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Killer fries, barbecued spaghetti and other reasons to revisit Highway 61
• by By Dennis Lowery ~ Photo by Jonathan Swegle
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Back when I was a wee one, my dad brought me to the building that now houses Highway 61 Roadhouse and Kitchen to help sift through the vinyl at Old Orchard Streetside Records for a favorite album that had long ago been reappropriated by one of his younger siblings.
In grade school, my friends and I walked over so I could spend my hard-earned lawn-mowing money on Iron Maiden (good Lord, someone should have set me straight back then). In high school, we would drive there to get concert tickets and try to purchase Ice-T and N.W.A. tapes even though the new rating system forbade us. Then, in the blink of an eye, the Old Orchard store was gone. Replaced by a restaurant, then another and another and – aw, heck, I lost count. Lots of ’em.
And just recently, karma smiled. This old record store is still a restaurant, but one that’s an homage to the music and food found along the section of Highway 61 that runs from New Orleans to St. Louis, through the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, known as the Blues Highway. Cajun, Creole, down-home Southern, Memphis barbecue and hometown favorites on the same menu? I can’t remember the old layout, but if the intimate stage right next to the dining area is where the blues section used to be, this might just be the perfect reincarnation.
I was pleasantly surprised by two things: the size of the menu and the family-friendly atmosphere. In hindsight, it seems logical that an extensive menu full of selections deeply rooted in huge family gatherings would attract, you know, families. Maybe I should think before I take notes.
Say it with me: crisp, fluffy french fries with sharp, tangy Gorgonzola sauce, topped with bacon and scallions. No wonder there are people of all ages here; these are fries for everyone. (Everyone but bacony, cheesy french fry haters – be gone, you.) Without a wrap of tasso ham (spicy Cajun ham with a taste eerily similar to smoky bacon), skewered shrimp might have been lost to a much-spicier-than-anticipated “herb butter for dippin’.”
Nice grill marks and a slightly salty seasoning punctuate the grilled Provolone, which is laid upon fried pita chips, but it quickly (before it reaches the table) becomes too solid to deal with without a knife and fork. Superb stuffed mushrooms are an admirable balance of earthy mushroom and delicately sweet crab, shrimp, crawfish and Asiago stuffing. With the Cajun meat pies, choose the beef, which is moister and has sweetness and succulence that, surprisingly, the shrimp and crawfish lacks.
Barbecued spaghetti is pure genius. Sweet and tangy barbecue sauce substitutes for marinara, and luscious pulled pork stands in for ground beef. These remarkable substitutions won followers among die-hard pasta fans and the serious barbecue crowd. St. Louis-style spareribs benefited from this same delicious sauce and were smoky and pretty tender to boot. Creamy yet sharp and softly acidic coleslaw really stood up to these dishes, but the sweet grilled corn on the cob had gone just over the hump from perfectly cooked to being a little mushy.
The cedar plank snapper was the one truly ugly dish we encountered, so overcooked that you had to use serious force to even cut it. On the plus side, the other dishes were so plentiful that once we sent this back, we didn’t have to order a replacement to keep anyone from going hungry. Disappointing but not disastrous, both the gumbo and the étouffée had good flavor but were more like soup in consistency than stew. Both could have used more of the trinity (onions, celery and bell peppers) and dark roux for texture.
A 16-ounce strip steak – beefy, moist and tender – was cooked perfectly, a hair shy of medium rare, and topped with a delectably herbaceous butter hinting at salt. Both the green beans, cooked with copious amounts of bacon and a sauce that had sweet Worcestershire heat, and the creamed corn soufflé, thick and crumbly at the edges and gooey in the middle, were excellent accompaniments.
I did not read the menu description and thus thought the stuffed chicken would be a whole stuffed chicken. However, the understated spicy warmth of the stuffed chicken breast had tones of the tasso and andouille stuffing that complemented the chicken but never overpowered it, certainly not easy to do with these particular meats. Sweet potato pie, smothered in all kinds of sugary, caramely, marshmallowy goodness, may as well have been a dessert or, judging from my son’s enthusiasm, the main course for EVERY meal.
If you are drinking, skip the wine (small selection, small pours) and stick with the cocktail menu, in particular the Hurricane. Heck, that almost made the snapper taste good. The ambiance is set with piped-in blues when no live acts are scheduled. Service is young and friendly (and perhaps a little inexperienced), but I think Bob Dylan said it best in his song “Highway 61 Revisited”: “And Louie the King said let me think for a minute, son. And he said yes, I think it can be easily done. Just take every[one] down to Highway 61.”
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