world's best hushpuppies and perfectly adequate grits

I realize that 'world's best hushpuppies' is a big claim to make, and I'm willing to go right ahead and make it. They're served at Big Al's Seafood, which is located on a perfectly forgettable strip mall-laden boulevard in Houma (say HO-ma), LA, about halfway in between the trucker-haven Ramada Inn and Creole Lanes, the bowling alley (which gives you brand new socks if you need them, yours to keep!). We were mainly at Big Al's in an effort to go three-for-three on crawfish in our meals that day, and because we still, three days in, had not managed to eat a crawfish boil; the hushpuppies were an afterthought. But oh goodness, not for long. They were crispy with cornmeal on the surface and perfectly deep-fried so that the crispiness gave way to soft, spicy, artery-ruining glory the whole way through. The crawfish were amazing, too, not to mention all kinds of fun to play with. I tormented Katie with dangling talking crawfish the whole meal long.

Houma as a town was suburban standard and pretty forgettable, in spite of AAA's claim that it is "often likened to Venice, Italy" (by whom, AAA? by whom?), but its uproad neighbor, Bayou Cane, was pretty danged memorable. Don't mess with Bayou Cane, particularly not the gas station on Route 24 that advertises Confederate memorabilia, Bud Light, knives, and dolls with an absolute lack of irony (unpictured because when we tried to obtain photographic evidence of this, the very scary owner chased us off her property). Much as we'd wanted to get a view of (one side of) the real Deep South, we were pretty relieved to flee Houma and Bayou Cane for über-suburban Mandeville and the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, which was a whole 'nother pile of weird, but a pile of weird in which we felt very much less like we were going to get shot for gas station trespassing.





Mandeville is home to a whole lot of rich people who seem to live a year-round take-it-easy vacation existence -- more South Florida than Louisiana, it seemed to us. The North Shore has lots of antiquing and a cute 28-mile bike path and adorable breakfast places like the original Broken Egg Café (which I hadn't quite realized was a chain!). If you go to the Broken Egg (or to Mandeville in general), go for the ambiance, not because you're expecting something exceptional. Katie's guidebook made the blackberry grits sound like they were going to be something to rave about, much like my AAA guidebook made Houma sound like Venice, and we were similarly disappointed. Not because they weren't delicious -- they were! -- but because they were nothing more than grits with a side of blackberries. Not quite that little special something we were looking for. But we should note that Mandeville does know how to throw a party (at the same four bars, visited in the same order, quite likely every night of the week) and that Katie was a real prodigy at the ubiquitous throw-the-metal-ring-on-the-bottle game. I'm sure she'd get a warm welcome back to Mandeville anytime. Me, eh -- maybe if I practice up.