Crawfish

Another of my dinner companions, my brother Dave, got a stunning half-and-half poor boy with fried oysters and crawfish. The sandwich was huge, filled to overflowing with seafood and generously dressed with lettuce, tomato and Thousand Island dressing. He added a healthy dose of Louisiana hot sauce. Dave is a big eater, and he couldn't finish it.

The bite of his sandwich that I sampled contained both crunchy fried crawfish and gooey oysters. The fried stuff was hot, the dressing was cold, the roll was crusty on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and the whole thing mixed up perfectly in my mouth with every bite. It was one of the best poor boys I have eaten on this side of the Sabine.

I was a little disappointed with the shrimp. The crab-stuffed shrimp we sampled were bland. The stuffing inside tasted like a lot of bread and not much crab. The fried shrimp were butterflied (cut in half lengthwise) and then dipped in spices. The shrimp taste spicier this way, since there is more meat exposed to the spicy dip. But either they were fried a little too long, or they were a little too small, or both because they came out dry and overdone.

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After watching the crawfish eating contest, I ordered a softshell crab poor boy at the bar. There wasn't a softshell poor boy on the menu, but the bartender took my order without blinking and charged me $10.95.

Since the poor boy and the softshell crab were the two best things I'd eaten at Mardi Gras Grill, I figured it was a stroke of genius to put them together. The sandwich was cut in half and in the middle it tasted awesome. But as you ate your way toward the ends, there were just the skinny legs and then the crab ran out before the bread did. So it wasn't such a great idea after all. I guess you could solve the problem by putting two crabs on the sandwich, but then you'd have a $22 poor boy.

While I was eating my sandwich, I noticed Mike Moore, one of the winners of the crawfish eating contest, sitting at a table nearby soaking his fingers in ice water. I walked over and asked him what happened. The crawfish for the contest were so hot that he had developed huge blisters on his right thumb and left forefinger from handling them.

When I suggested that this was a terrible mistake on the part of the restaurant, he disagreed. Crawfish slip out of their shells easier when they are hot, he explained. He could have dumped his ice water on them if he'd wanted to cool them off, but then they would have tightened up and he wouldn't have won the contest.

A $25 gift certificate seemed like paltry compensation for severely blistered fingers. But when I asked Mike Moore if he would do it again, he said he would be back next Tuesday. And he challenged me to join him.

I love the mudbugs, but I am not in Mike Moore's league.