Lou Caviglia has successfully reinvented his downtown spot Clouds as Louie’s Cajun Kitchen.
Lou Caviglia calls Cajun cooking “American Mexican food.”
“It’s rice and beans,” says Caviglia, who closed Clouds Downtown to open Louie’s Cajun Kitchen in the same spot last year. “A lot of the people in the South have no money, so they needed to create a cuisine that wasn’t based on expensive ingredients.” Southern families can feed a whole group for the price of one fancy steak. And by slow-cooking his food and using the right spices, Caviglia has been able to craft his tasty dishes while keeping them affordable.
SANTA CRUZ WEEKLY: What’s that thing behind the bar?
LOU CAVIGLIA: A voodoo altar given to us by a voodoo priestess in New Orleans. You don’t tell it what to do. You ask it for things. It’s really fun. She’s really powerful. Every day we give her a shot of rum and some food. She always has to have tobacco. And then at the end of the night, the last customer out takes the shot of rum for good luck. The little altar’s covered with trinkets and things for the safety of our customers getting home.
Does it work?
Yeah, it definitely has spirit. There’s no doubt about it. It makes it fun and interesting. You have to be careful to feed her, because she gets mad. Sometimes business won’t be that good and then “we forgot to feed her dinner!” We’ll feed her and give her rum, and then here come the customers. It’s pretty strange.
How do you get your ribs so tender?
We rub ‘em and let ‘em sit for a minimum of 24 hours. Then we slow cook ‘em. Then when we get the order, we reheat them with the sauce.
Do you like whiskey? There’s a lot of it here.
Yeah, it’s an American product, and we’re an American place, so it seemed like a good fit. And whiskey is definitely the best deal as far as alcohol’s concerned, mainly because it is a domestic product, so there’s no tax increment. It is amazing how many liquors come from other countries. There’s a huge tax. That’s why they’re so expensive. You can get really good bourbons for really reasonable prices.
Who would win in a fight, you or Vasili?
I outweigh him by about 60 pounds. He’s a tough character. I’d have to sit on a table. And if he could lift it up in his mouth with me on it, he’d win.
