We jump to Lafayette where we were encouraged by a local restaurateur to vote for Lafayette online in Southern Living magazine’s “South’s Tastiest Town” contest. And so we did. And thus discovered that a new restaurant had opened—Cochon Lafayette. Could it be related to the New Orleans restaurant with a similar name? Yes, it could.
“…In the past few years, a wave of new eating has rippled through Lafayette—propelled largely by chefs and entrepreneurs returning home and finding a bevy of sophisticated mouths to feed.... By far the most high-profile homecoming is that of Donald Link, from nearby Crowley, and his business partner and fellow James Beard Award winner, Stephen Stryjewski, who have opened a branch of their wildly popular New Orleans restaurant, Cochon, in Lafayette's south end....
“…Just over three decades ago, Paul Prudhomme brought his brand of Cajun cooking to the world at his legendary New Orleans restaurant K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen; this is Link and Stryjewski reversing the process, to the great benefit of all involved.
“Many New Orleans entrepreneurs and chefs who have branched out to open restaurants in Acadiana featuring ‘Cajun’ cuisine…fall way short of replicating the true regional fare. Now, an acclaimed New Orleans chef has come to town, and he has gotten it right.
The lunch menu contained a short list of entrees that included: beef meatloaf with tasso gravy and mashed potatoes, grilled tuna salad with lemon garlic vinaigrette, roasted chicken thigh salad with winter greens and buttermilk dressing, a beer battered fried mahi-mahi sandwich with pickled cabbage and tartar sauce, a pulled pork and coleslaw sandwich with onion rings, pan fried catfish with green chili rice and roasted peppers, and oyster and bacon sandwich. Many of these sounded intriguing, but it was the small plates and sides that captured our attention.
We started lunch with the boucherie plate which is very similar to the affetatti misti at Ancora in New Orleans. So similar in fact that one
Rounding out the plate were the restaurant’s version of “slim jims” (top left) which had the requisite chewy texture and salty taste that you find in the version sold near almost every mini-mart cash register; lightly smoked and very moist country ham (top right); dry cured and chewy house-made capicola (bottom right); and, in the center, were house made pickles (since Chuck doesn’t eat pickles these were mine—all mine) and a small cup of duck rillette.
To me, this last was the star of the tray. Chuck looked at it with great misgivings, taken aback I think by the thin layer of duck fat on the surface. I spread some on one of the small pieces of toasted bread and exclaimed “This is so good!.” When will I learn? Soon we had the battle of knives as we each raced each other to empty the dish.
“Rillette is like a rough version of pâté. Meat…is slowly cooked in fat/lard until tender enough to shred apart easily. The meat is then mixed with some of the cooking fat and seasonings. To store, the mixture is compressed into containers, and sealed in…, yes, you guessed it, the cooking fat again! ...Typically, the meat for rillette is pulverized into an almost paste-like consistency, making it easier to spread across a slice of bread or a cracker…” (ouichefcook.com).
Next came my favorite dish of the day—a plate of grits topped with a fire grilled sausage with peppers. What set this apart was the grits. They were coarser ground that most grits and were very rich.
Then came the charred onion hush puppies with pickled chile mayo. Hush puppies can be unbearably heavy,
Rounding out the meal was a dish of white beans with bacon and pork
We couldn’t leave without dessert and waivered between the warm sticky pecan chocolate pudding with bourbon vanilla ice cream and the apple cobbler topped with a cornmeal biscuit and house made salted caramel ice cream. The latter won.
This was a great lunch. A 5.0 Addie lunch. A lunch that has me eager to return. Especially for more of those grits.
To review the role of Adler, Kitty Humbug, and the Addie rating system, read the November 14, 2011 blog.
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