Creole Food at Creole Kitchen in Columbus

                Columbus, Ohio is one of the best cities in America for restaurants. I’ve lived in the New York area, Washington, Boston, Miami, and have been in virtually every major city in the country, so I am making that statement based on experience and knowledge, not hometown pride. The variety of ethnic restaurants is astounding, and these include Italian, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Ethiopian, Somali, West African, Iranian, Afghani, Indonesian, and Cajun, but the list goes on. The latter is what I want to discuss here.

                Cajun and Creole food is probably my favorite in all the world. I do like French food and cook it rather well, but no offense to the French, I think that the Cajuns of Louisiana did them one better. After working 5 New Orleans Mardi Gras and other festivals in the state selling concessions and novelties, selling flowers from a stand in Harahan, and working on an offshore oil boat out of New Iberia (the original Cajun settlement), I got to eat a great deal of this delicious food.

                A short while ago I found a coupon for a restaurant in Columbus called The Creole Kitchen and headed straight for it hoping to find some real Creole food. I was not disappointed. The menu included many wonderful entrees that one would expect from a Creole restaurant, such crawfish etouffee, jambalaya, red beans and rice, gator, fish and oyster poor boys, and a wide range of other delicacies. I had a special craving for a muffuletta before going there. When I lived in Harahan, a suburb of New Orleans, I lived across the street from a muffuletta shop and ate there often. It had been almost 30 years since I had eaten one and I was excited to find them on the menu. A muffuletta is a round toasted sandwich with meat and a special salad containing lots of olives. The muffuletta that I ordered, called a Toni Po Boy, was extraordinary. It included chicken, crawfish, and shrimp in addition to the muffuletta, and it took 2 days to eat. My companions had sea food fettucini, oyster and fish poor boys, and we all  sampled the gumbo. All of it was fantastic and was as good as any restaurant in Louisiana in which I have eaten, and better than most.  I make a very good gumbo myself, which I’ll write about in the future.  I won’t make any comparisons here with my own gumbo, but I will say that the cooks definitely know their stuff.

                The seating is limited at The Creole Kitchen, being more of a carryout, but the service is courteous and quite friendly. In fact, we were treated like family and will be returning as often as we can.  I will be writing about other Cajun and Creole dishes in the future that I make myself.

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