Las Vegas Weekly

Bayou ‘cue

Two New Orleans-influenced joints should have Las Vegans rejoicing

Three-meat special at Cajun BBQ Shack

Photo: Beverly Poppe

Down-home cooking has never had it better in Sin City, with the advent of two places tinged by the Crescent City, New Orleans. One is an authentic N’awlins-style café, where po’ boys and file gumbo rule. The other is a barbecue shack serving some of the best ’cue in town, as well as side dishes that would make a Cajun grandmother weep with joy.

The New Orleans Connection looks modest from the outside, a large, ramshackle space next to Chicago’s Tasty Dogs, housed in a South Eastern Avenue strip mall. Inside, there are red-and-white-checkered oilcloths on the tables, fishnets on the walls and the scent of hot, fried seafood and murky, slow-cooked soups permeating the air.

I actually found out about this place from a New Orleans native that I have coffee with on occasion. She fairly raved about the place, and now I know why. On my first visit, the restaurant was serving homemade boudin, an oozy sausage containing rice and pork that is rarely found outside Louisiana. I also tried the mysteriously dark file gumbo, loaded up with bits of sausage, chicken and crab in the shell.

I also tasted jambalaya, rice, ham, shrimp and the Cajun holy trinity of minced green peppers, onions and celery. Tasted alongside a jambalaya from a commercial chain, this dish is a revelation. All of the food here, in fact, is slow-cooked and tastes it, the best Louisiana cooking around here since Commander’s Palace closed its doors.

Not that the comparison is a fair one. The price point here is as modest as the décor. If you want a po’ boy, the long boy, at $6.99 to $8.99, will easily feed two, as it comes with a side dish. One day I tried the soft shell crab po’ boy, a crusty French roll stocked with a pair of enormous whole crabs, lettuce, tomato, onion and sauce. Another time I had roast beef with debris gravy, a huge affair just like you get at Mother’s, a N’awlins institution.

All of the food here is made from scratch by owner Carmel Frederick and her daughter, both of whom are aided by other family members. From the estimable side dishes, choose étouffée, a thick gravy made from crawfish tails, served over rice, a gooey mac and cheese or terrific sweet potato hush puppies, dusted with confectioner’s sugar.

If you can handle dessert, and most of us cannot after a joust with these dishes, there is a wonderful Rocky Road brownie to cut your teeth on, and an ultra-sweet bread pudding.

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Meanwhile, on the extreme south end of the Strip, there is the Cajun BBQ Shack, formerly K’s BBQ, where reggae music fills the air astride the sweet scent of hickory. The ticket here is some of the softest brisket in town, marbled with fat and crunchy from a burnt crust, complemented by one of the best spicy hot sauces I’ve ever tasted in Vegas.

The owner does most of the cooking himself, including items like biscuits, which aren’t always available, and homemade layer cakes such as a coconut cake with layers of white frosting more voluminous than the cake itself. He also does tasty batter on his catfish and chicken.

But it’s ’cue I will come back for, like rib tips so crusty you could break your teeth on them, chicken with the burnished hue of museum-quality bronze and ribs long enough to make you think they were hewn from a mastodon. All meats here come with the spicy or mild house sauce, and I can’t say enough about the spicy. It’s complex, subtle and at once penetrating and fragrant, a masterwork. I’d eat this sauce on peanut butter.

Side dishes score high as well. Dirty rice is especially good, flecked with bits of what once might have been liver. Fried okra, cut up into tiny nibs, has a cornmeal-inflected crust and a wicked bite. Barbecue beans are cloying, but collard greens are properly medicinal, the french fries crisp and the macaroni and cheese nicely gooey. All in all, it seems hard to believe one person is doing all this by himself.

For dessert, there is peach cobbler with a flaky biscuit-type crust, as opposed to those fake fruit crisps posing as cobblers, and other cakes like chocolate, carrot and 7 Up.

The owner also informed me he is opening a branch at Antique Mall of Las Vegas, just north of his restaurant, so look for that as well. Some people, it seems, just aren’t content with days that have only 24 hours in them.