Many of the core ingredients of Louisiana cuisine — shrimp, crawfish and oysters — aren’t exactly Colorado staples, and until the Gulf of Mexico starts lapping on the shores of Rocky Ford, no amount of locavore flag-waving will change that.
Lucky for us, we have UPS and FedEx. Luckier still, we have Lucile’s Creole Cafe, with five area outposts. The menus vary a bit among the restaurants, so the experience we had on recent visits to the Denver venue at 275 S. Logan St. might differ from what you get in Boulder, Longmont, Fort Collins and Littleton.
The Denver restaurant is a homey room that feels like a parlor, thanks to wooden wainscotting, butter-yellow walls and Mardi Gras posters interspersed with brass instruments. Serving breakfast and lunch, it is routinely packed. You show up, find people milling outside, put your name on a waiting list and, if you want, be issued a straw mat to loll on the grass while you wait.
So that’s a lagniappe — NOLA- speak for a small post-transaction gift bestowed on a customer — before you even open your wallet.
Lucile’s delivers the characteristic flavors of southern Louisiana. The food is both robust and refined, sometimes all at once, and sauces are built on a roux, the classic flour-butter-oil concoction that comes in various shades and depths of flavor. In general, the darker the roux, the deeper the flavor.
Making a roux takes time and attention, since the cook must constantly stir and monitor the pan. There’s an old joke in Louisiana that says if your boy misbehaves while you’re cooking a roux, you must punish him twice: once for what he did, and again for taking you away from the stove, thus ruining the roux.
Lucile’s basic roux is a dark, near-mahogany affair. Order the crawfish etoufee ($10.50), and you get dime-sized bits of sweet “mudbug” meat aswim in a sauce that rings a fluffy pile of white rice. A whole boiled crawfish in its bright-red shell perches atop the rice mound, as if monitoring his brethren below. The flavor is savory with a hint of heat, anchored by the Cajun culinary “trinity” of diced onion, green pepper and celery.
You get daily entree specials at Lucile’s. Arrive on a Friday and you can try the barbecued shrimp ($9.50). These are unshelled shrimp of the “popcorn” variety, pooled in a mildly spiced sauce the color of a navel orange. The shrimp could have been larger, since the flavor of the little ones got lost in the sauce. You didn’t much taste of the sea: just enough texture to tell you that you were eating a protein.
As with the other entrees, the dish comes with a square of pan-baked cornbread. It was moist and had a tight crumb. Kudos to the baker.
Servers are outgoing and knowledgeable. They are also frank about the food, apparently having encountered a few cautious palates in their time. The pepper jelly was “not for everyone,” confided a waiter. Well, it worked for me, sweet with just a zap of heat.
Lucile’s house-made condiments, from jams to ketchup, show real craft.
The hot sauce is long on peppers and short on vinegar, and its flavor beats the tar out of Tabasco. And the Creole ketchup is almost revelatory, touched with chile pepper and fruit notes. Its ingredients are a house secret, but let me take a stab. I could be barking up the wrong ingredient tree, but it seemed to harbor cherry notes — specifically, it tasted as if some of those cured Luxardo-brand cherries were mashed and added. Delicious.
The hot sauce and ketchup are sold for home tables.
Gumbos vary week to week. The one I tried had generous chunks of chicken and andouille sausage. A cup runs $4.35; a bowl is $7.60. (Lucile’s must have their cost margins down to the penny, because the menu is chockablock with such pinpoint pricing. Want half a grapefruit? That’s $1.85. Upgrading the blackened salmon to the contradictorily named “ranched wild” stuff is $3.20.)
Do try the red beans. Rich and unctuous, flecked with bits of shredded pork, a side costs $2.95. You can also get them with the Cajun breakfast ($7.60), paired with poached eggs and hollandaise and sided with a flaky buttermilk biscuit and grits or potatoes. (Shun the Yankee in you, and go for the creamy grits.)
One letdown was the muffuletta, and that was just in weighing the sandwich against its famous purveyor, New Orlean’s Central Grocery.
At Lucile’s, Central’s robust round loaf is replaced by a hoagie roll. But the bigger problem is that the grade of meats, ham and salami, isn’t up to snuff. The trademark olive spread could also be more plentiful and finely diced.
Still, Lucile’s delivers big value. That’s why the room is routinely packed with folks from the neighborhood and beyond. Laissez les bon temps, rouler, ya’ll.
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com
LUCILE’S CREOLE CAFE
Creole/Cajun 275 S. Logan St. 303-282-6258
** 1/2 Very Good/Great
Atmosphere: Homey, bustling room that feels like a parlor. Patio seating, too.
Service: Friendly, knowledgeable
Beverages: Beer, wine, cocktails
Plates: Worthy Louisiana cuisine — breakfast and lunch — that delivers big flavors with a fun vibe. Plates run $7-$12 Hours: Monday-Friday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m.
Details: Street parking, plus a small lot.
Our star system: : Exceptional : Great : Very Good : Good
