Monday, August 13, 2007

Bongos? Mais cher, ça c'est fou!

The lovely and talented Mrs. Favog and your humble correspondent took a Saturday evening drive around Little Italy, exploring all the nooks and crannies . . . all the narrow, really steep streets down by the Missouri River, all the new construction of condos and the historically appropriate new row houses where one of Omaha's venerable Italian steakhouses once stood.

If we can't have Caniglia's anymore, The Towns at Little Italy is a worthy replacement. Now, if everybody started grilling steaks all at once there one day, it might smell just the same.

I'll have the mostacholi as my side dish, please.

So -- speaking of food -- we ended up downtown at the local Louisiana-style eatery, Jazz, which is part of a Kansas City-based chain. The food is good, and pretty authentic . . . the gumbo more than passable and the fried oyster po-boys first rate. Nice and sloppy, just like I like 'em.

Now, if they could just get Abita beer up here in Huskerland. . . .

Anyway . . . we walk into Jazz to the honest-to-God chank-a-chank of a real, live Cajun band. In Omaha-by-Gawd, Nebraska. With the Sunbeam Bread and old Jax Beer signs on the wall, I could have deluded myself into thinking I was at Mulate's in Breaux Bridge, La. All that was missing was the dance floor.

And the Dixie Beer. Or the Abita Turbodog. I'm not picky.

The Omaha-based Cajun band was passable by Louisiana standards, hunky dory by Midwestern ones. For a second -- until the uttering of the words "You guys" -- I had half-convinced myself the lead singer had a faint South Louisiana accent. Somewhere between Cajun and 'Yat, as softened by professional-class Baton Rouge, if I had to place my auditory hallucination.

But it was just that. A hallucination.

And like the Las Vegas version of Paris, the Authentic Omaha Cajun Experience went a little awry when the percussionist (already a no-no if you're talking Absolutely Traditional Cajun Band) brought out bongos for a couple of numbers. It was as if Desi Arnaz had brought out a German oompa band to play Babalú.

Such is the lot of a Louisiana Boy on the cusp of the Great Plains, where people do listen to oompa bands. You notice things like bongos in a Cajun band. Sigh.

But that oyster po-boy was damn tasty. Mais cher! Ça c'est bon, oui!

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