Flagstaff Con Day 5: Cajun Food

After four straight days of travel and activities, it was high time for a day off. My intentions for that day were to stay at the house all day, coerce people into testing out my game, and maybe just hang out with people.

In essence, I wanted a day of vacation. However, even a slow day at a Starmen.Net convention will contain fun and surprises.

I think that was the day we all sat down and watched Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, which was fine. I reviewed that movie in a previous blog.

I accomplished a lot of what I intended to accomplish on that day: lots of work on my game, hanging out on the back porch learning the secret art of slicing one bubble into two intact bubbles (people were blowing bubbles on the porch all week), and just generally recovering from my hikes from the previous days.

As the day wore on, though, I decided to go out and find some food rather than cook something at the house. So, a group of us went to a restaurant called Satchmo's, a cajun/BBQ place.

I don't get many opportunities to eat cajun food unless I'm actually in Louisiana, and I'm generally skeptical when the opportunity arises. You see, when people outside of Louisiana think of "Cajun food" they imagine something very spicy, but I believe that's a misunderstanding. Cajun food is very flavorful, which often (but not always) has to do with spices being used. However, spiced food and spicy food are not the same thing.

I honestly don't like spicy food very much. If I can get the same flavor without the burning sensation in my mouth I'll take that option.

We looked the restaurant up on Yelp before going, and it was very well-reviewed. One person proudly stated that the food was the most authentic Cajun food west of Texas, "and this is coming from someone who lives in the bay area." Which is a strange thing to say, since I'm not aware of any large Cajun contingent in San Francisco...

Anyway, we went there and, though I was more interested in the barbecue options, I decided to try the jambalaya.

In my experience, jambalaya is primarily a rice dish with some sort of meat and spices thrown in. It varies wildly in preparation since different people like different things in their jambalaya, but it's always had a heavy base of rice.

The jambalaya from Satchmo's was approximately 30-40% rice. The rest was... whatever else was in there. I can barely remember, but it was okay-tasting yet very spicy. In short, not what I expect out of Cajun food. Ah, well. They did carry Abita beer, though, and I can't speak for the rest of their Cajun dishes. Suffice to say, though, that I have one more reason to appreciate Louisiana.

I wonder when I'll next be there. Probably sometime around Christmas.