Photo by: B.A. Nilsson

Bar on the Bayou
By B.A. Nilsson

Bourbon Street
Serving Mon-Fri 11 AM-3 AM, Sat 3-3, Sun (during football season) 1 PM-3 AM. AE, D, MC, V.1536 Crescent Rd., Clifton Park, 383-2930
Cuisine: American-Italian-Cajun bar food
Entrée price range: $4.25 (grilled cheese platter) to $14 (chicken-shrimp-jambalaya combo)
Ambiance: bar with a dance floor
Clientele: elusive

With so many different types of food available, I wanted to catch the place at a busy time. I kept missing it. “You should have seen us yesterday,” I was told at each visit, and each visit gave me the place practically to myself, my only company being a solitary diner or a couple of barside customers.

Bourbon Street is the latest in a long line of restaurant tenants at this location, and it’s been here for five years, an impressive feat on this somewhat neglected stretch of Central Avenue. Owner Marc DeRusso began with the name, then fashioned a menu to match. Although it suggests Cajun cookery, he has shrewdly judged the area and added Italian items like pasta dishes and American items like pizza.

I’m not sure what degree of scrutiny the food here warrants. Although the restaurant bills itself as “a unique place to eat and drink,” I think the emphasis is on the latter. The place is about sports and sports-based conviviality. Music, too, with a bandstand available.

But the food, during my couple of visits, had a variable presence. Jambalaya is a good test of Cajun cookery, but it wasn’t available during my first stop. Although Louisiana-style bread pudding is listed as a dessert specialty, there wasn’t any (or any other dessert) on both visits. (“People don’t really eat dessert here,” the server confided.)

They don’t seem to drink much soda, either. I complained of a weak proportion of syrup to carbonated water, an occasional problem with a soda gun, and discovered that it plagued both soda flavors I sampled. “I’ll have him fix it,” the server said, using that antecedent-free “him” so vital to the proletarian lexicon, but “he” hadn’t successfully done so by the time I returned.

But let me end this litany with a report on that jambalaya, which I was able to enjoy on visit No. 2. The $12 entrée is a definite winner, handsomely presented, rich with shrimp and chicken, spiced with an excellent blend of seasonings that slowly metes out a stays-on-your-palate kick. I can endure far worse than weak soda in order to enjoy such a dish.

Make your way carefully, though. The Bourbon Street grilled chicken and shrimp ($12) swim in a dark, salty sauce the consistency of consommé. Most entrées are accompanied by a salad and starch, and the fries I chose in the latter category worked better in the sauce than did the meat.

Chicken parmigiana ($11) is listed under “Mardi Gras Dinner Favorites,” but it’s a straightforward—and huge—portion of just what you’d expect. The chicken was tender, the sauce served its purpose nicely, and the leftovers survived two trips through the reheating oven.

On the more casual dining side, there are sandwiches aplenty, hot and cold, with a very good hamburger among the hot ones. It’s a half-pound of meat, and protrudes out the sides of the sandwich for that classic flying-saucer profile. And the unadorned version is a mere five bucks! It’s broiled unless you specify you’d like it blackened, in which case it gets a coating of spicy seasonings.

Although we didn’t try a pizza, the calzone we sampled speaks well for the pizza-making process. The dough was fluffy and yeasty, the portion quite large—so plan on two meals for the $7 you’ll pay.

Bourbon Street comes into its own the more it approaches classic bar food. You can find nachos (a deluxe plate for $7.50), littleneck clams (Wednesdays only, $5 a dozen) and a good-sized list of appetizers, most of which travel through the fryolator en route to your plate.

What is it about such items that make them irresistible? An $11 sampler platter arrays several such starters, all sharing two characteristics: They’re crunchy and moist with fat. And therein is the answer to my question. Crunchiness is a desirable food characteristic, especially if there isn’t a lot of flavor involved. Imagine a plate of crisp fries in front of you, and you anticipate tucking into them with some excitement. Now imagine them limp—we’ve all been served a plate of fries gone wrong—and the excitement vanishes. Fat alone can’t do its magic, which is to prolong flavor by making the palate sticky. But add some crunch and a piquant dipping sauce, and you have the culinary triumph of style over substance.

This is especially true of such things as fried mushrooms, which, based on the mushrooms alone, haven’t much flavor to savor, and fried potato skins, which really are only canoe-shaped fries. Add some horseradish sauce to the mushroom, however, and you’re in business; likewise, bacon and cheese and sour cream adorn the potato canoe nicely.

And don’t think I’m hurling brickbats from some snobbish height. I’m usually first in line to wolf down such things, and made my way through too many of the aforementioned items, as well as the deep-fried shrimp and mozzarella sticks also in the aggregation. Chicken wings were the standout in an otherwise run-of-the-mill bunch. Here, of course, you do get a glimpse of flavor, with just enough meat to peek from behind the crunch and the spicy sauce, available in several degrees of heat.

Indian cookery enjoyed a couple of runs at this site, and there were noble appearances by Korean and Russian restaurants. But it looks like the mixed American menu currently in residence is faring the best. Don’t think Cajun dining here: Think about relaxing with a beer while checking out sports scores, with visions of a burger or some wings as your meal. Then order the jambalaya.

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