Former San Diego Policeman Brings Cajun Cuisine Down Home to Brendory’s

In late May, Dorance Aldridge stepped out of the firing line and up to the fryer.

An eight-year veteran of the San Diego Police Department, where he worked in the DARE drug education program, Aldridge turned in his badge and gun just one week before opening Brendory’s Restaurant in Bonita. His workday has doubled in length, but the labor seems to have borne at least one important fruit: Whenever Aldridge tours the dining room, he wears the smile of a man who loves his job.

Brendory’s sign announces “Down Home Style Southern and Cajun Cuisine,” a claim the restaurant backs with an almost singable menu of jambalaya (no crawfish pie), hot link gumbo, collard greens, smothered pork chops and catfish Creole.

And that’s for starters. The list continues with red beans and rice, fried chicken, crusty corn bread, shrimp etouffee , black-eyed peas and a house version of succotash that turns the tables on this usually bland vegetable melange by teaming corn and peas with okra, bacon and tomatoes.

Aldridge, a native of Kansas City, Mo., supplies the down-home talents, while the Southern side of the menu is assigned to his Houston-born wife, Brenda. (The couple christened the restaurant by contracting their names.) A sous chef from Baton Rouge stirs up some of the Cajun dishes, although Aldridge said the bulk of the Lou’siana cooking is his. As soon as he perfects his roux (fat and flour stirred just about forever in a deep, cast iron pan, and the bedrock of Cajun and Creole cuisines), Aldridge may be able to pack up his kitchen and move way down South to New Orleans, because he does seem to have a good grasp of the niceties of this grand style of cooking.

Starters are not Brendory’s strong point, although the appetizer list may be the only one in the county to open with catfish. Most choices here are just smaller portions of entrees listed later; the fried, breaded shrimp are most definitely the genuine article, but the bland cocktail sauce fails to pass muster. Meals also include the choice of clam chowder elaborated from a canned product or a lackluster salad doused with commercial dressings.

But once past these needless delays and detours, the menu roars into high gear and careens down a country road lined with some of the premiere offerings of the traditional American table. The first stop is jambalaya, a highly seasoned rice casserole capable of supporting nearly any meat or seafood; Brendory’s version takes no chances and includes chicken, sausage, ham and shrimp. A plate called “catfish heaven” offers Southern fried, mustard-fried and sauteed filets.

The kitchen does not take a French point of view with portions. One guest swallowed her conversation in midstream and exclaimed, “Oh, my God, I don’t believe it!” when a mountainous platter of smothered pork chops with red beans and rice suddenly appeared in front of her. The chops--three of them, meaty and tender--had been smothered ever so tastefully in a pan gravy with a little grit, a little spice and a lot of country character. Southern recipes and cooks alone seem able to endow red beans with any charm; cooked into satiny pillows, they mingled happily with the rice and spunky seasonings in this most typical Louisiana dish.

The art of frying chicken nearly vanished, at least from restaurants, with the advent of chain fried chicken eateries. However, Brendory’s serves a superb, crisply golden, succulent half-bird, piled high on a bed of French fries and surmounted in turn by a slab of crusty, teasingly sweet corn bread. The creamy coleslaw on the side is meant to reduce the effect of the fried food and serves its purpose well. Taken as a whole, this plate constitutes one of those simple pleasures that brings with it a world of satisfaction.

Aldridge’s Kansas City heritage comes to the fore with the barbecued “farmer style” spare ribs, which are anything but spare; “farmer style” means boned, and these ribs are particularly meaty and succulent. Many Kansas City folk reckon themselves barbecue experts, and Aldridge concocts a sauce that, were it a novel, could be described as containing multiple nuances and shadings of meaning. Different layerings of flavors gradually reveal themselves, although a constant mystery lurks at the edges of the mahogany-colored brew. Sweet, spicy, pungent and sharp, it’s quite a sauce. The plate includes corn-on-the-cob, coleslaw and a hunk of corn bread or garlic bread.

Back on the bayou side, the menu offers shrimp etouffee , a shrimp stew usually eclipsed on menus by its better-known and more easily prepared cousin, shrimp Creole. This particular dish calls for a long-cooked roux enriched with minced onions, bell peppers, celery and garlic (the essential quartet of Louisiana cooking), thinned with shellfish stock and seasoned with thyme, bay leaves and a little cayenne pepper. The pseudo-Cajun cooks of these sorry times add a great deal of cayenne to achieve a dazzling but tongue-numbing effect, a mistake that Brendory’s handily avoids. Since the shrimp enter the dish only at the last moment, the sauce needs to stand on its own; this one is a little too thick, the result, it would seem, of too much roux . Even though it is served on a bed of rice, ask for the excellent potato salad as the vegetable option (admittedly, collard greens might seem more sensible), since this is a traditional accompaniment in Louisiana.

Potato salad again makes a good choice with the menu’s three Creoles, of shrimp, catfish and chicken. Also in the Louisiana vein are a gumbo, based on hot link sausages but filled out with chicken and seafood; oysters fried in a spicy batter, and a “Cajun kabob” of shrimp, fish and vegetables.

Dessert may seem an impossibility after all this food, but even so, there is a sweet charm to Brenda Aldridge’s richly crusted walnut-sweet potato pie and to the moist, nutty, loosely-textured carrot cake. Sharing makes having a taste or two possible.

Although the menu is down-home, the decor takes a more contemporary mood with slowly turning fanlights, candles, fresh flowers and a color scheme in the trendy, Southwest-inspired dusty rose-and-turquoise pairing. The food seems to arrive by no particular schedule (it arrived notably late on one night’s visit), but the young servers maintain good humor and seem eager to please. Overall, there is an unusual, ephemeral charm to the place, one that seems specific to establishments at which the owners are constantly on the premises. At Brendory’s, you don’t get out the door until you’ve shared your impressions and opinions with at least one of the Aldridges, and that may be what makes a return seem such a pleasurable prospect.

BRENDORY’S RESTAURANT 5202 Bonita Road, Bonita 479-6970 Lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday; closed Mondays Credit cards accepted Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $30 to $45