ROSEWATER GRILL & TAVERN AT DELTA DOWNS

2717 Delta Downs Dr., Vinton (337) 589-9063

Now, everyone knows I’m not a gambler. The only way I find out about restaurants in casinos is through word of mouth. A couple of weeks ago, I first heard about a new restaurant at Delta Downs that was said to serve an amazing steak. But the person who told me about the venue couldn’t remember its name.

Then my publisher sent me a media invite to check out the new restaurant — which was called Rosewater Grill & Tavern. I couldn’t make the media event, so Chelsea and I decided to check it out for our Valentine’s Day dinner.

Since I’d never been to Delta Downs, I had no idea where the restaurant was, and wasn’t sure what to expect once I got there. Once on the site, we wandered around for a moment until we found the newest-looking place. There it was — the Rosewater Grill & Tavern.

It was a very good-looking restaurant that was broken up into two different sections. The tavern area has its own menu, which is geared to a bar environment; the grill menu was oriented toward the casual dining experience.

We got a table with a great view of the racetrack. It was a prime spot to check out the flow and layout of the restaurant, which is something I always look for.

We started our meal with the crab-stuffed mushrooms, which had a seafood velouté sauce, which is one of French cuisine’s five “mother” sauces. It’s made from a fish stock and blond roux. The crab was seasoned perfectly, and the mushrooms were cooked exactly the way they needed to be to make this a must-have appetizer.

For our dinner, we decided to order the Street Tacos off the tavern menu — you can order from both menus when you dine. The tacos consisted of grilled gulf shrimp topped with avocado, red cabbage, cilantro and lime with a chimichurri sauce on a flour tortilla. This was a very light dish that had just enough of each ingredient to ensure that there was not one over-powering flavor. They all blended very nicely together and made a bar food that would be great to have at any time.

We also ordered the prime rib (end cut, of course) with the green bean almandine and a sweet potato soufflé.

The prime rib was off the hook: tender and juicy and cooked to a perfect medium temperature. The reason I get the end cut is that it seems to me that all the flavor rests there. This may not be true, but I’m convinced of it.

The green beans had the right amount of pop; by this I mean when you bit into them, there was that slight “pop” you get when the beans have been cooked to the right temperature and retain their perfect color and texture.

The sweet potato soufflé was very interesting. It came in a small ramekin and had some sort of a crust on the top. I couldn’t make out what the crust was, but it was for sure bad ass.

We finished off the meal with a crème brulée. You either make a good one or you don’t. It isn’t recreating the wheel. The cooks at Rosewater made a damn good one.

I very much enjoyed my entire experience at Rosewater Grill & Tavern. The staff was very helpful with menu selections and had a laid back, playful attitude that I found to be quite engaging. I’ll be more than happy to make the drive to Vinton and eat there again, and to tell all my friends that Delta Downs has stepped up its culinary game.

Veronica’s Café 

302 Hector Connoly Road, Carencro, La., (337) 565-2301

I’d been working in the Carencro area during a week-long period. Two days in a row I took my crew to lunch at a place called Veronica’s Café. Don Trahan of Southern Lifestyles Development turned me on to Veronica’s last year when I was doing a job for his company down the road.

The food at Veronica’s was amazing. But I’d only gotten to go the one time. So I was beyond happy that we were working right down the road for a few days.

The first day we went in, I had the smothered pork chop with rice and gravy, broccoli and cheese and a carrot/sweet potato mash that was so good my tongue almost knocked out my teeth with excitement.

This was the most tender pork chop I’d ever had, and I’ve eaten some pork chops in my time. The entire meal was a slam dunk; it shows you why Veronica’s has gotten such a following. If you aren’t in the door by 11:30 am, you’ll be standing in line to order. But as soon as you take the first bite, you’ll forget all about that.

The second day, I got the double meat and cheese with bacon burger. The server asked if I wanted the creole burger, which had Cajun seasoning, jalapenos and grilled onions, and I said, “hell, yeah.”

Boy, did I ever make a mistake.  This burger was huge; it seemed as if the patties were almost a pound each. I could barely get my hands around it to take a bite. I finally just decided to take the fork and knife to it, because the struggle was real with this one. With that being said, the burger was the bomb.com. It was just too much for me to eat on a 30-minute lunch break.

If for some reason you’re in the Carencro area Monday-Friday, you need to stop by Veronica’s Café and treat yourself to an amazing meal made by some great people.