The Bottom Line
Pros
- Huge portions
- Fast service
Cons
- In a word: grease.
Description
- 613 Selby Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55102 - Telephone 651-221-9140
- Plenty of parking in their lot behind the restaurant
Guide Review - The Louisiana Cafe
The Louisiana Cafe is usually packed when I roll by on the weekends. A place this popular must be good, I reason. So even though I'm usually too impatient to wait for a table, today my breakfast company brings books, and we sit in the queue.
The service is fast, and it's a big place with lots of tables and a counter so it's not too long of a wait, even with ten other groups in front.
Excellent, a window table. We get to watch the St. Paul police give a motorist a speeding ticket on the Selby-Dale intersection, and then five minutes later a different police car stops another driver.
So what's on the menu? The usual breakfast and lunch options, omelets, pancakes, plus burgers, sandwiches and salads. Perhaps it was wrong to judge the restaurant by it's name, but I was expecting slightly more of a Louisiana style to the food. Almost everything is free from the Cajun influence. There's a "Cajun Breakfast" which is eggs, hashbrowns, cheese, peppers, Cajun hollandaise sauce, and Cajun andouille sausage. This sounds great. But it's hardly spicy, and it's greasy. A Tex-Mex (well, Texas is next to Louisiana, and Mexico is quite close...) breakfast is equally greasy, and since when was ketchup the same thing as salsa?
I can see the appeal. The plates are enormous - two meals worth for an average appetite, everyone leaves carrying a box - and the price is reasonable for the amount of food. It's convenient, there's a large parking lot, unusual in this area, and the service is lickety-split fast. Just remember to bring antacids with you.
