I had gone to the original site of this restaurant once with a dinner club member for lunch, as we were looking for new venues for the club. Years later they opened up another restaurant much closer to our home and my Bride and I went there to check it out. As one would surmise the restaurant leaned favorably to fish and sea food, but they really had a New Orleans Creole/Cajun bent. As we have been to that fair city a couple of times on holidays, it was a good fit for us.

We were going there for dinner, but the menu also had plenty of “Po-boy” types of sandwiches to offer as well. We started off with Bayou Caviar which was crayfish battered and fried, and we also tried some of their farm-bred alligator prepared in a similar method. We both went with New Orleans themed dishes for our entrée choices and of course we had to share and compare notes. One of the dishes was the Crawfish Etoufee which is a stew type dish loaded with sweet crawfish. The other dish we tried was their interpretation of Jambalaya, which is also a stew type dish with shrimp, Andouille sausage and rice. I have to say that both dishes were spicy and tasty, but it did make us yearn for another trip to the Big Easy. Of course for dessert we had to share an order of Bread Pudding with warm Bourbon sauce, but unfortunately, all Bourbon sauces will always take a backseat to the wonderful sauce made at Commander’s Quarters in the Garden District.

Since we were having a spicy dinner we went and had a milder wine for dinner, and there was some decision pondering as to whether it should be white or red, since the dishes were seafood. I chose red wine because of the tomatoes and thought a softer red would work like Merlot, and I am glad that I did. We enjoyed a bottle of Merryvale Starmont Merlot 2000. Merryvale Winery is one of the old guard in Napa, as they were the first winery production facility to open up after the repeal of Prohibition. As I did more research, the wine back then showed that the fruit was from Napa Valley, and now most of the Starmont line from the winery leans heavily towards Carneros AVA, and of course Napa Valley, especially back then had more sway on the label than Carneros; and much more readily identifiable to the public.