New Place to Eat

Anyone who has read my blog, knows that food in all its forms is important to me. Trips away from Naruna, no matter their original purpose, are usually combined with dining out. Vacations become gastronomic adventures as my Lovely Bride and I search out the new and different whether it's in Italy or at the State Fair in Dallas. Unfortunately, those pesky jobs which allow us to afford the occasional trip, also keep us close to home most of the time.

That being the case, anytime a new eating establishment opens in one of the small villages near Naruna, we are quick to try them out. On Friday the 13th, a new place opened its doors in Burnet, and I was there to see what they had to offer. It turned out to be a Cajun place which was still trying to get everything they needed to operate as a restaurant, with coolers being delivered while I was waiting for my order. Its name is "A Lil Taste of - The Real New Orleans Style Restaurant - Where Cajun meets Country", and it is aiming to be more takeout than dine-in. It is run by a group of folks who also started up "The Real New Orleans Style Restaurant" in Round Mountain, Texas not long after Hurricane Katrina.

I took home a quart of seafood gumbo and an order of fried chicken to try out with the LB. The gumbo was richly flavored, and full of shrimp, sausage and ham, with a subtle spicy bite which crept up on me gradually. The fried chicken was to die for...spicy, juicy, crispy all at once. I really should have taken a photo of the chicken since it was so beautiful, but after driving home to Naruna smelling the intoxicating aroma, I barely waited for a plate before digging in.

PET PEEVE ALERT!! One of the great tragedies of our society has been the disappearance of fried chicken from menus. It has been replaced by chicken "tenders" or "strips" or even "chicken fried chicken", none of which have much to do with real chickens, especially flavor. When was the last time you got fried chicken in a restaurant where they actually started with a real chicken?

If you have only heard bad things of the "refugees" fleeing the destruction in New Orleans, this group of restauranteurs can show you the other side. They are a church family who decided to leave as a group from New Orleans the day before the mandatory evacuation was ordered. They were staying in East Texas, when they were again displaced by another hurricane, Rita. They kept moving from shelter to shelter, trying to stay together, until they arrived in Marble Falls in southern Burnet county. After seeing how the rebuilding of New Orleans was going, and looking at what was available to them in the Texas Hill Country, they decided to stay in Burnet County and have become valued members of the community. http://www.smokingforjesusministry.org/index.html

I sat and watched the interactions of the staff as I waited for my order to be ready. People wandered in and out, all in a state of excitement about the new restaurant, and the staff had a smile and a welcome for all. The waitress who took my order and also the cook both kept me updated on how much longer my order would be. When it was ready and I started to leave, the waitress apologized again for my order taking so long. I turned back and told her, "There are a lot of places I can go if I was looking for speed, but that's not what I'm interested in." She broke out in a big grin and wished me a great evening.