A Food Review by our Favorite Palate, Ronny Green!
If you are in the crowd who wants to step out of your culinary comfort zone, or you only venture outside of your culinary comfort zone when you venture out of Central Louisiana, Chef Matt has put an Asian inspired twist on an already stellar Cajun contemporary menu.
New additions to the appetizer section of the menu include: the Cajun shrimp cocktail, blackened shrimp served cocktail style with bam bam sauce and cocktail sauce. Don’t be afraid to mix the bam bam sauce with the cocktail sauce, your taste buds will do cartwheels! Next up from the new appetizer lineup are the crab nachos, I’m talking about legit lump crab meat, not that imitation stuff, tossed in a sweet chili pepper jelly, fried wantons, avocado, red onions, and bam bam slaw.
Chef Matt takes a nothing basic without reinventing the wheel approach to the new menu items. When it comes to the Molly’s Chicken ain’t nothing basic about this one. This dish features grilled chicken breast, roasted pistachio chimichurri, sun dried tomato bacon chutney, and whipped feta. This dish immediately made its way to my favorites of 2024, hands down. If you’re like me and enjoy a good sensation salad for lunch, you will thoroughly enjoy the Asian sesame salad made with fresh Romain lettuce, red onions, avocado, cucumber, candied pecans, wantons, bam bam slaw, and a sesame cilantro dressing you could pour over a tractor tire and it would taste delicious.
Continuing the trend of nothing basic and stepping out of our culinary comfort zones, we have Chef’s Special Lo Mein, sliced pork ribeye, lo mien noodles, peanut butter Thai sauce, bam bam sauce, and cilantro. This was my first time trying a peanut butter sauce and this dish did not disappoint. Chef Matt adheres to the K I S S method in the kitchen. The fried chicken sandwich, as simple as that is, has been upgraded at the Bentley Room. The fried chicken breast is tossed in sweet chili pepper jelly, dressed with mayo, pickles, avocado, bam bam slaw, and served on “Sheila Partin’s sweet mesquite bakery” sourdough bun. For dessert, I highly recommend the blueberry yum yum made with Mexican vanilla. Have one to share at the table and take one to go for later.
Asian cuisine is Chef Matt’s personal favorite, so he is like a kid in a candy store as he and his crew are in the kitchen whipping up these new menu items.