RESTAURANTS : Cajun Cooking Still Makes Sense at Bayou St. John

Since the closing of the very good Eve N’Orleans last year, Bayou St. John in quiet Seal Beach has been Orange County’s only bona fide Cajun restaurant. The Cajun craze may be over, but John and Carolyn Fagot are still satisfying customers with the recipes they brought from their native Louisiana in 1984.

The waiters haven’t lost their accents, either. But they aren’t the accents you might expect. “ Tie-bull for two?” asked the young Australian shortly after we appeared at the restaurant’s tiny podium. As we were seated we received a friendly greeting from our waiter, another Aussie. At least he didn’t say G’day.

This is a small restaurant, set back from the town’s main street. The decor is storefront simple: wooden chairs, red cotton tablecloths with paper place mats, artificial gaslights on the walls, a large French-style window facing the street.

The best way to get started at Bayou St. John is with a cup of gumbo. Fagot makes his own spicy brown sausage for it, and the extra-dark, murky soup is full of hidden flavors and textures. File is a thickening agent made from sassafras, and the kitchen here uses plenty of it. Your spoon can just about stand up in this gumbo.

Salads are solid but not particularly interesting. Pecan chicken salad has large chunks of steamed chicken breast, with some Mandarin orange slices and a pecan garlic dressing. But the nuts are raw and will make your mouth pucker. A Caesar salad fares better, with a dressing rich in egg yolk that coats the lettuce nicely.

Fresh seafood--redfish, trout, soft shell crab, shrimp and Gulf oysters--are flown in from Louisiana and used to good effect in such dishes as Oysters Rousseau, a rich appetizer of five freshly shucked oysters baked in their shells with Parmesan cheese, bacon, cream sauce and some spiced tomatoes.

Shrimp appear in a cocktail glass with the restaurant’s zesty red sauce, or sauteed Cajun-style with herbs and spices in a caper-butter sauce. Speckled trout is stuffed with lump crab meat and shrimp, then pan-fried in pure butter; this is one of the richest dishes on the menu.

Although blackened food has gone out of fashion--not a great loss because so few chefs understood the technique--this is one kitchen that does it right. Fagot coats his redfish in spices just as other restaurants do, but he makes the butter hot enough to sear off the excess acidity. The result is a crunchy coating that tingles without burning. Prime rib comes out somewhat spicier than the fish because the coating is thicker; Fagot uses coarsely ground pepper and a shocking amount of butter and Worcestershire sauce. This is a dish you won’t soon forget.

Jambalaya here is a zesty mixture of rice, sausage, ham, red and green pepper and a spicy Creole sauce. At $6.95, including green salad and hot bread, it is possibly the menu’s best value.

Another good value is the oyster loaf, breaded and fried oysters stuffed into a carved-out loaf of French bread. Other po’boys here include soft-shell crab, chicken breast and Creole hot sausage. All are served with an overly creamy house potato salad and good, vinegary pickles.

If you want it all, you might try the Bayou plate, a combination of jumbo shrimp, Louisiana oysters and sauteed or deep-fried snapper with a spicy remoulade dipping sauce. Mississippi queen is an even gaudier concoction, in which broiled soft-shell crab is added to the plate.

Beer goes well with this food. The management keeps the now defunct Dixie beer on the menu for nostalgia’s sake, but you’ll have to settle for Miller, Bud or Corona. If you don’t fancy those, try the wonderful spiced ice tea.

The best dessert is Creole bread pudding with apples, raisins and a hot rum sauce, which is made on the premises. I’m sorry I can’t say good things about the store-bought key lime or pecan pies.

Bayou St. John is moderately priced. Appetizers are $3.95 to $6.95. Salads are $2.50 to $5.95. Sandwiches are $4.95 to $6.95. Entrees are $7.50 to $18.95. Desserts are $2.25.

BAYOU ST. JOHN

320 Main St., Seal Beach

(213) 431-2298

Open for dinner seven nights, 5-10 p.m.

American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted