Friday, February 24, 2006

 

Pearl's -- OKC's best Cajun joint

Goin' to lunch with a flack today. Bidness lunch. We'll go to the place I always go for a workin' lunch, Pearl's -- EXCELLENT Cajun fare.

I'll have a bowl of red beans and rice with andoulle sausage, or a bowl of gumbo with a side of hushpuppies, or a fried oyster po' boy. Those are my three lunch dishes at Pearl's.

Tell me about yer favorite joint!

--ER

Comments:
I don't think I have just one favorite...I'll try to narrow it down to just a few. :)

RJ Gator's in Okeechobee, FL for Floribbean cusine...my favorite dishes there are gator tail with a Carribbean sauce for an appetizer, followed by their Coconut Shrimp dish served with black beans,
Floribbean rice and sweet plantains. Not every RJ Gator's is the same, though. The one in Okeechobee is the best I've been in.

For the best seafood, drinks, live music and beach ambience you can't beat Conchy Joe's on Jensen Beach, FL. It's won numerous awards for it's food and it's still very affordable and dress is shorts, sandals and very casual shirt. If you wear a tie, you just might get it cut off, depending on the mood of the waitress that night. Start with Conchy Joe's own chowder or the conch fritters and move on to their 20 year house specialty, Grouper Marsala, or their lobster or steak or even a cheeseburger. It's all good. It's built over the water, and half of it is outside seating, so after dinner you can wander over to the railing and drop left over bread (if you have any left over) to schools of fish just waiting for you. Best place to eat on the beach.

Okay, just one more...I have to tell you about the Mexican restaurant we found here in California called Tio Pepe. I think it's a chain, but it's the first one I've ever seen. I've been in a LOT of Mexican restaurants, but this is THE best I've ever been in. Everything is good in this restaurant, so order whatever, you can't go wrong. Even the rice is so much more than a side dish!

Oh, wait..the best table I ever set my feet under though was in Gans, OK at my Grannie's table. Nobody made fried chicken like her, and her apple salad, mashed potatoes with real cream and butter, seasoned green beans (yes, ER with bacon grease --she kept a can of it on her stove), homemade biscuits from scratch, followed by her personal recipe for pinapple-upside-down cake made you think you died and gone to heaven. Now, THAT was real eatin'.
 
When I get an urge for cajun I go down on South Meridian past the river to Pearl's Cajun Kitchen, that where they cook the same stuff for half the price they do up there in hoity toity land. A pulled pork, or crawfish poor boy is good. The red beans and rice with sausage are the same there as up on your side. Hush puppies are free and are brought around hot while you eat.
Now when I really want to slide into country comfort food I end up at the Hungry Frog at 10th and Penn. in OKC. Chicken fried steak, burgers,mashed taters and gray milk gravy heavy with pepper, all the breakfast you can think of and best yet, fat ole pan fried frog legs any time. And of course Doctor Pepper to drink. Take your antacids before you go and don't show up in too much finery. Oh yes, and leave a visable tip if you want to get out the door.
 
I don't have one favorite, either.

Claim Jumper (a chain, but don't know how far-reaching) is first choice when money is no object--lol. Their prime rib is enough to have leftovers for three days. Their french onion soup is wonderful, and the best dessert on the planet is their Chocolate Chip Calzone.

Ricardo's Don Jose's in Riverside, CA has wonderful chimichungas.

Mi Tortilla in Corona, CA is a half fast-food and half sit-down. You walk up to the register to order, but then they wait on you the rest of the time. Their Tortilla Salad with Grilled Chicken is fabulous, as is everything else there.

Okay, one more...The Original Roadhouse Grill (a chain) where they have barrels of peanuts-in-the-shell with small buckets for you to munch as you wait for your table and then take to your table with you. You just throw the shells on the floor (my son's idea of heaven.) They have wonderful rolls and the yummiest baked sweet potatoes. I can make a meal just out of the rolls and sweet potatoes. :)

Uh, thanks ER, now I'm starving! ;)
 
Crystal mentioned: (yes, ER with bacon grease --she kept a can of it on her stove)

I was married for ten years before my wife announced one day that I could no longer keep a crock of bacon grease on the stove to cook with. It was a major crisis in our relationship, but she prevailed. She thought Crisco a much better choice. She was just anti-bacon grease ever since the time I had run out of Criso when we were dating and I had invited her over for a home cooked meal at my place. It seems the pie crust of the cherry pie didn't taste quite right to her when the missing Cisco was replace with bacon grease.
Silly girl.
 
Ewwwwwwwwww, Doc!

(And ROFL!!)
 
Oklahoma Joe\'s BBQ, at the corner of Mission Rd. and County Line Rd, Kansas City, KS. Best ribs anywhere!
 
Something I miss from my childhood-- chocolate chip cookies made with bacon grease. I can't remember which friend's mother used the stove can for the cookies, but they were divine! I'd like to taste them again just one more time.

I'm still pondering favorite eateries -- one is the $5 lunch at Banta's BBQ at Meridian north of NW 10 -- "Where the women are tough and the ribs are tender."
 
Trixie said: "Something I miss from my childhood-- chocolate chip cookies made with bacon grease."

Did they have pecans in them?

Trix your making me think I should revert to my former ways. Hoe bread fried in bacon grease, with bacon crumpled up in the dough and and two hard fried eggs on top, covered with sorgum syrip. My Internist would absolutely have a kaniption fit if I told her I had eaten that?
 
Update: I went with the gumbo and hushpuppies.

And Drlobojo, you, alone perhaps among ER readers, will appreicate this:

I had lunch with a direct descendent of Bill Sublett.

You may touch me next time we meet. :-)
 
BTW, Crystal, of course, nothin' beats Mama ER's cookin' ... :-)
 
The Thai restaurant across the street from the OKC Art Museum and the Lido (off Classen north of 24th, near the really big Asian grocery store) are my two favourite Asian restaraunts *ever*.

For seafood, Mo's or the Whale's Tail, both on the docks in Newport, Oregon.

And for simply amazingly yummy food, go to Uglesich's in New Orleans (assuming it's still there, that is).
 
ER said:
"I had lunch with a direct descendent of Bill Sublett."

No shit.

I ain't touchen you without my gloves on though.

My Favorite Sublett story had to do with one of his shipments to one of the Rendezvous where he got a Federal permit to carry 450 gallons of wiskey for the use of his "boatmen". But he "embarced" from Westport Missouri and went overland by mule and wagon which of course ment he didn't have a single boatman with him.

He probably took bacon grease with him as well.
 
Speaking of Sublett, if you are ever in Denver and have room on your credit card, go to "The Fort" up in the hills west of town.
The Fort serves western mountain man type food and is a replica of Bents Fort down on the Arkansas River. They serve lots of game, fowl, elk, venison, and buffalo dishes. Their specialty is Prairie Butter on toast. Prairie Butter is where you spit the large bones of a bison's leg and scoop out the marrow and roast it. Damn fine stuff. Good on prairie chicken or Rattle Snake especially.
 
MRO, what the heck town is that?

Drlonbojo, I bet I'd love prairie butter. And I love the whole story(s) of Bent's Fort, so I'd probably dig that joint.
 
NOTICE:

A flame war involving the blogger KEvron -- specifically, a person or people who are out to libel KEvron -- has finally oozed itself to this blog.

Any suspicious-looking comments should be ignored, because they and any response to them will be deleted as soon as I can get to them.

Ignore them. I will delete them.
 
Oh Lordy, Drlobojo! You done took me back to being 5 years old. Yep, those bacon-grease cookies had big pecans.

And since you brought up sorghum, I have to tell you about my grandpa's ritual at Every.Single.Meal....
Two biscuits, split open on the plate, mashed up with butter and swimming in sorghum (syrup if they were out of sorghum). Big heavy goblets for the ice tea with enough sugar in the glass to simulate a blizzard.

Oh my lord, I feel my arteries hardening just from the memories...
 
What's happening to KEv is pretty typicl of what happens when you disagree with reactionaries, in language they don't approve of. I'm not surprised that the language they choose to parody/libel him with is as childish as it is...And close to what they fantasize about?
Anyway-Kiki: y'know that Mo's is a north coast chain now? Finest clam chowder anywhere.
It almost beats Jake's Famous Crawfish.
No one beats Assagio (also Portland) for Italian country food (outside of the Italian countryside, natch), and...
The best German-style bakery (outside of Germany, natch) is Wagner's Konditorei, Olympia, Washington. The best coffee roaster, Batdorf and Bronson, is also to be found there.
Oh, I could go on.
 
Mmm... Chicken in the Rough from Beverly's. Or Pad Thai from Jana's in Norman. Anything from Pepe Delgado's. I'm starving to death in central Texas - the food is terrible here!
 
Flint's BBQ in Oakland CA annnnnd -

Eastern Standard in Charlottesville VA - they could do things with caviar you couldn't believe...
 
I am makin a list of all of these places. I will get around to a bunch of them.

Speaking of restraunts, Cattlemans in the Stockyards in OKC. Listed as one of the 1000 thing you should do on earth before you die in the book of the same name. Brains and eggs for breakfast, and try out their lamb fries along side their chicken fried steak for lunch. Then come back at supper with some real money and have one of their grade AAA prime steaks.
When I get my second morgage paid off I'm goin to have me some of that AAA steak.
 
Oh, I LOVE the Cattlemen's! Hard for a farm boy not to like a place with a pic of dang-near lifesize cattle on the wall! My girl, I'm afraid, aren't much for the lamb fries. But they are tops on my list of favorites there.

AND THEY HAVE GEORGE DICKEL.

Dude. It don't get no better -- although I'll give equal time to McBride's in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas, where the standard martini has not changed, I'll bet, since they were servin' them to oil men back in the day. And they got a wonderful long-horned steer head on the wall in he dinin' room.

Dang. I'm thinkin' of givin' up meat for Lent. ... The mere thought will make the ribs I'm fixin' to have fer supper even better. (Bedlam BBQ ribs, Drlobojo, where we dined at the exchange of the Frito Bandito pencil eraser!)
 
Rather, the presentment, not exchange, of the FBPE.
 
Wichita Falls P-3, Pioneer Restraunt #3's German Apple Pie with a sourcream based topping on it and vanilla ice cream on the side. More than once I drove 60 miles round trip just for a piece of pie there.
 
Lent? Yer Catholic, all of a sudden?
KEv has been talking to me and Carrier, of late. What's happening over there is interesting. His antagonist has already demonstrated that he can post as me (I'm pretty tech-illiterate, and impress easy), just because I told his childish ass to shut up.
In any case, if some eejiot comes in here slobbering about child rape, claiming they're me, you'll know it's not, right?
Meanwhile, you read my latest? Do you already know about Sufjan Stevens?
 
RB, I think I'd recognize the imposter that KEvron has riled, and who continues to give conservatives a bad name. Beyond cleaning up any ooze that oozes onto this place, I'm staying out of it.

Catholics aren't the only ones who observe Lent. The Baptists that I grew up with don't, for sure, but I'm not much of a Baptist these days.
 
I'm Methodist, and we observe Lent. Ash Wednesday is this week. I will be ashed (we say it nicer, though. It's called the "imposition of the ashes.")

Part of the way we observe Lent is by choosing a spiritual positive to replace a spiritual negative, rather than "giving up something for Lent."

So, instead of giving up Brussels sprouts, for instance, I would choose to commit myself to a Lenten study rather than spending that time in front of the television. As individuals, we would make our own choices as to what would be best for us during this spiritual season.

As a church community, we'll continue to have Wednesday night suppers together, but they will be meager meals rather than feasts. Soup and bread, for example, rather than enchilada dinners or barbecue.

I'll be having a similar sort of meal for my singles group on Friday night. Guests can bring whatever side dish they would like to contribute, and I'll prepare the main portion of the meal, but it also will be a "meager fare" offering. I've started calling these dinners the "Elastic Table" because there's always room for anyone who wants to attend.
 
I like the idea of taking on something rather than giving up something.

Maybe I'll take on more veggies ... :-)
 
There you go! Good idea.
 
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