Of all the seafood houses strung along the Causeway, the low-slung strip of highway that carries traffic across the head of Mobile Bay, The Bluegill has never been the one that shouts. It opened in 1958. It sits east of the building that once housed Cock of the Walk, since recycled to other purposes. It does not dress itself up. And in the spring of 2008, that unpretentiousness was precisely what a local dining critic, who wrote under a pen name and paid his own checks, said he liked most about it.
His verdict, delivered after a weekday lunch, was neither a rave nor a dismissal. It was something more useful: a careful ranking, argued in detail.
The gumbo: good, with a to-do list
He began with a cup of gumbo, and he began with a concession. The Bluegill’s gumbo was not the best in the Mobile area, he wrote, but it was the best on the Causeway. The texture was good. The flavor was fine. That was the praise.
Then came the notes for the kitchen. He wanted the chunks of tomato and the strips of bell pepper gone. He wanted more okra. He wanted the onion to melt down into the roux rather than float through the bowl as short slices. These are not small quibbles in a region where gumbo is argued over the way other places argue over barbecue, and the critic’s implication was clear enough: the bones of a very good gumbo were already there, waiting for a cook willing to simplify.
A grouper filet that did its job
For an entree he ordered the luncheon grilled fish. He was told it was grouper and had no reason to doubt it. The filet arrived generously sized for a lunch portion, properly seasoned and properly grilled, and he pronounced it just right for a light midday meal.
The plate came with new potatoes, cole slaw and corn on the cob. He skipped the corn. The slaw he called very good, though he ranked it behind the version at Ed’s, which he considered the best on the Causeway. The boiled new potatoes drew the sharpest words on the plate: bland and mediocre. His fix was borrowed from Deanie’s, the Bucktown institution on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, where potatoes are boiled in crab boil rather than plain water. Season them that way, he argued, and the side would go from filler to something worth eating.
A word about the bread
The critic noticed that The Bluegill’s menu advertised Gambino’s bread for its po-boys. He had not tried one, but he offered the recommendation he offered nearly every restaurant that served the sandwich: switch to Leidenheimer. The New Orleans bakery’s long loaf, with its brittle crust and soft interior, was his standard, and he believed a bread change alone would improve the po-boy experience.
Half a parking lot, and a ranking
What seemed to puzzle him most had nothing to do with the food. The Bluegill’s parking lot was only half full at lunch, while a neighboring restaurant packed them in. He had eaten at the neighbor and, by his own account, could not construct a single original theory as to why it drew the crowd, since he believed the better lunch was to be had next door.
Asked to rank the Causeway, he put The Bluegill second overall. First went to the restaurant in the old Pier 4 building. Third went to the place with the better slaw. It is the kind of hierarchy that residents of Mobile and Baldwin counties have been constructing and defending for generations, usually over a table and never quietly.
Two small disappointments closed the review. No long-neck Barq’s was to be found, a running complaint of his, so he settled for iced tea, unflavored. And he noted, without enthusiasm, that The Bluegill offered live music on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. Those, he said, were the three nights no one would find him there.
The Bluegill is still standing on the Causeway today, live music and all, which suggests the crowd eventually found its way across the parking lot.