Shreveport

[joiei]

Okay, I now have a new favorite place to go when I am in Shreveport. THat is beside Lucky Palace and Bella Fresca. The Cotton Boll on Fairview across the street from Schumpert Hospital is excellent. Miz Jackie, the cook, made a great omelete. I just wish I didn't have to leave town because the word that I got is that her fried chicken is the BEST IN TOWN. Now I have a reason to go back.

[lukestar]

Okay, I now have a new favorite place to go when I am in Shreveport.  THat is beside Lucky Palace and Bella Fresca.   The Cotton Boll on Fairview across the street from Schumpert Hospital is excellent.  Miz Jackie, the cook, made a great omelete.  I just wish I didn't have to leave town because the word that I got is that her fried chicken is the BEST IN TOWN.  Now I have a reason to go back.

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Here is my favorite restraunts in North LA.

Cheap - Papa's Grill - huge hamburgers on homemade buns

Monjouni's - Great Italian food, Shrimp Pasta Salad is my favorite

Cotten's Fried Chicken (Minden) best spicy fried chicken any where

Nicky's Mexican Grill - Good food for the price.

Medium - Superior Grill - Good Mexican food, be careful with the Margaritas, they

very potient.

The Cub - Looks like a dump but has great steaks.

Expensive - Ernest's Orleans Restraunt - Snapper Shreve is great

The Maybury House - Chef's table is a treat

The Village Grill - Great Steaks and Seafood.

Edited July 15, 2007 by lukestar (log)

[Robert Peyton]

The Columbia Cafe is a really, really good restaurant in Shreveport: http://www.columbiacafe.com/

You might want to check out http://www.chickenfriedgourmet.typepad.com/ if you're interested in local foodblogs.

[davebr]

John T from Gourmet magazine seems to agree. This is from the food editors blog:

July 30, 2007

MEET EVELEAN AND OGLE HER NICE LEGS

Algonquin just released a book of mine, Southern Belly: the Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South. Within are profiles of 200-odd people and places. Food people and places. It's kind of a guidebook, in that I include profiles of old-school restaurants. It's kind of a social history book, in that I use food as a way to think about race and class and other issues.

I'm proud of the book. But I'll admit, freely, that -- taking into account the restrictions of the form -- it's flawed. By the time we went to print, one of my favorite spots in the book, Mayo's Mahalia Jackson Fried Chicken (and Fried Pies), in Nashville, closed. Maybe not for good. But as of this writing you can no longer buy the best sweet potato pocket pie in the world from E.W. Mayo, the nonagenarian king of the fry basket.

Losses of that sort are buoyed by new discoveries like the Cotton Boll Grill in Shreveport. It's a hutch of a place, in business since the 1930s, with a counter at center and four rows of flanking booths. Sausage and gravy over homemade biscuits for breakfast. Chicken fried in vegetable oil and ham drippings for lunch. (Great stuff!)

The Cotton Boll is owned by David Bridges, who also owns Bella Fresca, a local white tablecloth restaurant. But never mind that. The people to pay attention to at the Cotton Boll are the African American cooks and servers who really own the place. They are talented. They are sweet. They are sassy. On the day I was in, lead fry cook Evelean Demming was wearing a Cotton Boll T-shirt. On the rear was the retro-hip Cotton Boll logo. One the front was a stylized rendering of three chicken drumsticks and the slogan, "NICE LEGS."

[TAPrice]

That sounds like a great place. We always evacuate to Shreveport, so it's good to have recommendations for up north.

The Cotton Boll is owned by David Bridges, who also owns Bella Fresca, a local white tablecloth restaurant. But never mind that. The people to pay attention to at the Cotton Boll are the African American cooks and servers who really own the place.

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I got to say, though, the line above really bugged me. John T. thinks and writes enough about race that he should know better than to equate running a place with owning a place. Symbolically owning a place doesn't have the same economic benefits as actually owning a place.

Edited August 14, 2007 by TAPrice (log)

[davebr]

The Cotton Boll is owned by David Bridges, who also owns Bella Fresca, a local white tablecloth restaurant. But never mind that. The people to pay attention to at the Cotton Boll are the African American cooks and servers who really own the place.

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Symbolically owning a place doesn't have the same economic benefits as actually owning a place.

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True Todd, but not in this case. I have never gotten $1 from the Cotton Bowl and I dont expect to ever get anything besides the best fried chicken there is. It's all there for Mrs. E her family and the city. Im just trying to prolong the life of one of our institutions.

[joiei]

A menu coming up at Bella Fresca in Shreveport.

Sunday February 24th we will open for a special evening of BACON.

Heck, I just might have to do that. I will already be in the DFW that weekend, I can just add on a night in S'port to the trip.