Port Allen

A trip across the bridge for burgers, biscuits, and blues history

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“It’s just a bridge—get over it!” That’s the slogan Angelique Bergeron, Director of the West Baton Rouge Museum, quoted to me as I met with her recently. Our managing editor Lucie and I had crossed that bridge to explore Port Allen, the small town directly across the river from Baton Rouge. Port Allen is, provided the traffic gods have been appeased, a five-minute drive from downtown Baton Rouge, so close that “the Port of Baton Rouge” is actually in Port Allen… but I’d never visited, just zoomed through on my way to Acadiana and points west. That’s not a mistake I want our readers to make: with small-town charm, to-die-for food, and one of the best local museums in the area, our neighbor across the river is a great place to spend time, even if it’s just for an afternoon escape.

Our first stop was the Court Street Café (805 Court St) for a quick breakfast. After hemming and hawing over a tempting menu, I opted for biscuits and gravy and a side of grits, in the name of reportorial thoroughness: anyone can scramble an egg, but these three pillars of the Southern breakfast table are what separate great cooks from those who hide Pillsbury tins at the bottom of the trash. That was far from the case at Court Street: the biscuits were pillowy beyond belief, the gravy miss-your-grandmother good, and the grits so creamy that only the presence of ladies kept me from licking the bowl.

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Thus fortified, we were due at the West Baton Rouge Museum (845 N Jefferson Ave). The museum is housed, in part, in the former West Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, which a local lady with the memorable name of Puffy (aka Ethel Claiborne Dameron) had saved by standing in front of the wrecking ball. The museum grew to fill the building, then an addition larger than the original structure, and now a six-acre campus. Angelique Bergeron is exactly the kind of director every museum should be blessed with: energetic, friendly, determined, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable, she has a strong vision for the excellent, if under-visited, museum—and she’s willing to put in elbow grease to enact it. When we arrived, she was cleaning the juke joint.

The juke joint is the newest addition to the museum’s interpretive holdings, scheduled for a grand opening in April. The original museum focused largely on sugar, without which admittedly there would probably be no West Baton Rouge Parish, and the museum still displays an informative, vintage scale model of sugar processing equipment in one of its main rooms. As the museum grew, though, so did its mission, and it now covers more aspects of the history and culture of the parish and its people. Three cabins salvaged from Allendale Plantation now host a three-part exhibit on the history of African Americans in the parish, from the era of slavery through the civil rights struggle, with an emphasis on the missed opportunities of Reconstruction. Kathe Hambrick, founder and longtime director of Donaldsonville’s River Road African-American Museum, helped with the exhibit and continues to advise the museum. Rotating exhibits have included an ongoing look at creole cultures around the world and Acadian handcrafts.

The juke joint pays homage to the roots of the Baton Rouge blues, which, as Bergeron points out, often meant the Port Allen blues, since the smaller city didn’t have the jazz-stifling blue laws that limited the hours and activities of bars in Baton Rouge. Bergeron and others at the museum have transformed an “old boy scout hut” into a replica of a juke joint that successfully evokes not only a time and a place but a particular feel—it’s cozy in that special way a bar full of friends can be, and you know the music is good. Wisely, one of the walls has been rigged to open wide, making the juke joint both easier to explore and able to function as a temporary stage for special events, during which partygoers can shelter in the shade of the oaks outside.

Our last stop was the general store, which stood on the grounds of Allendale Plantation and is being restored to period accuracy by museum staff, often after consultation on inventory and arrangement with the shopkeeper’s now-elderly daughter. Mardi Gras beads fill flour and corn sacks, since “soft stuffing doesn’t fall right,” explained Bergeron. Linda Collins, the museum’s Operations and Outreach Manager and a talented artist, recreates perishables in more durable material, sculpting clay candy bars and sofa-cushion Wonder Bread. The store is full of products you didn’t know you remembered, familiar from grandparents’ cupboards if nowhere else, and I missed them as I saw a sliver of how the world might have looked when they were young. At its best, the interpretation of history captures intellectual curiosity while provoking emotional responses, and the West Baton Rouge Museum is well on its way to being a true master of this double play—and with the recent return of Curator of Collections Elizabeth Brantley from an intensive week-long International Training Course  in the curation of fashion and dress at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, this promises to improve even from its already high level.

After our time at the museum, it wasn’t lunchtime, but it was close enough to pretend. We pulled into River Queen Drive In (120 S Alexander Ave)… and immediately got sidetracked at the adjacent Port Allen Bakery (124 S Alexander Ave), where we picked up a bear claw and an old-fashioned blueberry cake donut for later, seduced by the smells but needing to save room for lunch. We picked up “Ida Burgers,” the special, from River Queen and took them to the Court Street landing to enjoy by the river. Whoever Ida is, was, or will be, she’s inspired an incredible burger. Upscale burgers with creative ingredients can be a treat, and fast-food burgers can scratch a certain itch nothing else quite can, but the ultimate in burger-ness, that marvelous meaty majesty, has to come from “a burger place” like River Queen. A testament to the burgers comes from the simple fact that Lucie and I, the most notorious chatters in the office, shut up to eat them, limiting our comments to muffled “oh my God” and “this, this is a burger.”

One of the most pleasant—and definitely the most unexpected—treats to come from working in Baton Rouge has been that I get to experience the Mississippi River more: in New Orleans, it’s behind levees and generally out of the way. I live four blocks away from it, and my most regular contact with it at home is that occasionally I hear the calliope from a tourist riverboat. In Baton Rouge, you can see it and remind yourself that you live on one of the greatest natural waterways of the planet. The view from the Port Allen side is even better. The river was high and rising in its annual spring swell, sending little exploratory pools of water beyond its banks to drown clusters of yellow spring wildflowers on the unprotected side of the levee. Across the river, which seems even wider from that side, Baton Rouge rises on the other bank, the view anchored by both capitols. It’s an incredible view, and one that more people will enjoy as the existing walking route along the river is expanded later this year.

For a quick (or not-so-quick) drink, you can swing by Delirious Daiquiris (105 S Alexander Ave) downtown. I, a model of probity, have never been in there, certainly not during a work day, and could not make any recommendations, such as a half-and-half mixture margarita and shock treatment flavors with an extra shot. I have, however, heard rumors that the combination is pleasantly sour and potent without being overpowering.

The trip back feels even quicker, a skip back over the bridge well in time to beat rush hour. Our donuts not only survived the trip but were in good enough shape to impress all we (a bit begrudgingly) shared them with—I particularly regretted settling for a single toe of the bear claw after I tasted it.

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As adventures go, my few hours in Port Allen weren’t the ascent of Everest or the conquest of Peru, but that’s never been the point. I now know another little corner of my adopted state. I learned more of its history, saw its capital from a new direction, and was again thankful for the chance to spend not just this time of my life, but also this part of my career in such an endlessly interesting place. (There are people in this world who have to write about Nebraska, poor things.) The afternoon was a gift, one I’m glad to have gotten and even happier to share with readers.

And, of course, there were the biscuits—they really are out of this world.

This article originally appeared in our April 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.