Taste of New Orleans restaurant
in downtown Dells has brought the taste of fine southern Louisiana cooking to
both locals and visitors alike, for the past six seasons. Recently, I got to
spend a few hours with owner Sam Rofolo, who kindly shared with me stories of
his colorful life, the history of the restaurant, as well as some of his
delicious Cajun food.
CHRIS DEARMAN: I can sort of tell
by your accent, but I’m guessing you’re originally from Louisiana?
SAM
ROTOLO: Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Went to college at U of L in
Lafayette – Ragin’ Cajuns you know.
So, what brought you up to the
Dells?
Made
a wrong turn on the interstate! (laughs)
I can definitely see that
happening, but I imagine there’s a little more to it…
Actually
my wife and I are part Native American, and we were doing a show in Iowa, a
horse show. Some guy had seen our outfit. We had a 20 by 20 square foot area
with Native American regalia – jewelry, artifacts, stuff like that. We had been
selling this stuff on the road for eleven years. And so a guy came up and said:
“Man that would go good in the Dells!” And I said – where the hell is the
Dells? (laughs)
So,
we came up to the Dells, being a Native American town. We got lucky enough to
get a place right on Broadway, just two doors down from here, so we stayed
there for almost six years. Called the place Sage Brush Jewelry. So, people
would come in and ask: “Where’s a good place to eat?” I’d say, well, you got
Famous Dave’s, you got Culvers… “Oh, we can get that in Chicago.” So my wife said: “Why don’t we open up a
restaurant again…”
So, this wasn’t your first
restaurant?
This
is my third one.
What were the others?
I had
one just outside of New Orleans in Waveland, MS – the hurricane took that one
out. We lost that to Katrina. A couple years before Katrina, we were doing
wonderful – it was called the Roundtable. We would sit 15-20 people at the one
big roundtable, and we would put all the food in bowls. We had a Lazy Susan and
just spin the bowls and take what you want.
Then I
had one in New Mexico that went over real big. I had a partnership though, and
the partnership didn’t work. So, those two didn’t last too long. For this one, I
told the wife if we were going to do this, we were going to do it ourselves.
What year was this? When did
Taste of New Orleans open?
2006,
three weeks before Memorial Day.
Are you open year round?
No, in March
are weekends only, unless spring break falls like it does now. Then, we stay
open full time until September. October is weekends only. We shut down the last
day of October and then we go fishing!
Did you have an anxiety about
opening a restaurant up here in the Dells?
I
didn’t figure it would last more than three weeks! Our biggest problem our
first year was, the first three months, was not ordering enough food! We didn’t
anticipate that kind of reaction.
So it was a success pretty much
right from the start? That’s pretty impressive.
I
guess the most impressive thing is that my landlord let me open this up not
thinking I’m going to make it. He and one of his buyers didn’t think I had a
chance. He’s a very good friend of mine, but he said: “There is no way he is
going to make it; I don’t give him three months.” So, the other night, about
three nights ago, they came in and sat right there – they’ve been here several
times, but never late at night, they always sit with me at my table. So, they
sat in the front, and all this was lit up (fountain, and main dining room), and
he looked at me and says: “Sam, this is the most gorgeous place ever. I love
it, you did a great job. I’m so proud of you.” And when I hear that, and I go
back six years ago and hear: “You’re not going to make it, but we’re going to
let you try. I’ll take your rent money, but I don’t think you’re gonna make it.”
So, every time I see him I say – we’re still doing good!
This place is pretty impressive.
I remember when you first came up here that it wasn’t quite as big…
We’ve
gone from a 60K a year place serving just po’ boys, jambalaya and gumbo, to now
being up to three quarters of a million a year. Every two years we’ve
damn near double our sales! We’ve expanded three times, went
from thirty-five seats to now three hundred. I tell myself though; we’re not
quite there yet. So, I guess that’s my, you put your chest out and beat it like
a gorilla.
Speaking of your chest, what’s
that on your necklace, an alligator tooth?
It’s
a thirteen foot alligator that we caught many, many years ago. This particular
one came from my buyer, she had it mounted, and we sell the teeth now. I put it
on here to remind me of the one that bit me!
You’ve been bitten by an alligator?
Oh yeah,
I once got split here to here (motions a large section across his stomach) when
one cut me open when I was twenty-two years old. This tooth is not
the one that bit me though. We sold him – we took the $1300 cash instead of the
teeth! (laughs)
So, back to the restaurant a bit.
Over the past six years it sounds like you’ve grown it quite substantially. I
bet it’s taken quite a bit of work…
I’m
almost there, but I feel like I’m walking on eggs, any moment something can go
wrong. I’m here from eight in the morning, to eleven o’clock at night every day.
I never take a day off. My
definition of a restaurant is 800 heads of cattle and they all sick! (laughs)
It’s a lot
of work, you know. You got employment problems, rent problems, customer
relationship problems. You’re constantly juggling – like walking on eggs
everyday – not to make somebody upset with you. With your cooking or your
attitude. You have a waitress that doesn’t come in and you’re shorthanded. You
got a cook that’s sick, then in the back you don’t have enough help. So, you’re
constantly in a turmoil trying to make everything just right so that when you
open that door, you can greet that customer with a smile, and give them the
best thing they ever put in their mouth.
That’s
what true love of culinary is, being able to put the very best in someone’s
mouth. The money is fine, don’t get me wrong, but the compliment is much more
rewarding. Sometimes you just live for a nice compliment to make your day feel
so wonderful, cause that’s what you open this up for. We enjoy the people here
– a lot of times I feel my customers aren’t my customers…
What do you mean by that?
They
actually feel – they become family. They come here once, twice, and back and
everyone is on a first name basis. Well, I might not remember everybody’s first
name, but we don’t forget a loving face. And we hug, I bet you I’ve hugged and
kissed half my customers! Because we’ve just become family, and I think that’s
important. That you have camaraderie between your customers and yourself. When
I sign my cookbooks (he has written two of them that can be purchased at the
restaurant) I always say: Good food makes good friendship.
I looked through your cookbooks, and
there were a ton of recipes in there that I would love to try. Do you feel
like it’s your job to help spread the word about the New Orleans culture to the
people up here to those that might not ever experience things down there?
I feel
like I am the only ambassador here for New Orleans, and I want people to go to
New Orleans. I want people to enjoy the culinary there, go down and see the
love in New Orleans, the camaraderie of having such a wonderful loving, very
romantic place. Old or ancient if you want to call it.
I’ve actually been to New Orleans
several times. It’s one of my favorite U.S. cities…
It’s
wonderful down there. We actually just got back from Mardi Grai. I haven’t made
it to Mardi Grai in about fifteen year’s cause I’ve been so busy working. We
went up on the bayou, that’s where I was born and raised, on the bayou up in Galliano,
just outside of New Orleans. We used to commercial shrimp, me and my wife, for fifteen
years. We got down there and everybody on the float knew me – and we just got
bombarded with beads! We came back with like 21K pairs of beads – so it was
really a lot of fun.
I was going to ask you, do you
have any good stories about Grai? I’ve been three times, but don’t seem to
remember too much of my time partying down there – drank too many hurricanes!
Well
you know Mardi Grai, it’s “Throw me something mister!” It’s being that you’re
getting a little something for free, and where in this world can you enjoy the
biggest party on earth, for free. I mean, you got a get a hotel room and all
that, but you don’t have to pay for the excitement. You don’t have to pay for
the music. You don’t have to the glory of getting something for nothing. Just a
little trinket makes you feel so good, but what is really nice about it, is
watching everybody else have such a wonderful time.
All the first timers?
Oh
yeah. We brought one of my workers that has been with me five years to New
Orleans, and she went to the Mardi Grai. She was like: “I will never miss this
again!” She just loved it that much. Of course, you also got the ones that
flash the boobs and all that – so it’s a lot of fun.
You ever get any woman in the
restaurant flashing for beads after a few cocktails?
Oh
yeah, it happens! (laughs) But, I think the biggest thing about being down
there is that you eat, you drink, you have a good time and then you come from
Mardi Grai and say: “Let’s go get a snack!” New Orleans is a snack town, you always
want to go and try to munch on something wonderful. We say in New Orleans,
every time you eat, should be an experience not just a habit. You don’t want to
just go and stick a hamburger in your mouth. You want something that’s really
wonderful. We have a saying in Southern Louisiana. We say, some people stay
alive by eating – but we stay alive just to get to the next meal! (Laughs)
Barbara
came with us this time to New Orleans and she said that the one thing that I
took away from this – when we went down to see your family and all that, is
you-all people eating supper, and you’re talking about the next meal while
you’re still eating! You-all just in love with the food!
Speaking of Southern Louisiana,
did you always want to be a chef, or did you have other jobs down there while
growing up?
Well,
I’ve been a commercial fisherman. In Louisiana we have four seasons – just like
you-all have four seasons up here, but ours are: oyster, shrimp, crab and
fishing. So, each season, you’re
changing over to something else – crabbing season is late summer, shrimping is
in the middle of the summer, oystering is in the winter, and fishing is in dead
winter – when it really, really gets cold. The red fish and the speckled trout
come in. So, you have the four seasons that you can actually make a living on.
Did you have different types of
boats for each?
Same
boat, but you had to change up the gear for each season. Take the nets off, and
put the oyster rakes up. You take the oyster rakes off, and put the crab traps
on. You take the crab traps off and you’re filling it up with fishing poles –
it’s always something.
Now before that you worked at
different restaurants?
I’ve
cooked in every rat-hole kitchen in the city of New Orleans! (laughs) But yeah,
I worked at Court of Two Sisters’ for a while, and in the back quarters. We did
all the major country clubs like the Covington Country Club. I worked at the
Slidell Country Club, that’s where you make your most money, cause they are
willing to pay the chefs top dollar for what they know. In fact, that’s how I
met my wife, she was working as a waitress at the country club and I was a
cook. It made a nice happy medium.
Most
of the time though, I worked with my mother, she was a registered chef. I
learned most of her recipes from her.
Would you say your primary
culinary experience would then be from your mom teaching you?
Yes,
most of our recipes are from my mother, or from family. Also, being on the
bayou when we would shrimp at night, you would throw the anchor, and another
boat would tie up to yours. We would put the boats back to back, and you would
visit. They would bring some of their food, we would bring some of ours, and it
be: “Boy that’s good, how did you make it?” And so you start swapping recipes
of what you like.
That’s
probably the biggest thing on the bayou. Everybody wants to know everybody’s
recipes. So, you have a lot Cajun cooking, you have a lot of Creole cooking,
you have a lot of French cooking. What’s unique about Louisiana is this one
thing – you got about seven or eight ethnic groups, and everybody wants to try everybody’s
seasonings. “I bet you that would be good in my gumbo!” – as they would talk to
an Italian, or they would talk to a Spanish person, or they would talk to a
German. Like for example, my mother was part German, she made German potato
salad, but then we kind of grew into making Cajun potato salad, by adding
shrimp and crab into the potato salad. Now you have a Cajun potato salad. So,
it’s kinda like you’re sitting there and taking your ethnic food, and
re-inventing it.
So, you basically grew up with
cooking, and have been putting your own spin on it ever since?
Yeah,
you know what
does a person good, when they’re going into a culinary field, is that you work
with this great chef for a little while, then this great chef for a little
while, and then you change over to another great chef. You pick up a bit of
each of their creativity, and then you begin to smart smashing their types of
meals together, and making your own thumbprint. That’s the difference between a
chef, and a cook. A cook mocks somebody, a chef creates. And that’s what’s
important, to be in life where you have your signature foods, that ties into
you.
People
have been really excited about my food. I was really amazed to the fact that
people actually like spice and they like it hot. Some people would come in from
Louisiana and ask us if we can make it extra hotter, but some don’t, so we cook
it generally mild. Then we add the spice if you want it extra spicy. There are
two or three items that we don’t change the recipe on though, the gumbo, the
jambalaya is spicy. I tell them right up front, that’s the way it’s made; I’m not
going to change my recipe.
I’m a
creative chef with over 180 items on our menu – and out of the 182, twenty-seven
are my creations from scratch, and they’ve been really, really phenomenal with
the people. They come in here and experience a different type of food. They
keep wanting more and more and more, so we keep creating new stuff. As we grow
we eliminate some things and then create new ones. We got a new dish called the
Swap Burger…
What’s that consist of?
I never
thought that it would work, but you got to try… and my guinea pigs are my
people, so my waitresses, my chefs in the back, there my guinea pigs. I’ll get
in the back and start creating something, so I took shallots and onions, ground
beef and ground pork, blended them together, puts some egg, some breadcrumbs,
then I threw in shrimp and crab…
Sounds pretty good so far…
Then I batter
it, in an egg wash, batter in some cornflower, and then I deep fry it. And when
it comes out, the quick heat of 350 degrees marinates and smashes the crab into
the ground beef, and it causes a chemical reaction that causes a wonderful
flavor. Then when it comes out we put it on a po’boy, and we put mayonnaise
sauce on it.
So, I
made of like eight of them and gave them to the employees. They are the ones
that puts stuff on and takes stuff off the menu. They thought I should buy a
half page ad and put it in the newspaper – the new swamp burger. And of course
we are going to marinate that with our swamp fries.
What’s that?
It’s a
Louisiana tradition to put brown gravy on top of the fries and put a cheese
sauce on top of that.
Wow, that sounds like quite the
combo.
The
main thing is that I want to tell the entire world is that when you take a
taste of food, you should taste the bouquet, the flavor, you should experience
something that is wonderful in your mouth – it should be a party! It doesn’t
have to be hot, it doesn’t have to be spicy, just good Cajun cooking, I don’t
care if it’s my food, or wherever you go in the world, the first bite you
should be able to taste the bouquet, the second bite should have a little bit
of spice, by the third bite, it should be hot, you should drink a little pop,
take a little bit of beer or something, to wash it away, so it’s no longer hot.
Then you start over, taste the bouquet again, and keep going…
Looking around here, the décor’
and memorabilia looks as unique as your food sounds. Where did you get all this
stuff?
Me and
my wife by ourselves collected everything, and put everything in here. We built
our own tables, we got the fountain specially made out of California, all the
portraits you see here we took with a little Cannon One-shot camera, and then
went to a billboard company and had them put on vinyl.
The
shrimp wheel came off my shrimp boat, the crab nets gave us a fit, the lobster
trap we got, I got my daddies old hunting traps, muskrat traps, got them handing
on the wall. The little shack in the back – that’s a replica of my hunting
camp. We have two stuffed otters, two raccoons, two possums, two minks that we
picked up at the same time we bought the twelve foot alligator that’s new this
year.
I saw that, it’s quite
impressive!
I used
to alligator hunt when I was younger. My father was a trapper and so was I. I
used to alligator hunt out of an airboat. So we went down to the bayou in
February and picked this up from some of the guys that are on the show Swamp
People. I got autographed pictures of them on the walls. We went and visited
Willie and junior, Bruce and his dog Tyler, I used to buy my alligator meat
from his father-in-law, he lives right behind his father in law, so that’s how
I know him. Then Willie and junior are from Pierre Port area and we know them,
so we went down and seen them this past year.
While we
were down there, we were kinda looking at Pierre Port area, so we’re pretty
sure that’s where going to buy a retirement home. I want to get my airboat
again, I love them airboats. When I was younger, the one I had a long time ago
was ancient, today they’re modern and have big engines on them. They go fast,
but I’m too old to go too fast! (laughs)
Do you have any crazy stories
from your time down on the bayou?
We sometimes
accidently caught turtles in our throw nets, and I had to give a turtle mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation to keep it alive once! Because some turtles are illegal to catch,
they’re protected, and if you’re caught, cause normally I would cook them up
and eat it, but on this particular occasion it was an endangered species, so I
gave it mouth to mouth resuscitation to revive it and put it back in the water.
(laughs)
So yeah,
we do a lot of stupid things in Louisiana, but we’re – let me tell you about Louisiana
people – specially the Cajuns, down south bayou people. We like to make fun of
ourselves, and enjoy you laughing with us, but don’t you laugh at us. We are
very, very hard workers; we’ll give you the shirt off our back, but don’t take
it. And that’s just the way we are. We’ll do anything for you, you’re our
friends. We don’t know any strangers.
Well I have to say, you have
certainly made me feel like a friend today. Inviting me to your restaurant has
made me feel like I was back in Louisiana, and now I’m anxious to get back!
What
I’ve tried to do here, because you want to be psychological about things, is
that I’m in Yankee Country, and I don’t want to be in Yankee Country mentally.
I want to be home. So, the restaurant is really decorated like my home. I want
to feel like I’m coming to work, no,
I want it to feel like I’m coming to my house.
People come here to eat, and I want them to understand that they are not coming
into my restaurant; they are coming into my home. Come in to enjoy my food and
southern hospitality.
That’s
how we feel. Me and my wife really worked hard at this. We are very proud at
what we got, and you know at night I walk up on the balcony to do the money
after closing, and I look down at the place and I say – damn this was my dream
and I’m living it now.
Thank you Sam for taking the time to speak with me today, and for your hospitality. The food was delicious!
