From Buffalo Chicken Wings to Cajun Cookery : Multiregional Fare at Encinitas Eatery

Living in a land of newcomers, as we do here in San Diego County, we may encounter certain challenges when we innocently raise knife and fork and look to soothe the inner person.

Because so many of us came from elsewhere, there are virtually no fixed culinary traditions here. People who live out their lives in less transient towns have an easier time of it.

In Buffalo, for example, every native--no matter his ethnic background--knows very well that the city’s famous chicken-wing snacks must be seasoned with a great deal of cayenne pepper and served with blue cheese dressing. Some Buffalonians may even admit that it is a horrifying combination, but they nonetheless will insist upon this as the only correct formula.

In much the same way, New Orleans natives understand from birth that gumbo is made with either file powder or sauteed okra, but never both. Other cities bestow similar types of knowledge upon their native children as a kind of birthright.

The Pot Thickens

But even Mexican cooking, a topic on which we should be able to reach some sort of local agreement, is far from codified, and the simple question of what constitutes an actual taco is sure to arouse argument, especially if there’s a New Mexican in the group.

It happens that a new restaurant in Encinitas called the Paradise Grill serves up hickory-smoked and barbecued foods, Southern-style specialties, a few putatively Cajun offerings, Buffalo-style chicken wings and, intriguingly, Cuban black bean soup.

This is quite a stew already, but the pot thickens with the information that the restaurant’s quartet of partners operate five establishments in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, including Dixie’s Bar and Smokehouse Grill in St. Paul, the working inspiration for the Paradise Grill.

The restaurant’s relatively large, informal premises combine with the menu to suggest a kind of Southern-fried diner that has been dropped from the heavens smack in the heart of surf country. And a menu that offers Southern-fried chicken, topped with honey pecan sauce and served with mashed potatoes with cream gravy, black-eyed peas with pepper hash, corn bread and (yes, by gum) baking powder biscuits, has much to be said for it.

If, that is, everything is made the real way, which is not always the case here.

We get an interesting taste of Louisiana cooking, as filtered through the St. Paul culinary consciousness, with the shrimp creole soup, a thinned version of the house shrimp creole that is mixed with white and wild rice. Wild rice, a distinctly Minnesota product, would never appear in a New Orleans gumbo; as it was, the flavor wasn’t bad, although the soup certainly needed thyme, and lots of it.

Sweet Potato Fries

The regional inspiration, if any, of the cream cheese-ham-leek soup is impossible to divine, but this was an extremely tasty if almost excessively rich concoction.

The appetizer list offers, among other things, a pretty good version of coconut-coated fried shrimp, a current rage in these parts; hickory-smoked chicken nachos, a kind of multicultural extravaganza; fried okra in season and what the menu describes as “sweet potato fries with Cajun spices.”

This sort of listing can arouse a sense of apprehensive anticipation, because french-fried sweet potatoes can be awfully good, but “Cajun spices,” a recent invention of questionable background, can be dangerous in the wrong hands. These potatoes arrived innocent of any seasoning whatsoever, but were also leathery and virtually inedible thanks to what seemed to have been several reheatings.

The menu states that Midwestern corn-fed beef and pork are slowly smoked, “in the Southern tradition,” over hickory logs from West Texas. The country-style ribs, basically chunks of meat wrapped around sections of bone, did not seem to have reposed slowly and lengthily in the smoker, however.

If anything, the meat was chewy and a bit dry, and the bits of gristle and so forth that generally soften in a slow barbecue process had not been so rendered in this instance. The meat had a mildly smokey flavor that was considerably improved by spoonings of the good house barbecue sauce.

Virtually the same comments apply to the smoked Cajun pork chops, which purportedly were slowly smoked, then sprinkled with Cajun spices and charcoal-broiled. These were certainly meaty chops, but not particularly tender, and the advertised seasoning was by no means in evidence.

Fit for a Gargantua

The barbecue section of the menu also offers baby back ribs, a half-chicken, barbecued beef and pork loin sandwiches, and a sampler platter that includes several of these as well as other entrees and garnishes. The portions tend to be Gargantuan; the ribs, for example, were served with an ear of corn (cold), a mound of french fries, cole slaw, corn bread and biscuits with honey. Both breads needed to have been more recently from the oven; neither improved with age.

The kitchen seemed to fare better with its hefty “platter specials,” semi-diner-style offerings that range from chicken-fried steak in cream gravy to grilled ham steak, the inevitable (these days) “blackened” steak, honey pecan chicken and broiled pork steaks in a peppery peanut sauce.

All of these are served with the breadbasket and a choice of such side dishes as skin-on mashed potatoes (not bad, but why just potatoes’ skins have become chic remains a puzzle) and black-eyed peas, pinto beans and green beans. These three all are simmered for hours in the genuine, undisputed Southern tradition, which renders them either exceptionally tender or remarkably overcooked, depending on one’s point of view. (They are, in any case, wildly at odds with Southern California’s avowed affection for crunchy baby vegetables.) The peas and green beans are to be served with pepper hash, which had to be requested on both occasions and which proved to be an odd, salsa-type thing composed of cucumber, onion and a little minced, red bell pepper.

The honey-fried chicken, a pair of boneless breasts served brown and juicy under a sweet, nutty sauce, was one of Paradise Grill’s happier offerings. The pork medallions, buried beneath a rich, cayenne-hot brown sauce stiff with mashed peanuts or peanut butter, also was quite likable. It seemed nearly identical to a Malaysian satay, although the menu identified it as Southern, and it just possibly may be; peanuts and red pepper do turn up in country cooking down there.

The menu gets a little wild in the dessert category, showing a fondness for pies and cakes based on crushed candy bars. There is, for example, a Butterfinger pie that involves banana and butter pecan ice cream, crushed Butterfinger candy, peanut butter, hot fudge and whipped cream. In a more sedate mood, the kitchen recently offered a fresh strawberry-rhubarb pie that was a little on the heavy side, but quite nicely flavored.

PARADISE GRILL

1476 Encinitas Blvd., Encinitas

943-9997

Lunch and dinner served seven days a week.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with one glass of wine each, tax and tip, $25 to $50.