Most people know New Orleans restaurants via the upscale culinary temples that have made Creole cuisine famous, places such as Commander’s Palace, Galatoire’s and Brennan’s. These luxurious places are renowned for their elaborate preparations and rich sauces such as meunière and hollandaise.
New Orleans neighborhood joints, though, are another thing altogether. The food is humbler: poor boys, red beans and rice, and fried seafood (served only with sauce de tartar). The surroundings, to put it kindly, are down-to-earth. You expect a large bar, a TV over that bar, a jukebox in the corner blasting New Orleans favorites and a waitress who calls everyone “babe.”
I love both kinds of restaurants, but because of economic necessity, I’ve spent a lot more time in the neighborhood joints. And I’m happy to report that Troy Roth, co-owner and chef of The Gumbo Shop has successfully transplanted the vibe to Houston. The place feels like New Orleans, and if you pick your dishes carefully, you can eat quite well.
You expect a place that dares to call itself “The Gumbo Shop” to do right by its namesake, and sure enough, the seafood variety ($3.95) commanded my full attention. Dark and rich-tasting, it’s loaded with spice and seafood, including particularly fresh-tasting shrimp. And in a nice break with tradition, the rice is served on the side, rather than in a mound in the bowl; this way, you can calibrate the precise rice-to-gumbo ratio you prefer.
Less riveting is the chicken-and-sausage gumbo ($3.95). Yes, the flavor’s decent, and yes, the color’s nice and dark. But it lacks a gumbo’s necessary thickness. It’s more like good chicken soup with a serious tan.
The seafood platter ($11.95) brings a pile of fried seafood — shrimp, oysters, soft-shell crab and fish (catfish or sea trout, depending on what’s fresh) — perched atop a mound of good, crisp french fries, with a side of creamy coleslaw. A spicy cornmeal crust sheathes the seafood, which needs just a little salt and a squeeze of lemon to bring it close to perfection.
The exceptional red beans and rice ($5.95) remind you how good the old standard can be when the kidney beans remain firm and the bean-thickened liquid is heady with onions, garlic and spices. Bonus: They’re served with a nicely grilled link of andouille sausage on top.
The sauce for the crawfish étouffée ($7.95) is a beautiful color, the orange you get from combining crawfish fat with cayenne; that combination tastes great, too. All the dish needs is a few more crawfish.
The jambalaya ($3.50) isn’t bad — in fact it’s a lot better than others I’ve had in Houston — it’s just mild, blah and safe-tasting.
The poor boys, on the other hand, were a nearly complete disappointment. The muffuletta ($5.95) was in fact dreadful, with too much olive salad dominating the lackluster meat and cheese. The hot sausage poor boy ($5.95) held more promise: The same good andouille was here, dressed properly with lettuce, tomato and gobs of mayonnaise. But mushy, characterless bread ruined the effect. Poor boys require French bread, with a fluffy interior and a crispy crust that leaves a trail of crumbs across your shirt, the tablecloth and an approximately six-foot radius around your chair. This bread left a trail of nothing but (gasp!) sesame seeds.
Among the side dishes, the onion rings are good, a tangle of thin, crispy, lightly breaded onions. The hush puppies ($1.50) and jalapeño corn bread (50 cents) are dry and forgettable. But with gumbo, red beans and fried seafood this good, who really needs corn bread? And with a sound system playing such an inspired collection of classic New Orleans R&B, I can almost ignore the fact that The Gumbo Shop still looks a little too new and clean, and hasn’t yet acquired the patina of a serious joint. I’ll be happy to give it time.
The Gumbo Shop,
2207 Richmond at Greenbriar,
(713)522-1311.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 1999.