Beyond Casual

Georgia State students blocking the entry to my parking deck. High school cross country teams out for morning runs. The leaves outside my apartment turning gold and falling to the ground. Fall is nearing and the dog days of another sweltering Georgia summer are coming to an end.

There seemed no better way to commemorate the season change than by eating outside at the Evans, Georgia, Rhinehart's Oyster Bar the last time I was in town.

Rhinehart's has been an Augusta-area staple for longer than I've been alive. It opened in 1983 and brings the flip flops and pop tops aura of beach eating to its two locations in the CSRA. Thinking about it now I can actually hear the radio commercials from my childhood, proclaiming "This is Amy from Rhinehart's Oyster Bar" loud and proud in my ear. Aside from the fact that it's one of my favorite stomping grounds on my weekends home, I wanted to do a Meatetarian Eats post on Rhinehart's because recently it received some shoddy press from consumers who are 1) over-reactive and 2) have no idea what they're talking about. Let the Meatetarian educate you for a moment.

Just like worms that occasionally invade your apples, there are some marine worms that can come live alongside oysters in the wild. We like mother of pearl shells and so do they. Occasionally, according to the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, so-called oyster worms can make an appearance in restaurants alongside the mollusks customers order. And I quote, "they do not affect the health, quality or taste of oysters, and they do not pose a known health risk to consumers, especially if they are discarded when found." So, if you happen to see a weird little moving object on your oyster shell, alert your server, ask for a new oyster and maybe advise the kitchen staff to keep an eye out for more wigglies so they can be taken care of before the half shell hits the plate.

Right. Back to the task at hand, which is the $7.67 shrimp basket lunch special.

Light, flaky breading is a trademark of Rhinehart's shrimp and oyster baskets

As a wee thing I ate my fair share of popcorn shrimp. I was used to heavy breading and a dense, deep brown shell surrounding my prized crustaceans. When Rhinehart's finally opened a second location in Evans and I got my first opportunity to eat there, the light flaky batter surrounding butterflied shrimp tails was a refreshing spin on my childhood favorite!

Each basket has a handful of sweet, juicy shrimp and fries. The fries are skin-on, a good thickness and seasoned with salt, pepper, grease and what I'm 99 percent sure is Old Bay. You're also presented with two cups of dipping sauce: a bright red cocktail and a salty tartar. This is one of the places where the sauce is probably there for shrimp dipping purposes, but the fries are excellent dipped in there as well. Forget ketchup when you've got these on the plate!

If you're not up for shrimp, you can also get a fried oyster basket, though it's a little more than $7.67 (a price that you can't beat for the food you get). The po'boys aren't bad either, and though I've never had it, members of my family like the burger, too.

I do think the best way to experience a Rhinehart's lunch special is outside at one of its picnic tables with a cold beer and hot sun. The inside is fine, but it's dim lighting and reminiscent more of a bar than of a day on the coast, so I prefer to eat outside and pretend I'm closer to the surf than I really am!

ProTip: Unlike eating at an actual beach restaurant ... I think management might not let you in if all you're wearing is a bikini and flip flops. Rhinehart's may be beyond casual, but it's still got standards, friends.

Aw, Shucks, Y'all!

Guess what -- after three weeks of no posts, you get two doses of Meatetarian Eats this week! Aren't you lucky!

Somehow my 26th birthday became "The Year of the Seafood," as two of the three celebratory meals I ate centered on chicken of the sea. Eh, that pun didn't work. Moving on.

Birthday part three took place in Alpharetta (north of Atlanta) at this swanky seafood place called Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen. The concept behind Pappadeaux includes French and Creole flavors that bring Bourbon Street to the metro area. Lots of things are blackened or served with andouille; lots of menu items end with "etouffee" or are served in a gumbo. Since I'd just eaten fish, I decided to venture a little more toward the seafloor.

A cup of crawfish bisque

The meal began with something I'd never had before, but seemed appropriate for being in a Creole restaurant: a cup of crawfish bisque.

I could have eaten a bowl.

Here's the thing about bisque. If you get "bisque" from a can or from somewhere that prepares it cheaply, you're more than likely to get a watery, greasy soup with more butter melted on top than any other ingredient. It may be creamy, but there's no texture to it aside from the one piece of meat buried at the bottom. A true bisque is a thick, creamy soup studded with chunks of meat throughout. It is rich. It is flavorful. It makes you slurp the whole thing down in three minutes and ask the waiter for bread so you can sop up what your spoon didn't get.

The crawfish bisque gets two thumbs up at Pappadeaux. It was packed with chunks of crawfish. It had just a hint of kick without being overly spicy. The only downside was we did not get bread to dip in it, so I had to resist the urge to be ultra ladylike and stick my finger in the cup.

Instead of getting a fish entree, I followed up the soup with the oyster duo. This is a plate of six Apalachicola oysters (and yes, they were from Apalachicola -- I asked!) served two different ways. Three are Oysters Baton Rouge, presented with a melted parmesan-romano sauce on top. The remaining three are Oysters Pappadeaux, stuffed with crabmeat and then topped with chopped spinach and hollandaise sauce.

Left: Oysters Pappadeaux, right, Oysters Baton Rouge;
served on a platter of salt

The oysters were baked, so the cheese was nice and bubbly and the hollandaise smooth and creamy. The oysters themselves (I scraped the toppings off to try the pure little mollusks) were thick, meaty and briny. Despite being baked, they were well-cooked and still tasted fresh. No slime here, bro. I enjoyed the Oysters Pappadeaux trio more than the Baton Rouge -- though the cheese was good, it was the only flavor presented, and that left a little to be desired. Granted, I am no expert at oyster toppings, but this blend of cheeses could have been amped up a bit, perhaps with the addition of the Tabasco sauce folks usually throw on raw oysters.

Pappadeaux is definitely a cool place to take the family. I felt like we went back in time a few decades and that jazz music should have been playing. This restaurant (a franchise, so I'm only speaking for the Alpharetta location) is what I'd imagine a New Orleans seafood restaurant circa 1924 would be like. The decor, the acoustics, all of it. You walk in and next to the lobster container is a huge on-ice display of fish that you can eat that night. The restaurant seats 400 people. FOUR. HUNDRED. There was live music playing in one room, dimmed lights added to the ambiance and servers bringing out dessert sampler platters every 10 minutes. I enjoyed the meal and the atmosphere and would definitely come back. They also have a lunch menu if you're in the mood for something heftier than a soup and salad.

But if you go and get a soup and salad at lunch, I highly recommend the crawfish bisque.