Cajun Food

I was undecided what to do this week for the blog and decided to browse Google Maps along likely routes to see what might be new in the area and came across a new location of an established Charlotte restaurant.  Cajun Yard Dog in Fort Mill was the just what the doctor ordered.  For those anyone who might not know Cajun cuisine has influences from France via Canada plus cross pollination with other Louisiana cultures so it has an international flair as well as the straight out of the bayou ingredients.  The title of the post comes from my favorite TV cook of all time, Cajun chef Justin Wilson.  You should check him out on YouTube.

Anyway back to the food.  Cajun Yard Dog is on a corner of a shopping center and easy to spot from the road or the parking lot.  When I arrived there was only one other table with diners and the waiter was working on table set ups.  He told me to sit wherever and he’d be with me in a minute.  They have a lot of window (heavily tinted) tables being on the corner so I grabbed one that had an awesome view of the bank across the parking lot.  There are a good number of tables in an open area plus a bar.

I was presented with a one page, front and back, menu that actually had a lot of different dishes on it.  It was cool because the guy asked me if I’d been there before and when I said no he spent some time giving me a tour of the menu, pointing out some popular items and explaining the difference between the Crawfish Creole & Crawfish Etoufée (tomatoes vs roux).  He also pointed out the chalkboard wall that has daily specials plus the catch of the day, desserts, wine list, and beer list.  Thorough and helpful.

Since it was lunch time and I had some football watching ahead of me I didn’t want to get too much so I ordered a fried oyster po’boy with jambalaya for a side.  To drink I decided to try one of their New Orleans beers, Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager.

We’ll start with the main attraction.  The po’boy was served on a warm baguette that was nice and crusty on the outside and soft on the inside.  The fried oysters were atop a bed of lettuce and tomato.  There were four to five good sized oysters on each half that were fried crispy in a light batter.  The first half I ate as presented and the second I gave the oysters a few shots of Tabasco each to spice it up.  The sandwich was quite good and they had a list of a dozen or so different po’boys.  Next up was the jambalaya, which I actually thought was the better of the two dishes.  The jambalaya had a good quality andouille sausage and a generous amount of chicken in the stew of rice, tomatoes, onion, celery, spices.  Interestingly I didn’t see any green bell pepper but I’m also not complaining about that.  It had just a little heat but there several hot sauces at the table to dial up the temperature if you wanted to.  I really liked the jambalaya and am glad I popped for this premium side dish.  The low point of the meal was actually the beer.

The Blackened Voodoo Lager had a nice caramel color, as you can see in the photo, which looked promising.  The first sip was a bit of a surprise.  It tasted almost sour and then got really sweet with a little hops at the end.  The sour taste dissipated as I drank, probably my taste buds just shutting down in self defense.  The sweet was there until the end though and overall it was not an experience I would like to repeat.

So I liked the place, people and food and will definitely go back to try some of the other things on the menu but definitely with some other beverage.