Zinkthink: The Best Thing I Ever Ate (La Crosse edition)

You guys ever watch that show, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, on Food Network? Well, I don't either, but I've seen snippets of it on the TV in the background while I've been doing other things. It's a kinda neat concept, in which various Food Network "personalities" talk about their favorite dining experience, within some sort of guidelines. So there was a Best Thing I Ever Ate pizza episode, and a sandwich one, and BBQ, and so on. Well, I don't go out to eat that often, and I usually don't think it's the best thing I ever ate, but this past weekend may have been an exception.

This weekend was a crazy busy one, all of which was Stacia's fault. There's this thing called the Edgewood Rodeo (somewhat self-explanatory), which she hasn't missed I think ever since she's been old enough to remember going. It's always the last weekend in June. More about that, including the incredible videos I shot with the neato camera from my bro, at a later date. But this wasn't just rodeo weekend. No, in an incredible fit of ridiculous scheduling, one of Stacia's cousins scheduled his wedding for the same weekend. Fortunately he opted for Sunday instead of the usual Saturday, but that meant a trip up to La Crosse, Wisconsin and the burning of a vacation day on Monday.

But it also meant very exciting news. Unlike the rest of the family, who had things they needed to get back to at home on Monday, we pretty much had the whole day to kill in La Crosse. Which turned out to be a rather cute town. I'm not exactly sure how they do it, but that town has one of the most thriving downtowns of any small city I've ever seen. It may help that it's a college town and there were a rather higher than average number of bars, but there were also lots of shops, restaurants, cafes, etc. in the central core that most mid-sized town can only dream of. It was a nice place, and the drive up there was simply incredible, going through the Mississippi River bluffs. However, there was one other exciting point to La Crosse beyond all of that.

That's right, cajun food fans, it's a Buzzard Billy's! For those of you not from the Des Moines metro pre-2008, let me explain. Buzzard Billy's was a restaurant and bar in Des Moines, located about a block from the river on Court Avenue, in the basement level of a neat old brick building. They had all sorts of cajun food, from catfish to andouille sausage, from crayfish to alligator. That's right, the only place I've ever seen "Gator Fingers" on the menu, and they were actually pretty tasty. (And in case you were wondering, it does look like they're farmed sustainably, if it ever comes up.) We loved Buzzard Billy's, but probably didn't go often enough, since it closed forever about two years ago. It turns out that when devastating floods arrive, a basement location a block from the water isn't the greatest place to be. We were very sad... until we arrived in La Crosse!

Amazingly, even though it was 275 miles away and on street level instead of a basement, this place felt exactly the same when we walked in, right down to the old baseball cards under the glass top of the table. Which, now that I think about it, may have been the same tables, relocated after the flood. Or maybe just very similar. Oh, and since the full name of the restaurant is Buzzard Billy's Flying Carp Cafe, there was a fun stained-glass carp window.

Anyway, food-wise, I didn't even need a menu when we sat down. There had been some internal questioning about blackened versus fried as we arrived, but I pretty quickly realized I couldn't pick anything but... the Blackened Catfish Po-Boy, the Best Thing I Ever Ate in La Crosse, or in a Buzzard Billy's, or whatever. Either way, it was really awesome. Between ravenous bites, I took a poorly-focused picture.

That's me holding a whole fillet of catfish, seasoned and blackened at high heat in a cast-iron pan til it's juicy and delicious, topped with lettuce and sliced tomato, all on a soft warm hoagie bun slathered with tartar sauce. The fish was the tender, soft but not mushy way that catfish is best, the seasoning was flavorful and exciting without being overpowering, the tartar sauce melded all the flavors together, and the bun was the perfect slightly yielding vessel to hold it all. This was what I always ate at Buzzard Billy's in Des Moines, and for once I was happy to deviate from my usual "let's try something new" persona. It was also huge, and I was stuffed to the point of borderline over-fullness when I was done, but it was worth it.