A very happy hour at the Roadhouse
by Ari Weinzweig
This is my favorite offering off of the Roadhouse’s new Happy Hour menu. They’re already excellent, best-selling, nationally recognized fried chicken served on one of their really (seriously) amazing buttermilk biscuits, and topped with the terrific artisan sugar-cane syrup we get from Charles Poirier down in Lafayette, Louisiana. And because it’s part of the Roadhouse’s new Happy Hour, you can get it at a really good price to boot!
The salty, savory, slightly spicy (from the top-end, farm-to-table Tellicherry pepper we bring in from Kerala in southwest India), crispy fried chicken (raised by Amish farmers in Homer, Michigan) with the complex sweetness of Charles’ old-school cane syrup, all on a buttery, tender house-made biscuit. Order a small salad and an order of fries, and I guarantee you will have a very, very good meal on a weekday evening.
Charles’ cane syrup production is so small that it’s only slightly bigger than what would be called homemade. He’s doing the entire thing on his farm: growing the cane, crushing it, cooking it down and bottling it. What he’s producing is truly one of the tastiest things I’ve tried. While cane production and processing for syrup (and sugar) were once found all over the area, they’re now almost non-existent. Like so many people in the food world, Charles was driven by the desire to rediscover family tradition. “My great-grandfather in St. Martinville used to make syrup. There used to be mills all over the countryside. It takes about 15 gallons of juice to make about a gallon of syrup,” Charles explained. “It takes me about six-and-a-half to seven hours to cook it down. I cut all the cane by hand. I enjoy doing it.”
It’s great on vanilla gelato from the Creamery, pancakes, waffles, or mixed with a bit of bourbon. Or, if you come to the Roadhouse between 4 and 6 pmMonday through Friday, you can try it on this freshly cooked bit of fried chicken along with a half dozen other biscuit-based Happy Hour offerings!