Bayou on Bay, Bellingham

A southern-style Sazerac

Let me just preface this post by telling you I adore New Orleans. I love the food, the atmosphere, cold beer, icy Hurricanes in plastic cups, and the music. I love the tawdry, bead-bedecked, 24-hour street party that is the French Quarter. There's just no place quite like it, anywhere else.

But I live in the northwest corner of the U.S.—almost as far from New Orleans as you can physically get, and still be in the continental United States. I haven't been back in a couple of years, now, so I often find myself longing for café au lait and beignets, gumbo, fried oyster po'boys. As hot as the Pacific Northwest has been, this week, I've found myself more and more thinking of super-heated, muggy afternoons in dim barrooms, nursing frosted mugs of Abita beer under a slow ceiling fan.

So that's how I recently found myself in Bellingham's Cajun and Creole restaurant, Bayou on Bay, hoping for at least a glimpse of that old-fashioned New Orleans atmosphere, flavor, and style. Authentic New Orleans sets the bar awfully high for Cajun/Creole cooking

This restaurant and bar takes its name from the convenient Bay street address—1300 Bay Street, Bellingham, WA—as well as the peek-a-boo look at Bellingham Bay, just visible from the tables out front. There's reliably a good lunch crowd (they open at 11) and even on weeknights, there are patrons in both the restaurant and full bar. I always figure it's a good sign if a place is reliably busy, week after week. The food gets rave reviews from a crowd of Bellingham regulars, and mediocre reviews from people who really know and love Cajun-style deep south cooking. One of the many reviews I found said, "The food is on par with the taste and authenticity of the dirty south, and the service is good as well!" Well, not really. At least, not in my experience.

Well, look. It isn't New Orleans. It can't be. There are things I'm just not going to order in Bellingham, Washington, because no matter how many Mardis Gras beads they hang on the wall, we're still not on the Gulf Coast. All in all, though, they do a pretty good job. Bayou on Bay does serve up a yummy muffaletto or pulled-pork po'boy with collard slaw and sweet potato fries. The bar is indeed muggy and comfortably dim, with lazily-spinning ceiling fans, and the walls are draped with Mardi Gras beads. They serve sazeracs, two kinds of Abita beer, and they make the yummiest little mini-beignets I've found anywhere this far north—although I did miss the more traditional, regular-sized beignet, I have to admit. And I do really, really wish they made chicory coffee.

The staff is generally relaxed and friendly, and not in any particular rush. They serve a number of traditional dishes, from crawfish to frog legs to jambalaya. The prices are reasonable, and the atmosphere is comfortable and pleasant.

Bayou on Bay is worth the trip. It was really pretty good, and I'll definitely be going back. And after all, if they provided the same sort of transcendent dining experience here in B'ham that I've come to take for granted in the little cafes and bistros in the French Quarter, I'd have no excuse to go back to New Orleans.