mardi gras meal

Since it was Mardi Gras and I was no where near to hopping on a plan to New Orleans today, I did the next best thing and headed to Angeline's Louisiana Kitchen to get some Lousiana culinary treats. Their lunch menu is mostly po' boys or meat sandwiches with a side of potato salad or hush puppies (the deep fried corn bread balls - yummy!), but they also have a few pasta dishes, gumbo and jambalaya. There are also vegetarian version of jumbalaya because this is Berkeley and you don't want to leave out your vegetarian friends.

Desserts include creole pecan pie, apple pie, and Beignets (a kind of donut type dessert). They serve a couple of Louisiana beers along with strawberry soda, lemonade, sweet tea, and swamp water (which according to the owner jokingly said "is called Arnold Palmer at lesser grade establishments").

My lunch consisted of:

-boudin sausage with salad
-cup of gumbo
-creole pecan pie
-swamp water

The gumbo has a nice balanced heat that builds in the back of your mouth, but not so searing hot that you can't taste it anymore. If you want heat there's a couple of hot sauce containers at each table to kick it up a notch. Their spoons are the size of serving spoons, so make sure to open wide. Even the cup which is a bowl in other restaurants is quite filling and enough for lunch.

For the non-carb, well semi-carb, dieters there's the boudin sausage and salad starter. Boudin (pronounced boo-dan) is a rice sausage that they grill to a nice crispness. Comes with mustard and a salad with a sweet vinagrette. Combined together you get the salt-sour-sweet tastes all at once with the varying textures makes it an entertaining dish for your mouth.

The Swamp Water is even exceptional as they made it a proper blend of ice tea and lemonade such that it really becomes it's own kind of drink, instead of the usual lemony ice tea or the watered down lemonade.

I was getting ready to end the lunch with the Creole Pecan Pie, but due to some miscommunication, they were out of it. The waiter/owner felt so bad that he gave me a business card with a handwritten note that I would get my next slice of creole pecan pie for free. The meal was so good and filling I didn't even mind missing out on dessert and it just gives me another chance to eat there again. Even as I write this, I can still feel the warmth of the meal, or maybe that's just slight heartburn. Either way it was good eats and I'm looking forward to pecan pie.