Put this place on your "to do" list

Once again I had a great experience at Beausoleil. Colleagues and I decided to go for a late lunch on Friday and the atmosphere was great, everything you could want on a Friday afternoon, if I hadn’t been driving one of our party to the airport later I would have loved to have stayed for a few drinks. The food was really good as well. The table shared two orders of the fried eggplant, which is sliced paper thin and super crispy and was served with some of the best red gravy I’ve had this side of my Italian ex’s father’s Sunday gravy. I also had the duck confit salad which was very fresh but could have used a little more goat cheese and for the roasted pecans to be bigger than the tiny pieces that eventually made their way to edge of plate as they were too small to be picked up by the fork. The salad had a light balsamic dressing and plenty of mostly ripe strawberries. I do have to say that I think calling the ample amount of duck that graced the salad “confit” might have been a stretch as it resemble more of yielding from a technique more akin to roasting or broiling. This duck was moist and tender but lacked flavor. All in all a good salad and great lunch.

A few of my favorite links:

www.johnnyiuzzini.com
Beautiful, the man and his desserts!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Southern-Vogue-Blog/137970019602511
A southern girl after my own heart, pure grace and style.

http://www.facebook.com/shopsucre
too bad they won't open one in Baton Rouge :(, trust me I have asked!

The King Bar & Bistro at Hotel Indigo , Baton Rouge LA

Colleagues and I had lunch at The King Bar and Bistro a week or so ago and I have to say it is a great place to sit, have a drink with friends maybe have a snack but this is no place to have a meal. The menu stated that it was chef inspired but I can tell you it was not cooked by a chef. I should have been clued in that the food might be less than inspiring when a very nice man that worked in the hotel came by our table a few times telling us how great the food was. The flavors were muddled at best and there was no balance in any of the dishes I had. Our table started off with a charcuterie plate, which was good. The plate consisted of slices of a decent salami, chopped pieces of tasso and mild tasting pate as for the cheese there were cubes of swiss, pepper jack and cheddar and these were of the variety that are pre-cubed and purchased in a bag. Chef inspired is not quite what I would call this fare. I had the shrimp and grits and from the description on the menu it sounded great, sauteed shrimp with spices over creamy Gouda cheese grits topped with tasso jam. Sounds great right? To start with the dish was cold and I had to send it back, once the dish was hot I had high hopes, the shrimp were cooked nicely and were big and plentiful, the Gouda grits were lacking Gouda for one and were oddly watery and separated but what was really the downfall of this dish was the so called tasso jam. There was no tasso that I could discern but it was rather a sweet vinegary chutney type relish. The “jam” would have been good if there was a lot less of it and had the grits been rich and creamy to offset it’s overpowering taste. Overall no one at my table of 5 thought they would come back for an actual meal. This is a great location and the atmosphere is very nice so maybe they could get a chef to do more than inspire but maybe actually taste some of the food that they serve.