McAdoo's captured the old post office of New Braunfels and transformed it into a Louisiana-style seafood restaurant keeping the high ceilings and wondrous woodwork. The ambiance is as good as the food. For more information go to www.mcadoos.com.
It is worth the drive from Austin or San Antonio on I-35. Take the Seguine exit and go west into town to the circle. Then it gets slightly complicated. If you are coming in from the west on TX-46, consult your GPS if you're not familiar with New Braunfels.
Louisiana Trinity: Jambalaya, Red-Beans-n-Rice, Gumbo
Rice is a mainstay of the Louisiana diet and below are three of the South Louisiana's favorite rice dishes served at McAdoo's.
Jambalaya:
This is a side dish, believe it or not! Jambalaya is a rice dish which migrated from the Caribbean to Louisiana. Pork, chicken, sausage are cooked into white rice and the result is a tasty color transformation in the rice. In a later post, I'll show you how it's made. The stuff at McAdoo's is really good!
Red Beans and Rice:
This too is a side dish, believe it. Red kidney beans like they use in New Orleans. With red beans, I usually like to add Tabasco Sauce (www.tabasco.com) ... but not with McAdoo's beans. They're already spicy!
Shrimp Gumbo:
Don't use the Tabasco Sauce on the gumbo either ... unless you really like the spice. This is a roux-based gumbo with tomato stewed into it. Great Creole taste to this gumbo. The shrimp are huge.
Louisiana-Style Fried and Stewed Entrees at McAdoo's
Crawfish Plate:
The cooking in this dish, in my opinion, is Cajun. And really good Cajun. This crawfish plate is a combination of crawfish ettoufee and fried crawfish tails. Both are scrumptious. My wife makes a great ettoufee, so restaurant ettoufee has to be really good for me to eat it. And this is one of the places that I order ettoufee. For those who know better, McAdoo's uses the good Louisiana crawfish tails and not the oily Chinese tails.
Seafood Platter:
The platter is a combination of catfish, shrimp, oysters, and crawfish fried to perfection. Their oysters are particularly good. Note to oyster lovers, good oysters are due as much to the astuteness of the buyer as to the talents of the chef. McAdoo's has both.
Combo Lunch Special:
Cajun Enchilada with Shrimp Gumbo are several of many option pairs under $10 for lunch. The three-option lunch is under $15. The Cajun Enchilada is made with a well-cooked corn tortilla stuffed with cheese and accented with cumin to give it that Tex-Mex flavor. It is topped with a cream crawfish-n-shrimp sauce accented with slivers of red bell peppers and a chunk of avocado. This is good stuff ... so good that I ate it ever so slow.
Crawfish Po-Boy:
This is one of my favorite sandwiches. Perfectly fried and seasoned crawfish served on a French loaf. Growing up in New Orleans, I never found a crawfish po-boy in the city. It wasn't until I moved to Baton Rouge that I discovered the crawfish po-boy. Now it's just about everywhere there's Louisiana cooking.
Shrimp Po-Boy:
This is a traditionally popular po-boy: lightly fried shrimp on a French loaf. This goes well with tarter sauce. The seasoned steak fries are great with this sandwich.
Oyster Po-Boy:
The oysters at McAdoo's are great on a po-boy. Crunchy and tasty. Add a little Tabasco sauce to the Tarter Sauce.
Calamari Appetizer:
The calamari at McAdoo's fried to perfection. The seasoning is so great that neither my wife nor I used the marinara sauce except for one taste. The sauce was really good, but we did not want to take from the flavor of the calamari there.
Abita Amber Beer:
This is a true Louisiana beer made from the waters of the famed Abita Springs in that state. And McAdoo's serves Abita Amber. There are other Abita beers out there, so be sure and ask for Abita Amber. That's the best one this Louisiana micro brewery makes. For more info go to www.abita.com/brews.
