I don't hand out at-a-boys often, especially to restaurants, and when I do it's because the restaurant is in the Worth a Journey category. Such restaurants are rare in the mid-South. However, just this past week Vertis and I experienced a dining and visual gem in Crossett.
This was not a fine-dining experience with a high-dollar charge; it serves hands-on Southern, Creole, and Cajun cooking that is truly remarkable in a setting that looks like a Louisiana juke joint complete with a blues band frontman.
Jan. 17 is our wedding anniversary, and to celebrate we picked Greenwood, Miss., and the Alluvian Hotel. The night away was great, and as we headed back home Vertis spotted Beech St. Bistro on the Internet. It's a couple blocks off U.S. 82; if you have trouble finding it, just ask.
The restaurant serves from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. daily. We pulled into the parking lot a few minutes after 11 a.m., and right away the exterior made us think we might have found an off-the-beaten-path treasure.
The bistro is in a large old clapboard house with a wide porch decorated with a mix of mostly painted Louisiana memorabilia along with some musical instruments.
When we walked in, we had a visual surprise. It was nothing resembling what I thought a Crossett bistro would look like. It felt like south Louisiana.
Decor can add ambiance, but can't take the place of good food. You must have both. We sat near the front where we could see almost the entire restaurant. Tables are scattered in rooms of the old house; as we looked at the walls, ceiling, and serving bar, it was obvious that a great deal of work had gone into making the space visually spectacular.
Vertis went to the restroom, and when she came back she said, "There is a chandelier in the ladies room."
A local artist has added a wonderful touch of Southern/Cajun wall paintings that make the restaurant authentic. I glanced at the menu, and the owners' Louisiana heritage was obvious: Cajun and Creole infused with a lot of Southern. Virtually all of the items are homemade, even the mac and cheese.
That made what could have been just another decorated-to-death place with ordinary food into a place where the cooking fit the decor. Owner Chester Paul Huntsman handed me his card, which was a guitar pick with his name on one side and a pic of him as a bluesman playing a guitar on the other side.
He told me arthritis had slowed his playing, but he hadn't lost any of his bluesman's personality, and immediately made us feel welcome. The bistro features music on Thursday nights, and if you are inside the building or on the front porch, I'll guarantee you won't have any trouble hearing it.
A meal there starts with complimentary hot-water cornbread muffins and yeast rolls. Those items are hard to beat, and they add an extra something to almost anything you order after that. The 11 lunch specials were so Southern that my mouth began to water just by reading them, and made me start reminiscing of some of my grandmother's home cooking. I had to tell the server to give me a few more minutes; it was that tough to decide.
I finally picked pork tenderloin with brown gravy and rice: absolutely delicious. Vertis selected gumbo, a large bowl with a twist of Southern flavor with the addition of fresh corn to the shrimp, crawfish, chicken, and sausage. The portions were enough that Vertis brought home enough for the two of us to have lunch the next day.
I took the menu home to get a look at items offered for dinner. I don't know any other place in Arkansas where you can get alligator prepared in a half-dozen ways, or three or four ways to eat crawfish (thank goodness none of the crawfish require you to peel the tails). How about a quarter-pound of fried crawfish or alligator with homemade onion rings?
The bistro isn't just Louisiana specialties; it's loaded with Southern favorites such as hamburger steak, pork chops, chicken fried steak, and a list of po-boys as long as your arm.
A couple of menu items are going to pull me back to drive 42 miles from El Dorado to have dinner. According to folks in the bistro, their homemade chicken and dumplings are to die for, and one of my weaknesses is homemade banana pudding. It also features blueberry cream cheese stuffed beignets.
You might want to go all out and have a Atchafalaya Feast: A half-pound of fried crawfish, a half-pound of fried alligator, seven jumbo fried shrimp, seven jumbo shrimp scampi, fries, fried onion rings, homemade yeast rolls and hot water cornbread for $69.99.
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Regarding my recent column on hitchhiking, I received similar stories from readers. Here's one of the best:
"It happened in a small east Texas town in the early 1950s when our hitchhiker ended up there after dark. After a couple of hours without traffic, cold and without any chance for a ride, he spotted a breadbox in front of a grocery store. He was so cold that he opened the breadbox, got in, and closed the lid. Hours later the early-arriving bread delivery man opened the breadbox, and up popped our hitchhiker. After the hitchhiker helped pick up the bread, the delivery man gave him a ride to Tyler."
Email Richard Mason at [email protected].