Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Texas Eatin!

So far, the highlight of the trip down in Texas has been the food. Tonight, we ate at a place called Delacroix which features Cajun cuisine. We're in east Texas, less than an hour away from Louisiana, and since it's crayfish season, it was high time I sampled my first crayfish of my life. Apparently I attacked them with sufficient exuberance for the local trumpet professor to say I was eatin' like a true Cajun. In order to eat them like a true Cajun, you've got to yank the tail off, squeeze the meat out and then take the head and squeeze out the juices--and let me tell you, that's darn tasty! All you taste are the spices and the crayfish juice, which is fantastic!

Along with the crayfish, I ate my first alligator, fried. It tastes like chicken, and that's no joke. It was good, though I would rather have had the blackened mahi-mahi that some of my other colleagues enjoyed. I also ate some crab ettouffe, a hearty crawfish stew that's simply delicious. The fried okra was fantastic, and so were the hush puppies.

Last night we had some remarkable Tex-Mex, with the best guacamole I've ever eaten, made table-side. Earlier this week we had some Texas BBQ, and lunch the next day at another Cajun restaurant.

It's been a good food week, and tomorrow we're ending up in Austin, a great food town. We'll have a few hours to explore the city in the afternoon, have dinner, do our show and then do a pub crawl on 6th Street, the music scene. We'll see when we get home though--our airline is American, and they canceled 1,000 flights today. It sounds like they're going to continue canceling flights through the weekend. If we get stuck, Austin's not too bad a place to be!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey!!!
i'm in a gallery on 6th street in Austin. the Wally Workman Gallery. you should pop in an say hi, tell them that you are a friend of mine, they'll flip out. also, the Whole Foods headquarter is right there on 6th street, and being the chef that you are-you have got to stop in there. it's unbelievable ...like whole foods meets disneyland. i've never seen anything like it

Dan said...

Awesome! Ali, I'll definitely stop in and check it out! I've got all afternoon today to explore, and I hear that 6th street is the place to go.

I'll be sure to report back! And Whole Foods sounds like a sure fire winner!

Alison Hodgson said...

I love cajun food. Yum. Enjoy.