Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [123]
622 Second St.
318–352–3353
Natchitoches, LA
BLD | $
Lasyone’s meat pie is a mash of pork and beef, onions and parsley, enclosed in a deep-fried half-moon pastry. Similar to a Cornish pasty but more piquant, it is practically a meal unto itself. Natchitoches used to have many places to buy meat pies—from street-corner vendors and from ladies who made them in their home kitchens and sold them from the back porch. But by the time James Lasyone opened his restaurant in 1967, meat pies were hard to find. Mr. Lasyone missed the food of his childhood, and so he rescued the idea and began making and selling his own meat pies, using a recipe that took him two years of experimentation to develop.
James Lasyone’s meat pie is a vividly seasoned mélange enclosed in a crust and deep-fried until golden crisp. Most people get one for lunch, sided by “dirty rice” and a typical southern vegetable such as okra or greens, but it’s not uncommon to see someone at 7:00 A.M. having a meat pie alongside a couple of fried eggs and a pile of warm grits, glistening with melted butter.
Lasyone’s true Louisiana menu also lists fried seafood (shrimp, oysters), red beans and rice with spicy sausage, and such non-Creole Dixie classics as catfish platters and chicken and dumplings with corn bread and black-eyed peas. We have eaten first-rate banana pudding for dessert, but the sweet tour de force here is a dish invented by Mrs. Lasyone called Cane River cream pie—a variant of Boston cream pie, but with gingerbread instead of white cake.
Louisiana Seafood Exchange
428 Jefferson Hwy.
504–834–9395
Jefferson, LA
BL | $$
Along Jefferson Highway between two sets of train tracks, the Louisiana Seafood Exchange is a wholesale and retail seafood market with a fairly nondescript café in front. Inside this café you can eat extraordinary seafood, especially in sandwiches.
Po-boys are available normal-size (eight inches long) or king-size (foot-long), the latter big enough to feed a hungry couple, especially if filled with oysters. There must be two dozen crisp-crusted ones heaped into the loaf so copiously that you can barely see the bread beneath them. Likewise, the shrimp sandwich is overloaded with so many crisp-fried and impeccably seasoned shrimp that you want to ask for a whole other length of bread into which you can pile the overflow. And oh, the seafood muffuletta! That’s shrimp and oysters and fish inside a big muffuletta loaf, dressed, preferably with lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo.
Most folks know this place as a sandwich shop; indeed, non-seafood sandwiches are as good as anywhere. But beyond sandwiches, LSE serves New Orleans plate lunches to remember: grilled tuna or tilapia, definitive jambalaya, and seafood gumbo are all on the menu, as is bread pudding for dessert.
Middendorf’s
US 51 N
985–386–6666
Pass Manchac, LA
LD (closed Mon) | $$
As you might expect at a Tangipahoa Parish seafood house situated among a string of bait shops and take-out stands, Middendorf’s is extremely casual, noisy, and fun. Its crowded dining rooms have long been the great country catfish destination restaurant of New Orleans, good reason to drive forty-five minutes north of town, then stand in line waiting for a table.
Middendorf’s catfish is the big allure. There is nothing like it, whether you get thick or thin. Thick is a meaty cross-section of fish, similar to a steak wrapped in breading. It is sweet-smelling and has a freshwater taste that is unlike any saltwater fish. Thin catfish is more elegant than thick. Sliced into a diaphanous strip that is sharply seasoned, lightly breaded, and quickly fried, a thin cat fillet crunches loudly when you sink your teeth into its brittle crust, which is sheer enough to let the rich flavor of the fish resonate. With the catfish, thick or thin, there are perfectly good and unsurprising companions: French fries, hush puppies, and coleslaw salad.
Beyond catfish, just about any seafood on the menu is well worth eating. We have had some great gumbo here, made with shrimp and crabmeat, which