With Crazy Fresh Oysters, Shrimp, Crab and Crawfish, Bozo's Ain't Clowning Around.

What started out as a little bait-and-grocery on Pascagoula's south side has grown into an establishment that draws crowds, food lovers and journalists - a dependable spot for fantastic locally-caught and harvested seafood, po'boy sandwiches and such. We drop in at Bozo's Grocery and Seafood for a Sunday morning bite.

Cypress Social Provides a Tasty Escape From Urban Life.

The former Cock of the Walk location has become a destination dining experience with an out-of-town feel, in the middle of Greater Little Rock's clamor. With its focus on re-imagined Southern Delta classics, it provides a nice bite, too.

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.

Cajun Landing - Fine Fare of Louisiana.

As I mentioned last month, Grav and I spent a goodly amount of time out-of-state attending different functions and completing assignments. While traveling from New Orleans to Dallas, we took a day and explored

southern and western Louisiana.  I was quite happy to share with Grav a previous find, which turned out to be the day's highlight -- Cajun Landing in Alexandria.

I first discovered the restaurant on the north side of town while traveling with friends in 2002, and I've been back several times.  But this was the first chance I had since 2007 to step back through the doors for an early, leisurely dinner, and now I'm sharing that opportunity with y'all on the blog.  Because it was fantastic.

Cajun Landing started more than 20 years ago, and it feels like a permanent fixture for the town.  On my previous visits, I've fallen into the extraordinary Étouffée and delighted myself with the crabmeat and mushroom topped Chicken Pontchartrain.  And I've dreamed about the Seafood Bisque.

The restaurant is housed in what seems to be a giant old house, with one dining room leading to another.  There's a bar in there now, which I hadn't recalled before, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there before.  In past the entry room is the first large formal dining room, divided in the middle and

replete with white-topped tables.

Our waitress was Geannie, and she was patient while Grav got settled from the drive.  She was even patient when we requested to move to another table to capture good light.

Once our orders were placed, our soups were brought to the table.  With entrees, there's a choice of soup or salad, and really -- you should just get the Seafood Bisque and be done with it.  Order a salad if you like, on the side, but take a few minutes and savor this wonder.

And I mean savor.  Impossibly packed with savory and sharp spices, layers of heat and cream, chunks of crabmeat and crawfish, Cajun Landing's Seafood Bisque will make you shed a tear not for spiciness or pain but for the delectable elegance of it all.  It is a masterpiece.

And, as we found out, the recipe's for sale for $5, which we happily added to our bill.

Of course, meals followed, though we were quite happy where we sat already.  Grav had chosen the Seafood Crepes and he was not disappointed.  Two thick rolls of crepes paired with asparagus spears drizzled with Hollandaise sauce, packed with sauce and shrimp and crawfish tails and topped with large lumps of crabmeat, absolutely

heavenly in every respect.  The side item in this case was a mixed squash and zucchini medley.

I had chosen the Southern Style Seafood Platter and felt I had also chosen well.  Unlike the

dainty yet substantial crepes, this was good old fashioned seafood at its finest, in all its variations.  There were juicy fried oysters with plenty of flavor, ethereally light catfish fillets, curly well-spiced tail-on fried shrimp and a red and not-so-red wave of crawfish tails and fried clams.  The plate came with both cocktail sauce and tartar sauce

and a side item, this time garlic mashed potatoes that I didn't really touch until I ate them later with my fingers in a Dallas hotel room.  Maybe that's oversharing. It was a FEAST.

Both our meals were delivered with splendidly crispy-surfaced rolls --

which we found are actually baked and then lightly fried to obtain that level of perfection.

These meals would have suited us well on their own, and we would both have happily rolled out the door and onto the highway well-satisfied, but Geannie talked us into a dessert.  Well known for their bread pudding, Cajun Landing also offers creme brulee (which I've had, and it's fantastic) and Key lime pie (which I've also had, and it's marvelous, too).  But this time we chose a dessert I hadn't sampled -- a deep fried cheesecake.

This large square of house recipe cheesecake had been wrapped in wonton, deep fried, surrounded by blueberries in juice and lightly threatened with powdered sugar.  We claimed between the two of us that we'd never finish it.  Moments later, we were dueling spoons over the very last moist crumbles of cheesecake and dribbles of blueberry sauce.  We also contemplated the possibilities of moving our

hotel reservations so we could recuperate from our self-induced dining overindulgence, but more assignments down the road awaited.

Mind you, I love Arkansas and its wide variety of restaurants.  But I'd sure love to have a bisque that worthy offered here

rather than so far to our south.  Alas, I'll have to settle for the occasional journey down I-49 to this pleasant place, and thank heavens that it isn't closer and I can never grow tired of what it has to offer.

Cajun Landing
2728 N MacArthur Drive
Alexandria, LA 71303
(318) 487-4912
cajunlanding.com

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.