North Of The Bayou Brewery — Restaurant in Madison

It is a shame and frankly disgraceful to call this even remotely “Cajun” food. I feel sorry for the people of Madison that think this is what Louisiana food tastes like. Hellen Keller could cook better tasting meals.

To start, I’m born and raised in the Bayou’s of Louisiana, so don’t come at me for speaking truth here.

I ordered the fried okra for an appetizer. Never came out.

To ‘sample’ I ordered a small Red Beans, a small Gumbo, and a small étouffée. I’m not sure where to even start so we will begin with the Red Beans. This Louisiana staple is hard to screw up but this place really hit it out of the park. The best part was the bland white rice on top. Now on to the Étouffée. News flash!! Mushrooms do not go in Étouffée. There was ZERO flavor and I described it to my colleague, also from NOLA (we will get to his plate in a moment) that it tasted like Chef Boyardee ravioli sauce. INEDIBLE! Now on to the star of the show - or lack thereof - gumbo. In my 45 years on this earth, I have never had crunchy crawfish tails (texture was unbreaded and deep fried) in a gumbo. You people go big and frankly everyone should go home. Hopefully, not sick.

My colleague got a “Catfish PoBoy.” We are not sure what type of species was being pawned off as catfish but it was not the real thing. It pulled apart like a chicken tender.

This place is a fraud to all things, Louisiana - well, maybe they got the wall paint colors correct so they are winning at that. The waitress said the owners have a house in NOLA and go a couple of times a year. That doesn’t give one the okay to say this is Louisiana cooking.

On behalf of the people of Louisiana, I’m sorry for your customers. Stick to cheese curds and leave southern cooking to the south....

I really want to like this place. I genuinely love cajun food and it's right by my house.

The atmosphere is interesting. It's a huge pink building visible from the highway. Inside it's part medival castle, part quinceanera. It was originally a supper club, then a night club, then a Mexican restaurant, and you can still see the iterations of all previous establishments. I'd be very curious to see what it looked like circa 1985 or 1990. It's a very interesting building with 5 stories and multiple dining rooms.

They have many cajun/creole staples and a few odd midwesternized versions. My friend and I decided to try the shrimp po boy, seafood gumbo, red beans and rice, and beignets.

Everything was right in theory but in practice, it reminded me as if Applebees or Denny's had added cajun items to their menu. Everything seemed bland and reheated. The breading would not stay on the shrimp, the roll was the wrong consistency for a poboy, and it had pickles added that were not the right flavor (poboys do often come with pickles). The gumbo and RBR had the texture of canned soup and badly needed hot sauce. The beignets were ok (how do you mess up fried dough?) but heavy, and not light and fluffy at all.

If they make any significant changes I might return, otherwise, I think I'll stick to New Orleans Takeout despite their...

UPDATE I received a very nice card in the mail from the manager of North of The Bayou. It was an apology with an unexpected compensation that more than made up for the food not received. She made it clear that she was aware that to much time passed before this should have been rectified, but it was such a nice gesture that not many extend anymore. I have changed my rating from a 2 star. We will be back and do love the food and drinks.

As a long time customer, I am very dismayed by the customer service we have received at North Of The Bayou. We have always enjoyed there food but recently had an issue with management contacting us back after several phone calls. We did order take out on a very busy night. We had ordered Beignets as our dessert. When we got our meal home, no beignets. I get how that could happen, no problem. We were charged for it so I called, left a message with my info and asked for them just to not charge our cc. CC was charged, 3 more calls were made. Two messages and speaking with one person who assured us a manager would contact us. Still have not heard anything going on several weeks. It will be a while before we go back, there are a lot of choices in Madison and customer service makes or breaks...