Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

CLOSED - In June 2001, the building is vacant and apparently undergoing massive reconstruction. ** Beau Weevil
1318 Bardstown Road
(502) 458-3390
In a food-loving city with more than its share of cooks and eateries that boast legitimate claims to being "unique," Pete Mak still stands out: He may just be the world's only Chinese-American former airline pilot turned Cajun-style chef.

Mak, an amiable, slight fellow with shoulder-length graying hair, puts his personal stamp on his restaurant, invariably stopping by during the course of your meal to check on how you like it and engage you in a friendly chat.

His first venue, Pete's Cajun 99, closed the doors of its old-house location on Grinstead Drive near Bardstown Road last summer; but he soon moved his Cajun gig a few blocks south on Bardstown, opening Beau Weevil in a longtime neighborhood bar that previously housed Kiwi's.

Pete seems to have brought along most of the funky Mardi Gras memorabilia that gave his former home a bit of a frat-house quality; in the darker, faintly grungier bar setting it comes across a bit more like a saloon in New Orleans ... not French Quarter, though, but maybe the somewhat seedier Irish Channel.

The food, however, is the same, and while Mak's interpretations of Cajun cuisine could be termed idiosyncratic, they are almost invariably well prepared. Better still, Beau Weevil may offer one of the better cheap-eats menus around, with everything on the dinner menu marked under $10 (entrees from $6.50 for red beans and rice, vegetarian or with sausage, to $9.50 for a grilled pork loin). The lunch menu offers an even better deal: Any of 10 entrees is $6.99; add two bucks and you can have all you care to eat ... even if you care to eat all 10 of them and then come back for seconds.

We did just that for a very large lunch, taking a taste of at least nine of the selections - I think Jambalaya Pasta got lost somewhere in the onslaught.

Take note that the lunch list is a little hard to understand until you get the hang of it: The first six dishes are Cajun or Cajun-inspired dishes; the last four are actually sauces served over rice with, if you wish, chicken or shrimp. Here's a quick rundown:

GUMBO: This dark, roux-thickened stew is a Cajun classic, and Mak's rendition is reasonably authentic. The thick, dark-brown roux imparts a properly scorchy taste, and the cayenne-pepper spice is set at a reasonable heat level, hot enough to make you break a sweat but not jump up screaming for water. It's studded with bits of smoky sausage and shrimp and served over rice.

JAMBALAYA seemed a bit lackluster, a mild-flavored mound of cooked rice with good crunchy bits of crust from the pan edges, hot-pink with the tomato sauce it was cooked in and including a small ration of oddly precise cubical chicken dice and the "Holy Trinity" of Cajun cookery, onion, green pepper and celery. Bits of sausage are billed as andouille but actually appear to be mild smoked sausage, a far cry from the searingly spicy Cajun version.

ETOUFFE was an idiosyncratic variation: Simple white rice topped with a delicate, sauce based on a light roux cooked only to pale tan, with a few more of those squarish chicken dice. (My guess: They are cut from packaged deli chicken-breast meat.)

ZYDECO is another sauce-on-rice dish, this one a silken-rich mix of heavy cream and Parmesan cheese with minced bell pepper.

COLONIAL CURRY fuses Cajun and Caribbean-Indian cuisines with a creamy, hot-and-spicy, bright-yellow curry sauce over rice with tiny slices of fresh jalapeño and the ubiquitous chicken dice.

RED BEANS: A rather scanty portion of beans on a mound of white rice with bits of green pepper and a smoky sausage.

VOODOO: Yet another sauce-on-rice item, this one featuring a lightly spicy tomato sauce and a few lonely shrimp.

GEORGIA GARDEN PASTA: Perhaps the least successful dish of the menu, bow-tie farfalle pasta topped with what appears to be Pete's "Zydeco" sauce, a scattering of sauteed mushrooms, and what appears to be a "garden mix" frozen-vegetable medley of tiny green beans, mushy carrot dice and a few kernels of yellow corn.

There's full bar service, but the menu lists no desserts. We wouldn't have had room anyway.

A truly filling and generally enjoyable lunch with tall glasses of iced tea, with competent service and a friendly (anonymous) chat with proprietor Mak, totalled out at just $21.17 for two, plus a $3.83 tip to round it up to $25. $$