Darnell Renee / Special Contributor Crawfish étouffée is filled with plenty of tender tails.

Dallas Morning News/
GuideLive

By KIM PIERCE / Special Contributor
October 15, 2004

The message on the sign outside the Alligator Cafe (“Chef owned/Small business/Try us out”) is an invitation to some of the best Cajun cookin’ in Dallas, with a dash of creole thrown in.

Alligator Cafe is about as fancy as the fast-food restaurant that once occupied this East Dallas spot, which still has a drive-through. Gators and gator heads abound, and long, leafy vines tumble down from hanging plants. One window's lined with empty hot sauce bottles, while brands like Bayou Butt Burner and Bull Snort Fire Hole grace the tables.

Order at the counter. Then surrender to your senses. Naturally, there’s gator on the menu. The alligator and crawfish gumbo ($3.75 cup, $5.25 bowl) was deep-brown and spicy, with a bay leaf still floating in the mélange of celery, onion, bell pepper, crawfish and chunks of alligator meat.

Mahogany-hued shrimp-and-oyster gumbo (same price) was, if anything, even thicker and richer, though a bit shy on oysters.

Blackened chicken breasts ($7.75) were succulent and fire-spiked, accompanied by red beans and rice, maybe the best I've had. Again, they were aggressively seasoned and not so much hot as richly layered with earthy flavors. Still, they were almost overshadowed by the sautéed green beans with bits of garlic still clinging to the pods. Crawfish étouffée ($8.25) was a huge bowl of rice smothered in tomato-intense sauce with plenty of tender tails.

“Pasta-laya” ($8.75) was another bowl, full of penne pasta, chicken, tasso ham, crawfish, tomatoes, bell pepper, chunks of celery stalk and green onions in a low-burn, high-flavor blend. About those bowls: They’re entree-size, and the rims are festooned with dustings of cayenne.

Both desserts ($3.25 each) are house-made. Sweet potato pecan pie was good, but the bread pudding with whiskey sauce was divine. Neither too dense nor overly sweet, it showed the power of understatement in an oft-overwrought dish. The viscous sauce, though, could use some work in the texture department.

We'll be back for items not tried, such as the muffuletta sandwich, alligator with piquant sauce, po’ boys and – get this – house-made root beer and cream soda.

Who’s behind this little bit of bayou heaven? Chef-owner Ivan Pugh, who has primarily been a caterer the last 10 years. He calls himself a combination of “Baton Rouge Cajun and Wisconsin cheese-head.” He reveals that he did a stint as Deion Sanders’ personal chef and catered a Cuban spread when the late entertainer Tito Puente was in town.

However Chef Pugh got to this point, it’s our good fortune.