Acadiana Restaurant - a little Cajun inspiration in Chinatown

Last night, my good friend Magda and I went to Acadiana Restaurant to celebrate her new job. She had never been there before so I was super ecstatic to share with her one of my favorite places. I love Cajun cooking, probably due to my love of all things salty and savory! There were a few items on the menu that were a little unusual for Magda, so we steered clear away from those. They actually had a prix fixe menu for dinner, $35 for a 3 course meal, how could you go wrong with that? And we ordered a bottle of wine and got settled in for a delicious dinner.

I started with the trio of deviled eggs and Magda got the spring mix salad. I don't know what it is with deviled eggs, but I have an insane attraction to them, maybe it's cause I grew up in the south? But my trio did not disappoint! Starting from the left, I had the crabmeat ravigote -- superb pieces of crabmeat on top of the creamy and buttery filling; cheddar cheese bacon -- when something comes presented with a piece of bacon on top, there's no criticism to be found; and caviar deviled egg -- which I think happens to be my favorite, the salty caviar works so well with the creamy egg mixture and gives it that extra punch of flavor.

For our main courses, I got the New Orleans style BBQ shrimp and Magda got the cornmeal crusted catfish. The catfish was deep fried to perfection, and it's even inspired me to try and make some deep fried fish at home using a cornmeal coating. It was served in a tomato bouillon sauce with a generous helping of house made bacon.

I was in New Orleans earlier this year and got to devour some of the best BBQ shrimp at Brennan's Restaurant while I was down there. Magda warned me not to compare this BBQ shrimp to the one I ate at Brennan's. When the dish came out, there was no  need to compare, this dish was equally just as delicious! The BBQ sauce is a little bit of a misnomer since it's not the traditional sweet and thick BBQ sauce used for grilling. Instead, it's a lighter flavor full of intoxicating spices that's perfect to dip some crusty bread in. And one of the bonuses of this dish, the shrimp was already peeled, so I wasn't at the table licking the juicy sauce off my fingers, not that I mind doing that at all.

To continue with my theme of going down memory lane to New Orleans, I had to get the beignets for dessert. Magda got the bread pudding for dessert, minus the vanilla ice cream. I'm not a huge fan of bread pudding, but it did look really delicious, and it was apparently served with spiced pralines for that extra kick of flavor. My beignets were as pillowy and soft as I remembered and served with a generous dusting of powdered sugar. It was the perfect end to a great meal.