. Ever on my burger quest, I asked for a regular burger. My companion went for the lunch special. Our hostess brought us massive Mason jars of beverage and we quietly waited while she went to the back and got things started.

The day’s average patrons dribbled through… too early for a full lunch but not too early for pickups. A guy the hostess called Lee came through the doors. Before he was halfway across to the register at the back she started to holler. “Mayo and ketchup, right?” He nodded, and she continued “fries ain’t done yet, it’ll be a few.” Lee gave her a nod and a gesture and went out front to sit on one of the two van benches located to either side of the front door.

“So how long have you been here?” I asked across the room.

“About 25 years now,” she hollered back, continuing to work on our meals.

A younger lady, perhaps my age, came through the doors and entered the middle of a conversation. I caught “she done died up in the hills. She was 96 years old, never did have no kids.”

I looked back out front where Lee was waiting. I saw him get up and turn to come inside. The hostess met him halfway across the room with a couple of white sacks. He nodded and turned out. I have no idea if any money was exchanged. Probably was when I wasn’t looking.

I’d no more than jotted down a few notes about the exchange when our lunches arrived. My companion’s lunch special was a smothered country fried steak, potatoes and Great Northern beans, the former two doused in a somewhat thin brown gravy, all of it steamy and smelling like a country kitchen. The beefsteak was crunchy and fork-tender, lovingly and lightly spiced with salt and pepper and maybe a little seasoning salt, a generous hand-sized portion about half an inch thick. The potatoes were hand-mashed. And the beans?

I had to get some beans myself. I don’t do that much. But these were slow cooked buttery Great Northerns and I couldn’t help myself. I snuck several off my companion’s plate. Our hostess noticed this when she came out to bring a hunk of cornbread and a biscuit to go with my companion’s meal. She brought me back a bowl of my own to savor.

Not that I needed more food. The third-of-a-pound flat-smashed patty on my burger was crusty from the griddle and glued to the top bun by a single slice of American cheese. It was a classic American burger, pickles right up under the meat, a generous helping of white onion ringlets, tomato slices and a leaf of iceberg lettuce above the bottom bun. It had the sort of flavor you’d get at a drive-in restaurant. I approved.

My companion had been delivered a layered biscuit and a hunk of yellow cornbread… which I confiscated for use with my beans. It was that right blend of yellow cornmeal with its natural sweetness, butter and little else, no added sugar to intefere with the bean consumption. I approve.

Our hostess came out and asked about dessert -- both of us first refused, but she told us she’d bring us a small piece. She returned with something I haven’t seen in ages -- a corner slice of buttermilk cake, just like the sort of cake I could find at any family gathering growing up in south Arkansas. It was a basic butter cake, almost a pound-a cake (a pound-a this, a pound-a that), with a little tang from the buttermilk and just the slightest hint of cinnamon. It made my day.

We couldn’t eat it all, and asked for something to take the cake with us. A piece of plastic wrap over a bowl sufficed, and we were shortly on our way.  I have no idea how much everything actually cost -- our ticket was $11.34 but that included that big lunch special, my burger and two drinks.  Who knows?

Bonnie’s really isn’t the sort of place you’re going to find on an average trip. You have to be going to Watson or somewhere close by to even find the place. The only other places in town we found where you could purchase anything were a liquor store and a small convenience grocery in a mobile home. There’s not even a gas station. Towns like Watson tend to blow away without an anchor.

I suspect Bonnie’s is that anchor, and I’m glad to see such a place survive and thrive, serving up good home cookin’ and the like. I must make another stop there for breakfast some time when I am back in that neck of the woods. Else I should make a special trip.

Bonnie’s is open Monday through Saturday 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Like all good country restaurants on backroads, it’s closed on Sunday. (870) 644-3345.

Cavender's Greek Seasoning: Arkansas Spice.

On my travels across Arkansas and across the South, I have had many a burger. I can almost instantly recognize the seasoning in a burger. There are a few joints that make their own hamburger seasoning, and my hats are off to them. The others fall into one of five categories: salt & pepper burgers, Worchestershire sauce burgers, onion burgers, Tony Chachere burgers and Cavender burgers.

It is the last of these seasonings that I am most familiar with… considering I grew up with that familiar flavoring on my lips. As a child, I experienced Cavender’s on fish with lemon juice; on steaks and in gravy and of course on burgers. I think I was an adult before I thought of Cavender’s as anything but THE seasoning mix in the kitchen. Never occurred to me that it was a Greek seasoning or anything else. It was just good.

We still use Cavender’s at Chez Robinson. Because of my frequent dining out (a necessary job hazard) we don’t go through a bottle as quickly as we once did, but we were averaging at one time a new bottle every three to five months. So finding out that I was just a few miles from the place where Cavender’s is produced, I just had to go.

I had a couple hours between one assignment and another in the area on a Monday morning and had heard from the folks at the Hotel Seville (which has Cavender’s up for sale in its lobby) that the headquarters was located over on Industrial Park Road. Meandered over that way to take a gander.

I do believe the receptionist was taken off guard when I walked in and asked her if she could tell me all about the place. She looked a little panicked, and I realized it might have been much more wise to have called first. She fetched another woman to come meet us. She introduced herself as Cara… later we’d find out she’s Cara Cavender Wohlgemuth, a member of the third generation of the Cavender’s family.

I asked a few questions about the operation and she offered to show it to me, with the caveat that the men who worked the line were gone to lunch. Once again, I regretted not calling in advance.

Still, I was surprised by how open Cara was about the operation. We really hadn’t introduced ourselves, yet here she was offering to show us what went on behind the scenes. We went through one doorway into a break room and then a second one, a warehouse operation with filling machines. The scent immediately cleared my sinuses and simultaneously made my stomach growl. It smelled comfortable and almost heavenly.

Cara didn’t seem to have the slightest qualm about sharing the behind-the-scenes tour with a couple of strangers.

“You do know the story of Cavender’s?”

“A little,” I admitted, curious to hear her take on it.

She shared it with us as we looked around. Her grandfather had a friend in the restaurant business who was dying who passed this specific spice recipe along. Spike Cavender took that recipe and made it up with a friend from Oklahoma -- not to sell, but to give away to friends.

So Spike’s Greek Seasoning was born. Eventually it was renamed Cavender’s Greek Seasoning because of a trademark issue. Didn’t change the flavor or the name.

Spike and his son Stephen created the S-C Seasoning Company back in 1971. Cara and her sister Lisa Cavender Price now run the company, along with their husbands and several longtime employees.

Cara showed us each of the three machines used to package Cavender’s -- one that fills 3 ¼ ounce bottles, one that fills eight ounce bottles and one that loads up five pound tubs. “That’s what restaurants use,” Cara told me.

“I can believe it. You know, I eat a lot of burgers, and there are a lot of places around here using Cavender’s in their meat.”

She beamed. “I’m glad to hear it.”

We walked over to the other side of the warehouse to the mixing station -- a big table and bin set-up. The scent was even stronger here. “We take the spices and put them together here and load them up in 55 gallon barrels.”

“How often do you do that?”

“Couple of times a day. We’ll process four to five tons of seasoning every day.”

A little quick math -- five days a week, 50 weeks a year (they take off during the holidays, do doubt) -- you’re looking at, at least a thousand tons of seasoning prepared every year. In a little place in Harrison, Arkansas. So how’s that work?

Well, it works because Cavender’s is that good. It’s earned a reputation for being the best secret ingredient in so many things -- burgers, steaks, ribs, barbecue sauce, chili, whatever. It’s distributed all over the nation through Wal-Mart and Kroger and who-all knows else. I’ve seen it on a table in Boston, in a spice bin in Phoenix and on a window ledge in St. Louis. I even encountered it in a grocery store in Freeport, Bahamas. I have friends in Great Britain who use it, had one friend sight it in Jerusalem and another in Sydney, Australia. It’s been all over the world. That’s a hell of a lot of spice.

“Do you want to see what it looks like?” Cara asked me. I already knew what it looked like on my shelf and on my steak, but I nodded anyway. She opened up one of the big tubs and let us take a photograph down into it. “This one’s not quite full,” she admitted.

“It’s fresh,” I responded, almost bowled over by the concentration.

“We get our spices in every week, they’re going to be fresh. Because of the way they come to us, the mix will last forever.”

I could smell notes of this and that and thought to myself is that parsley? Surely that’s paprika… oh, I can smell cumin and anise and… but it didn’t matter. I could spend a lifetime attempting to recreate the recipe. But why, when I could just go to the store and get another bottle of Cavender’s?

13 spices go into Cavender’s blend, but the proportions are a family secret. What I can tell you is that they’re shelf-stable and will last however long you keep them (though they may lose a little potency over time).

There wasn’t much else to see… the whole operation’s in that little warehouse and some administrative offices out front. Cara gave us one of her business cards and bottles of the seasoning -- realize, we’d barely introduced ourselves! I didn’t mention that I write about food for a living or that I have Tie Dye Travels or that I write Eat Arkansas. I just told her we were on assignment to cover the Ozark Medieval Fortress. Yet she invited us back and gave us gifts. Awful friendly. Then again, being friendly isn’t foreign to Arkansas. It’s our way of life.

So I urge you, your next trip to the store look for the little yellow and red containers. Cavender’s will be on your aisle with your spice rubs and mixes and condiments. Take it home and just experiment sprinkling it on stuff -- meat, potatoes, barbecue. Strangest thing I’ve had it in is brownies and it somehow worked there, too. I think if you don’t know about it now, you will add it to your pantry.

If for some amazing reason you don’t have it on your store shelves or you live out in the boonies far from civilization and want some, you can indeed order it from the Cavender’s website.
There’s a salt-free version, too. Spice up your life.

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.