One of the great culinary advances of the United States in recent years has been the spread of Cajun and Creole restaurants. New Orleans is, in my opinion, the best food city in the country due to its mastery of its distinctive local cuisine. How things have changed! New Orleans style restaurants and menu items are virtually ubiquitous now. David Sanders, our RoadFood group trailblazer, found one in the fun little neighborhood of Park Circle, named after a park set inside a large — very large — traffic circle. As a grandfather and expert on childrens’ play areas, I heartily endorse the Park Circle park. I’ll also endorse the nearby commercial strip, busy with cheerful pedestrians younger than I. Just around a corner, across from a large parking lot, sits LoL. It’s, a Low Country Louisiana Seafood Kitchen, and a good one!.
We ordered a … feast, with a good rich gumbo,
boudin balls with rice, with oddly, most of the heat in the dirty rice rather than the boudin balls,
fried green tomatoes with remoulade,
jambalaya,
red beans and rice,
and a boudin link and pork belly, again with the rice spicier than boudin.
Doesn’t all that look good? It was quite a meal! The food wasn’t as heavily seasoned as in New Orleans (it never is), but it was full of good, deep flavors, and mainly limited by my reluctance to add my usual Tabasco sauce to dishes we all were sharing. The star of the show, though, was the muffuletta, which I ordered with some tasty greens as my side.
Whoa! Now that’s a muffuletta worthy of the name. Sure, the bread is wrong, but the filling made you forget that and many other problems in your life. I cut the sandwich in pieces and shared it around, and I think everyone who tried it spoke up enthusiastically. That filling, the meats and cheese and that gorgeous olive relish fairly exploded with flavor, the sort of flavor that makes your eyes light up, you eyebrows raise, and your palate say, “Whoo-ee! Laissez les bon temps rouler!”
We finished with some bread pudding,
which was at once entirely unnecessary, and entirely delicious. Funny how those two, unnecessary and delicious, go together so well so often.
What a meal! Grab your hats and call your friends and say, “Meet me at LoLA! Let’s eat!”
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