After several days in Texas, I have to confess that I was glad to be leaving the great state. I tried not to mess with Texas, but it’s still a  little  unnerving  being told continually not to mess with the place you are. How am I to know what Texas will consider inappropriate?? Between being pulled over by the cops for speeding (this time it was me, I admit it) and getting a warning, having a slightly more aggressive exfoliation from the cacti in El Paso, and punishing amounts of grease and cheese during meals in San Antonio and Houston, I was looking forward to a little bit of a change. Maybe some green bayous, with a side of gumbo

And so it was that we headed ever east out of Houston, into the foot part of the Louisana boot. Straight across, on terrain that was so flatito that you can see why hurricanes head for this part of the world. Turns out, they’re lazy bastards, those hurricanes. Instead of aiming for land where they’d have to beat themselves against peaks or cliffs, they cruise on over to this flat land where they can spin themselves into a frenzy without any resistance. Fortunately, we did not run into a hurricane in the Delta. We did encounter one (or as good as) in Tennessee, but that’s a story for another day.

En todo caso, I had declared a moratorium on Mexican (not on Mexicans, obviously!) during our sojourn in the Crescent City, a/k/a New  Orleans. There is sooo much amazing food to try, and we had so little time to do it. No way was I going to pass up the chance to enjoy some jambalaya or gumbo or etoufee or red beans and rice or any of the other delicacies for which the city is duly famous. Ya veremos, me dice Max. If there’s some kind of fusion thing going on, cajun and mexican, or creole and Mexican, of course we’ll have to check it out, right? Uh huh, le digo, sure…thinking, meanwhile, right, like THAT’s gonna happen. But wouldn’t you know it, not twenty minutes after we had this conversation in the car — what do we see, but a sign for EL CAJUN: LA-MEX RESTAURANT! This sign was irrisistible. And so, about 30 miles east of N’awlins, we pulled into the Cajun County Casino / El Cajun LA-Mex Restaurant / Nocko’s Trading Post Truck Stop. Vaya combinación.

The restaurant menu proved to be heavy on the Tex-Mex items; the most notably Cajun influences were a couple of dishes made with crawfish. Max ordered the crawfish enchiladas, and although I would have loved to, I bravely avoided the temptation and chose a chicken chile relleno instead. The enchiladas were very nice; the fishy sauce that bathed the crawfish was rich without being heavy and the seafood flavor was fresh and robust.

The chile relleno was, sadly, pedestrian, and notable only for its astonishing amount of cheese.

The restaurant itself was very spacious; the entry hall was as big as some of the other restaurants we’d been in over the course of the preceeding week. The eating area was likewise quite large; oddly, however, there was music playing only in the entrance and none at all in the dining area. The sound of quiet conversations dominated, and we both noticed a couple of tables at which couples were sitting on the same side of the table. Unusual. The clientele was exclusively white; some people were dressed up as if El Cajun  were a special destination, while others were dressed in  very casual clothes as if dinner out were sort of an afterthought. The decor was a semi-sincere hybrid; there big sombreros  painted with crawfish and the names of the surrounding parishes hung on the wall, and there was a sign that promised “Frogs Legs / Alligator / Burritos” or something along those lines. Sadly, though, there were no frogs legs tacos or alligator burritos. I wonder if perhaps the restaurant does not offer these kinds of things because they are daily food — or at least unexotic — for the local folks; when people who live in this area go to a restaurant like El Cajun, maybe the last thing they want  to have to eat is yet more gator?