Just as good as we remember!

As most of you know we were really looking forward to the food in America. Now don't get me wrong, the food in Turkey is really good but they are missing some of our favorites. We love seafood, and their seafood pretty much consists of fresh fish and mussels. You can get some other seafood dishes, but they aren't prepared the same as in America. We were especially looking forward to eating at one of our favorite restaurants, Pappadeaux's. Many people warned us that it probably wouldn't be as good as we remembered it to be. They said that they were disappointed in their favorite places when they came back for a visit because they had built them up so much in their minds, and then they didn't taste as good as they remembered. We didn't believe that we could be disappointed. We had already been back to the states for visits twice, and both times we ate at Pappadeaux's and it was still good! Soon after arriving in America, Brian and I went to Pappadeaux's for lunch. It was still yummy! Here are our favorite dishes!


Brian loves the crawfish platter! On the right you see fried crawfish tails. On the left is crawfish ettouffe, and in the middle is dirty rice. He always eats the fried crawfish first and then mixes the rice with the ettouffe and eats that. He says he eats it this way because if he can't finish his meal the fried crawfish doesn't taste very good reheated but the ettouffe does! Planning ahead so as not to waste good food...good thinking!

This is a shrimp po-boy...my favorite...basically a fried shrimp sandwich. According to my brother-in-law the pickles are the best part! The other day we went to lunch at Pappadeaux's and I decided to branch out a little. The meals always come with french bread so I decided to get the fried seafood platter. That is basically 3 fried shrimp, a decent portion of fried crawfish tails, and a piece of fried catfish. I had the great idea of making three different small sandwiches by using the bread that came with the meal. It was missing the lettuce and pickles, but that wasn't a big deal to me. I made a little sandwich with the shrimp first and ate that then could barely eat anything else! I had to have the server pack up the rest of the meal so I could take it home to eat later. My mistake had been eating a piece of bread with butter while we were waiting for our food to come. I had filled up on bread! I don't know how many times I have heard Brian say, "Don't fill up on bread." The waitress asked if I liked my meal when I asked her to pack it up, and I told her that I was really full because I had eaten too much bread. I don't know if she believed me or not! I had left the whole piece of catfish, all of the french fries, and almost all of the crawfish on my plate! If she only knew how much I love Pappadeaux's! Before coming back to America I had dreams about it, and this is the second blog I've written about it! The only disappointment in the whole experience was that my stomach couldn't hold all the food on my plate so I had to eat the rest later. Oh, and I agree with Brian. The fried crawfish didn't taste as good when I reheated it for lunch the next day. He is so smart!