Bayou Lucy (aka Yolanda Jimenez) Creates Great Vibe and Flavors
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
The Seafood Gumbo has a bite to it.
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
The Seafood Gumbo has a bite to it.
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
The Seafood Gumbo has a bite to it.
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
The Shrimp Po'boy
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Jes Gearing
Bayou Lucy's
Wham Bam: It’s Bayou Lucy’s take on fried catfish topped with crawfish etouffee.
If you’ve driven along Brandon Avenue in front of Towers Shopping Center any time in the past couple of months, you’ve probably noticed a new business in the location that was recently vacated by Big Lick BBQ. Bayou Lucy’s new yellow, purple and green color scheme is hard to miss, and somebody has painted “Who Dat?” on the cement pig out front. Since my wife and I have recently been on the lookout for some Cajun and Creole cooking, and since we’re always on the lookout for good, home-style Southern eats of any stripe, we couldn’t resist stopping in to sample some of the goods.
It’s not a huge restaurant, and not a fancy location. But it’s got the humble charm of a second line: lots of joy, lots of harmony, and lots of talent. The first thing that really caught our attention was the hospitality on display. The staff was friendly and welcoming, seeming to generate an aura of enjoyment and enthusiasm. When you walk in the door, you feel less like you’re in a restaurant and more like you’re walking into your favorite slightly dotty aunt’s kitchen.
You might think that when my wife and I started looking over the appetizers, the first thing that would have jumped out at me would be the Gator Sausage Bites with Cornbread, or the Crawfish Pond. I mean, not every restaurant in Southwest Virginia has alligator and mudbugs on the menu. But no. This is me we’re talking about, so my eye naturally went somewhere else.
“You’re going to get the chicken wings, aren’t you?” my wife asked me. I can’t help it; I’m an addict. The only question was which sauce to try. In order of ascending volatility, they were named “Lucy’s Sweet Chili (mild and spicy); Curt’s Louisiana’s (medium and flavorful); Renahe’s Flaming Skull (hot and tasty); and Renahe’s Sun-Fart (OMGROTFH).”
(As an aside, it’s been a life-long ambition of mine to get the phrase “Sun-Fart” printed in a family magazine. Take that, bucket list!!!)
In the end, we settled on trying an order with the two hottest sauces, and the chef was happy to give us the sauces on the side so that we could compare. Both were diabolically hot but with plenty of flavor as well. The sauces seemed designed not just to maim, but also to actually taste good. “The only reason I tolerate your constant chicken-wing tweaking,” she told me, “is that you can generally find them with sauces hot enough to hurt a little.”
But we’d have been neglecting our duties if we hadn’t also tried the Gator Sausage Bites and the Crawfish Pond. The crawfish were deep-fried, crispy and tender inside, with enough spice to give them a little pinch. We also really liked the flavorful sausage bites, though they were a bit greasy and the cornbread was a bit sweet for my taste. Shoot, might as well be clear on this point; the cornbread is really sweet. I think it would give a honeybee a toothache.
For dinner, my wife ordered the Jambalaya Plate, with plenty of celery, peppers, onions, rice, tomatoes, and sausage. Despite the reputation that Cajun and Creole cuisine has for always being overly spicy, this wasn’t seasoned so heavily that the taste of the vegetables got outshined. However, each table has a bottle of Crystal Hot Sauce, a Louisiana staple.
For my entrée, I was tempted by The Sampler. Because I have a lot of trouble making decisions. Let me take a second and tell you about The Sampler. Now it will run you $41.95, but you don’t choose a set number of items from the following list; you get the whole flippin’ list. Catfish. Three oysters. Gator Strips. Shrimp. Crawfish. Gumbo. Red beans and rice. And either jambalaya or étouffée.
But in the end, I decided to order something that had a good Southern vibe, but that wasn’t necessarily something that screamed New Orleans. I went with the Fish and Fries, and I’ve got to say, this was a winner. The catfish was lightly breaded with spices and pan-fried, and there’s not much of a better way to do catfish. Really good dark flavor without being too fishy, and the spices gave it a nice kick.
All entrées come with a house salad, but neither of us wanted to ruin all this good with a bunch of healthy, and the kitchen again obliged us by letting us swap out for sides of potato salad. This was a standout, with plenty of mustard, egg, and seasonings. Too many restaurants (and other types of cooks) make this dish like they’re cooking in the most boring old folks home in the world. It’s like there’s some unwritten rule that says that potato salad has to be bland and lame, and I’m glad that Lucy’s doesn’t buy into that myth.
Almost as enjoyable as the food was the great atmosphere at Lucy’s. Though the dining room had been just about empty when we showed up (a little before five), with just a solitary diner in a porkpie hat and cowboy duster, the place quickly filled up, and the sounds of happy diners competed with the blues on the stereo. We got a huge kick out of a family with four daughters, who were wandering around the room, taking cell phone pictures of Mardi Gras masks and beads and other decorations.
A few days after our meal, I had a chance to sit down with Bayou Lucy herself, whose real name is Yolanda Jimenez. I asked Jimenez about her secret identity, and she explained that when she was brainstorming for a name for her new place, she thought about how much she identifies with Lucy Ricardo. She even met Lucille Ball working a job in California years ago.
“A lot of things in my life have happened that were funny, bad, sad, believable, unbelievable, and whenever it happened, it would happen to me,” she says. “And it always took me back to her show, because she was always getting into something.”
Though she was visibly exhausted from a trip to her native New Orleans to arrange for regular shipments of live crawfish (she’s going to have crawfish boils until she runs out), Jimenez’s energy and enthusiasm seem boundless. New menu items, an ABC license for authentic New Orleans daiquiris and other plans for the future seemed to be swimming around in her head.
Now about that sweet, sweet cornbread, Jimenez set me straight. When she was a little girl, her parents’ cornbread wasn’t sweet at all, “and I was forced to eat it when I was a little girl.” Now beyond her personal preference, there’s a method to what she’s doing: “The sweet kind of balances out the gumbo and the other spicy things.”
Jimenez told me that she cooked her first pot of rice and beans when she was 13, and she’s been cooking ever since. She sees herself as a passionate cook, but also as an ambassador for New Orleans. She stressed that while Cajun food tends to be hot and spicy, “Creole means good, seasoned soul food. And that’s something that a lot of people think. But people come to New Orleans from all over the world for the food, and there’s something for everybody’s tastebuds there. We want to feed ya’, and if I can get into your stomach, I can get into your heart.”
Bayou Lucy’s, 677 Brandon Ave., Roanoke
344-2194