Word: cajun
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...might be expected, a specialized definition comes from the most highly specialized champion of American cooking, Paul Prudhomme, who adapts Cajun and Creole classics at K-Paul's. His dishes of spice-blackened redfish, jalapeño cheese bread, flounder stuffed with seafood, and crawfish "popcorn" have inspired a virtual cult of imitators such as the Ritz Cafe in West Los Angeles, a branch of which will open on Park Avenue in New York this fall, the Atchafalaya River Cafe in Houston, Memphis in New York and Lafitte in Washington. "The food we call Creole and Cajun is the most American...
...most of these graduates, eclectic a key word. It certainly applies to the food served at Miss Ruby's Café, which opened late last year in Manhattan. Says Ruth Bronz, the Texas-born owner-chef: "I plan menu changes on a regular basis, switching from Cajun-Creole to New Mexican to Shaker. I'm missionary about it." Shaker food, along with the fare of the Pennsylvania Dutch and the American Indians, has already packed them in at special festivals in the formal American Harvest restaurant at Manhattan's Vista International Hotel. And surely eclectic the word for the menu...
...long-term success of no-frills, down-home cooking will depend upon the public's willingness to pay relatively sophisticated prices for apparently unsophisticated specialties and upon the financial aspirations of the restaurant owners. The lessons from such professionals as Baum, Prudhomme and Abe de la Houssaye, the Cajun proprietor of New York City's excellent Texarkana, indicate that authenticity is not enough. They all quickly realized that native dishes had to be re-created in larger-than-life versions to command top dollar. Says Baum: "Above a certain price, the public wants to see evidence of skill, and dishes...
...ethnic and regional fare--like the California-based New Meiji chain of Oriental food--are adding to the diversity. "The earlier cycle of fast foods was primarily concerned with supplying sustenance in a cheap, quick manner," says Lamar Berry, a spokesman for Popeyes, a growing chain specializing in spicy, Cajun-style fried chicken. "Now you can get convenience everywhere. People want to get the ethnic experience and titillate their taste buds...
This has been a banner year for food lovers. Ever more bizarre victuals found their way to specialty grocery stores, and a frenzy of new restaurants swept across the land. The cooking of the Southwest began to eclipse Cajun fare as our high-status regional cuisine--small wonder, when the gumbos, jambalayas and red beans of Louisiana became overworked into clichés. Its most overrated specialty, blackened redfish, is a culinary travesty. Scorched spices encrust the fish and mask its delicate flavor. There were contradictions, too, as Americans pumped iron to stay thin, then tried to maintain status by eating...