cuisine

Good at Guidry's

For fresh fish, generous helpings and a faithful link to
Plaquemine's place in history.
by James Fox-Smith

The 109-year-old walls at Guidry's Restaurant are festooned with photographs that recall the colorful history of Iberville parish.

Plaquemine is a place where reminders of times past are ever present. There’s the hulking structure of the old Plaquemine lock to remind you of the era when the town was a transportation hub. There are faded, slightly asymmetrical nineteenth-century architectural gems to remind you of the mercantile wealth that lumber and river transport brought. And on Eden Street, in a circa 1899 department store building with a handsome pressed-tin ceiling and walls cluttered with photos and memorabilia, waiters bustle back and forth delivering soups, overstuffed po-boys and big platters of fresh seafood to an appreciative crowd. It’s noon at Guidry’s, and despite the historic surroundings, attention is at least temporarily focused on the important question of what to have for lunch.

Philip Guidry didn’t set out to make his restaurant an homage to Plaquemine history, but he doesn’t mind that it’s turned out that way. “I love the old town history,” he says, admitting that sometimes, he thinks it might be nice to have lived back then. The scores of historic photographs and newpaper articles on the walls were collected by lifelong Plaquemine resident and historian, Mr. Anthony Fama. At ninety-one years of age, Mr. Fama’s personal recollections of town life extend back as far as the great flood of 1927 and the city’s golden age as an agricultural and transportation hub, when Plaquemine was larger than Baton Rouge and Iberville Parish paid more taxes to the state treasury than any other parish except Orleans. He has lent parts of his collection to Guidry’s so that it might be displayed in a historically suitable setting and he still writes a column on aspects of Iberville Parish history for the Guidry Journal, a pamphlet published by Philip Guidry and distributed every six weeks or so.

Guidry’s is at least the fourth restaurant to occupy the Roth Building on Eden Street, previous incarnations having included Dupont’s, Humphrey’s, and most recently Miranda’s, the restaurant operated by the owners of another Plaquemine landmark, the City Café. Philip Guidry went to work for Charles “Squeaky” Miranda, who also owns Baton Rouge’s Little Village restaurant, at City Café back in the ‘eighties, and came on as a partner when Squeaky and Martin Miranda opened Miranda’s on Eden Street four years ago. In early 2007 Guidry bought his former partners out and now oversees operations here, with help from his sister Stephanie and father Louis. Back in the modest kitchen, Chef Greg Lewis keeps Guidry’s five line cooks in line, cranking out the soups, fresh seafood choices, steaks, salads and pastas that originated at Miranda’s and have been fine-tuned since. The kitchen stays busy. The restaurant, which seats around 120, does a cracking lunchtime business in shrimp, oyster or catfish poboys, seafood gumbo, corn & crab bisque; and all sorts of fried seafood dinners. At night, folks come back for entrée specials like shrimp pasta, grilled tuna steaks, Catfish Atchafalaya—fried catfish strips served over rice and topped with crawfish etouffée; a Rib Eye Supreme that arrives with crawfish, shrimp and mushrooms; and lots more seafood and steak options. This is good, traditional South Louisiana fare: the seafood is fried crisp and fresh; the soups are flavorsome; the portions are generous. Most nights Guidry’s offers six to eight specials, too. “Amberjack, mahi mahi, red snapper, speckled trout: we like to offer a different fish special every weekend,” observed Philip Guidry, “And they all come with jumbo lump crabmeat. Where would we be without jumbo lump crabmeat?”

Where? Well, not at Guidry’s, anyway.

DETAILS.details.DETAILS.
Guidry’s
23466 Eden Street,
Plaquemine, La.
(225) 687-2578