On one of my first trips to Marquette with my Bride, while she was working and I was practicing for retirement, I discovered by accident Lagniappe, a Cajun-Creole restaurant.  It is just me, always asking about restaurants and this restaurant opened in 2006.  It has been a few years since we have been to New Orleans, but she still has apron and her recipes from a culinary class that she attended one year. She tried to meet one of her contacts for dinner, as this would be her last professional tour of the Upper Peninsula and they declined, but we still went.  Lagniappe loosely translates to a small requested gift from a merchant after a purchase, and first recorded for the world by Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi in 1883.

My Bride can only find the restaurant by the “alley” entrance off of a municipal parking lot and when we went in, I was admiring some of the ceiling tiles over the bar area, that were decorated with some of the watering holes in The French Quarter and we had only visited a couple that were depicted.  My Bride had the Atchafalaya Jambalaya; the famous one dish meal of chicken, ham, Andouille sausage, vegetables, seasonings and rice.  I went for something a bit more exotic that I can’t readily find around home and that is Crawfish Etouffee; a spicy dish of crawfish tail meat smothered in a roux-based sauce of minced caramelized vegetables with seasonings over rice. We enjoyed Clos du Bois Chardonnay California 2019.  Clos du Bois was originally a producer in Sonoma County founded in 1974 by Frank Woods and he started with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  He was also the first to introduce a Bordeaux-style red in Sonoma. One of the first to promote sustainable and green vineyard practices, including solar panels.  Frank Woods sold the winery in 1988 and it eventually became part of Constellation Brands Inc.  They in turn just sold this winery and some other wineries to Gallo in 2021.  This is a good basic wine that is produced in bulk found in plenty of restaurants, grocery stores and wine shops.  This is their basic and classic Chardonnay that I am sure is done in Stainless Steel with the addition of wood chips.  This wine is always safe to order as it offers a soft gold color with notes of apple, pear and toasted oak.  On the palate there is citrus, white fruits, butter and oak with a short finish of fruit.

As we were getting ready to go back to the hotel, we ended up meeting her contact person at another place that she was excited to have me visit.  We ended up at the Courtyards and it was an eclectic mix of food and drinks and there was a food truck parked in a bay of the Courtyards offering Cajun-Creole food.  My Bride discovered the Courtyards on her last trip, which was without me, but she called me to tell me about it, and the group that she was with. We didn’t have any food, as we were stuffed from our meal, but there was always room for something liquid.  We had a couple of splits of Cantine Vedova “Casa Farive” Prosecco DOC Extra Dry NV.  The Vedova family is one of the largest and well-known wineries in Valdobbiadene.  They began in the 1950’s.  The Casa Farive brand covers all the different parameters found in the production of Prosecco from the Charmat Method and they also produce some vintage wines as well.  This wine was a light straw color with notes of white fruit and florals.  On the palate some citrus and some apple in a dry wine with a finish of fruit afterwards.  This was just a nice drinking wine with friends and the perfect way to end the trip.