Suburban Cajun Showdown: 3 Deuces vs. Heaven on Seven vs. Moe Joes

The Service:

Heaven on Seven:  Servers are very friendly and attentive.  Your water glass never goes empty.

3 Deuces: Very understaffed for the night that I went.  I felt ignored most of the time throughout my meal.  Plenty of tables that had not been cleared down.

Moe Joes: Probably the most welcoming of the bunch.  The Appetizers were a little slow to get out but after that the food flew out of the kitchen.

Edge: Moe Joes

The Food:

Bayou Chicken

3 Deuces:  Execution wasn't exactly perfect, but they get points for the creativity of the menu.  Though the menu size is kept small and concise, the dishes also seem to be a bit unique.  The Bayou Chicken signature dish was very good.  The chicken was perfectly fried and crisp and the sauce was quite nice.  It came with broccoli that was steamed to perfection as well.   It took a solid 25 mins to get out my appetizer which consisted of a lukewarm crab cake that in it's defense tasted very fresh and filled with crab and had a very good remoulade sauce accompanying it.  The greens in the salad that were served with it could have been better and some of the greens in it had wilted.  I passed on dessert because they seemed so overwhelmed in the kitchen.

Heaven on Seven:  I started with the Fried Green Tomatoes over a  Warm Remoulade Sauce.  The tomatoes were fried and crispy and the remoulade wasn't the mayonnaise based one that I am accustomed to but is one that is made from a very dark roux that gives a little bit of an acidic punch and a little bit of spice. I settled on the Chicken Fried Steak for the main course and it was tender with that perfectly crisp breading.  Combined with that tasty gravy and you had the perfect execution of a southern favorite.  Not to mention that the portion was so big that I had enough to take home.

Alligator Po Boy

Moe Joes:  I started off with the Calamari, the only problem with this dish was the plating.  It was a good price for the dish the plate it was on made it look as though they were skimping on the calamari  Also it was just slightly greasy though it had a good spicy kick to it.   The turtle soup was tasty and had a strong tomato notes.  You could definitely get the complexity of it from the thick roux that was used to  create it.  The Alligator Po' Boy, was perfectly fried.  It as a little messy to eat but the bread was nicely toasted, and it was a well seasoned dish.  I asked for the sweet potato fries to go along with it and they put cinnamon sugar on their sweet potato fries.  I hate that.  There are some scenarios in which sweet potatoes should be treated like a dessert, say when your making a pie and other scenarios in which they should be treated like a substantial savory side dish.  Like say when they're being fried and subbing in for traditional french fries or onion rings.  There are so many seasoning combinations that would have been better. 

Edge: Draw

The Cocktails:

3 Deuces:  Why am I drinking a halfway decent White Russian at a Cajun themed restaurant? 

Heaven On Seven: The Voo Doo Juice made me feel like I was was walking down Bourbon Street.

Moe Joes:  The Old Fashioned was a pretty epic cocktail made the way it should have been made.  I also tried the Give Me Some Beads, which hides the very strong nature of the drink among fresh juices with a bit of red Bull for some kick.

Edge: Moe Joes

Decor:

Heaven on Seven: More of a casual approach with tons of unique hot sauce bottles bordering the walls.  The place remains fun and casual.

3 Deuces:  An intimate and more of a upscale approach.  3 Deuces lends itself to more of the atmosphere of the more exquisite Cajun restaurants. 

Moe Joes: Lands somewhere in the middle of the two.  Though the jazz music is slightly obtrusive.

Edge: 3 Deuces

Hot Sauce:

3 Deuces: Tabasco.  It is a Louisiana hot sauce but at the same time you can get it anywhere.  Their food stands on it's own anyway.

Moe Joes: Tabasco and Crystal.  Crystal is usually one of my hot sauces of choice and it is a Louisiana hot sauce.

Heaven on Seven: A bunch of unique hot sauces are on every table.  How can you not be tempted to try one named ass on fire?

Edge: Heaven on Seven.

Verdict:

Moe Joes and Heaven on Seven are clearly ahead of 3 Deuces.  That being said I would have to give just the slightest of   victories to Heaven on Seven.  It may only be a victory as controversial as a split decision in  boxing but it is a win none the less.

Cajun Chicken Salad

I decided to use  the remains of the roast chicken I made in order to make a chicken salad. You can also make this salad pretty quickly using a rotisserie chicken from your grocer. Visits to these places had me thinking outside the box of my normal Mediterranean direction that I usually plant myself in using capers and giardiniera and settled on more of a light remoulade to coat the salad.

Ingredients:

1 Half Roast Chicken, Shredded and Deboned, skin removed
1/4 Cup Mayo 
1/4 Cup Hot Sauce (I prefer Frank's or Crystal)
1/8 Cup Grape Seed Oil (Any light oil will work here, Extra Light Olive Oil, Canola Oil, Safflower Oil, etc.)
2 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 Egg Yolk
1 Teaspoon Tomato Paste
2 Tablespoons Pickle Juice
1 pound pasta of any type cooked and drained (Almost any, would be a little silly to use a strand type of pasta like spaghetti or linguine, go with something along the lines of macaroni or farfale, but even orzo would work)
1 Tablespoon Tony Chachere's Cajun Seasoning (Should almost be illegal to do Cajun cooking without it)
1/3 Cup of Dill Pickles Chopped (There are lots of good pickles out there, at the very least use Claussen, but if you have a good local pickler, go with those.   I would never advocate the use of the store-bought stuff that has likely been sitting on a shelf since the Reagan Administration.)

This recipe is pretty simple.  Whisk the Egg yolk (ff you want to take your salmonella risk to near zero, you can put the egg and boiling water for a few seconds and remove I usually skip this since your odds of getting salmonella from eggs is about 1 and 10000 to begin with, but hey I like to live dangerously) and Mayo together  Slowly drizzle in the Olive and grape seed oils while continuing to whisk.  Then do the same with the tomato paste, Pickle Juice and Hot sauce.  Then toss the remaining ingredients together and viola.  A very quick and easy dish.