Louisiana…Is On The West Side Of Phx!

The Dish: Catfish Po’boy
The Place: Flavors of Louisiana
The Location: 13025 W Rancho Santa Fe Blvd., Avondale, AZ 85392

By: Colleen A Johnson

Have you ever had a food craving that turned into a must-have obsession? This phenomenon doesn’t happen very often with me, but I fell prey to such a craving with a catfish po’boy from Flavors of Louisiana that literally became a four-year ob.sess.ion.
I was living in the West Valley in 2008 when a new family-operated restaurant opened its doors in Avondale – Flavors of Louisiana, a Cajun/Creole eatery. It was a very modest restaurant, with extremely limited seating. People stood on line to order their food from a mother-daughter team who worked behind a small window that prepared and served the orders. Sparsely decorated with a few LSU Tigers memorabilia, the restaurant wasn’t known for its décor or its extravagance. This little restaurant was making a name for itself because of its great Cajun food. I ordered the same meal every time I went: a 6” catfish po’boy, coleslaw and lemonade. In 2010, I was uprooted from landlocked Arizona and moved to southern Maryland. Maryland, essentially surrounded by water on three sides and inundated by blue crabs and fish of every kind, I sorely missed my catfish po’boy. No fish sandwich in Maryland equaled to the delicious catfish sandwich I regularly ate in Arizona. And so the craving began…
The detour to Maryland lasted four years, and four years too long! When I knew I was returning to Arizona, the po’boy craving became an obsession. I marked the days off my calendar – T minus # of days to arriving in Phoenix along with the celebration of ending my obsession with a catfish. Late evening on June 25, 2014, I arrived in Phoenix and on June 26^th there I was at Flavors of Louisiana ordering my catfish po’boy.
Oh my, how things changed in four years! Flavors of Louisiana was no longer a small restaurant, but is now large and accommodates quite a bit of patrons. The little window where the food orders were made is gone. The menu selection expanded to include more options. With so many external things that changed, the one constant, the one most important and crucial element that remained the same was the incredible deliciousness of the catfish po’boy. I promptly ordered my po’boy accompanied with a new side, Cajun chips, and with every bite I took the craving evaporated.
What will it take to convince East and Central Phoenicians to travel “all the way” to the West side to try a fish sandwich? Well, if you like Cajun and Creole food, you will love Flavors of Louisiana. The po’boy is made with a New Orleans French baguette perfectly baked to be crusty on the outside with soft, feathery bread on the inside. The catfish is coated with a light cornmeal and flour combination deep-fried to be perfectly flakey fish and crisp and flavorful breading. A Cajun-spiced special sauce lightly drenches the catfish topped with a light sprinkling of shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes. The real delight is pairing this perfectly spiced Cajun fish with the most spectacular homemade Cajun potato chip. Honestly, these things need to be bagged and sold in all stores! Eating a Cajun chip is likened to noshing on a Molotov cocktail – an explosion of Cajun flavors of cayenne, paprika, garlic, and onion dusted on a crispy fried potato chip. The marriage of these spices awakens even the most sedate taste buds. If you still have room for dessert, a must try is their beignets. The beignet, associated with New Orleans cuisine, is a scrumptious fritter, fried dough-like doughnut, covered with powdered sugar with wild abandon.
If you like gumbo, jambalaya, dirty rice, fried pickles, etouffee, shrimp, oysters, red beans and rice, and a whole lot more of southern comfort food, you will love Flavors of Louisiana.
So, if you find yourself driving to California or — to Buckeye — get off the I10 at the Dysart exit and stop in and try a po’boy. You will not be disappointed!