Dodie’s Cajun Restaurant

Had a lockout notice on Sunday October 28^th. Restaurant was closed. Guess might reopen after they make payment. Place had kinda gone down hill lately and was empty most of the time

I came in with 14 of my coworkers for lunch today and it was not as good as I remember it being. Service was good, our waitress was very friendly and attentive, but the food was not as tasty as before. I got the red beans and rice and it was rather bland. The gumbo that my coworker had did not look very appetizing either.
For a restaurant in Addison during lunch time on a Friday, it was awfully slow. I love Cajun food and I really hope they tweak their entrees because they are in a great location and should be busier than this.

With so many other options in Addison, I don’t know why my friends chose to eat here. The terrible Unilocal reviews helped me establish very low expectations of Dodies and yet again Unilocal steered me right.
I ordered the crab cakes and they were a greasy, flavorless, battered mess. I could find a better crab cake from a frozen box at Kroger. What a waste of $ 10. Service was respectable.

It’s very sad to see that after a year of reviews about bad service and Dodie’s has done nothing to improve. I walked in early for lunch. It was empty except for two tables. There was no one at the front to greet me and as I walked in, four employees behind the bar just looked at me walk around. I had to find my own table.
The booths were very uncomfortable, then the server almost spilled a hot plate of etoufee on me and my client while the waitress just watched. No one offered to refill our drinks or clear the table after we were done.
The food was just ok. I’ll never come back here again. Addison has nothing on the Greenville location. It’s Addison. Go figure.

Loved the place! Not enough people there but the food is good. I think they need to hire a new bartender or train the one they have.

Walked in with friends for dinner. One booth was «open» but had a couple half-​full cups of coke on it. We asked the waitress if she’d clear the table so we could sit there.
Ready for it?
She said «no» and went on to explain that the two boys smoking at the bar left their cups on the table to save it while they smoked.
Really?
We were looking to order dinner & drinks, but if you’d rather have smokers nursing soda over actual paying customers, more power to ya! We won’t be back.

There is better Cajun in Dallas.
For my taste, it lacked the seasoning as well as the layered or deeper flavors of Cajun food. If you want fried catfish, I prefer what they serve at Babes to Dodies. Razzoo’s does better in most areas than this location of Dodies.
I have not visited the other locations, but I have both read and heard that they offer better fare.

No coke products, strike 1 but happy to say everything else was very good. The service was good and we enjoyed ourselves. Will return but may have to smuggle in some coke products.

From the outside there’s not much exciting about this little Cajun restaurant, and as I enter through the front doors I notice the place isn’t packed like most restaurants in Addison.
That initially scared me a bit. I sit down, fire up Unilocal and start reading reviews. As I’m reading. I put in a drink order and order a bowl of Seafood Gumbo. (I already know what I want. its what led me here. instead of a mushroom burger from Smashburger… I diverted quickly when I saw the word Cajun. out of the corner of my eye. hmm. Gumbo…)
The server brought out my gumbo and my sweet tea pretty quickly. and although I was a little nervous from the previous reviews. The gumbo. sure looked good. I could see Shrimp, and oysters poking out from the top. Sure enough. it was a great bowl of gumbo ! Not the absolute best. (i mean I am from South Louisiana). but very good. The roux wasn’t a dark roux but it had a lot of seafood and was pretty spicy. It certainly met my lunch needs.

I am in love with the food here. Everything I have had from pasta dishes to crab cakes have been full of flavor and zing. The food is served nice and hot. I have had good service and poor service at this location, but as of late the service was great. Prompt ordering and constant refills. The place is clean with pub style decorating.
If you go, I recommend the fried crab cakes. The sauce is superb and the cakes are moist with a tasteful explosion. I am not a big fan of the slaw served with it, but you could like it. (too chunky for me)

I am from LA, so people are always recommending cajun restaurants to me… like Dodie’s. I finally had the chance to check this place out. Before I mention the food, I’d just like to say that the service needs improving. I was at a table of 6 and our waitress would take orders in pairs, leave, come back 10 minutes later for the rest of the orders, leave, etc. Our food came out in pairs, all 10 minutes apart, which is unusual because if a group of people at one table are there together, we most likely would want to eat together. :-/
I ordered the red beans and rice. For all of you LA cajuns out there, you will not be happy if you order this dish. The red beans and rice tastes nothing like how they are supposed to. It also has a sweet taste to it that throws the whole meal off.
The Pasta Monica is a simple pasta dish that wasn’t disappointing.
I wouldn’t recommend this restaurant to anyone because it isn’t true cajun eating.

So far, so good!
I had the chicken & sausage gumbo, buffalo shrimp po’boy and an Abita.
The gumbo was darn good! The po’ boy was filled with shrimp and was filling.
Wireless worked good after 2 – 3 minutes to connect!
Menu had a nice variety of choices.
I’ll be back to try more items.

#AllergenInfo — Soy, Nuts, Corn: The fry oil is peanut, and they do use soy oil on the flat top when blacken menu items. For the fries with gravy, they are unsure if the gravy is soy free. Some, if not all of their dressings, are not soy free. However, the batter for the fried items is soy free, but if I heard correctly, it does contain corn meal.
I ordered Fried pickles as an appetizer, and a Pick 2 Combo as my main dish. I chose popcorn shrimp and crawfish tails.
The pickles were crisp, hot, and even had some spice heat, but the are served with Ranch dressing. Since most ranch dressing isn’t soy free, I avoided the sauce. Despite the lack of sauce, they were quite flavorful, and I’d be willing to order them again.
The hushpuppies were the smallest I’ve ever seen. They were fairly standard in flavor, with a slight bitter after taste. I’d rate the hush puppies at Sea Island in San Antonio as much better than these. As for the Cajun fries, they were soft but well seasoned.
The popcorn shrimp and fried crawfish tails came to the table so hot, that all I could taste at first was the fried batter. After cooling down the crawfish tails had more flavor than the popcorn shrimp, and both tasted better with ketchup than without.
Unfortunately the condiment bottles were not clean, and since they allow smoking here, those things lowered my rating a bit.
I rate this place lower than my new favorite fish place, Sea Island in San Antonio, and I’d be willing to eat here again, but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to do so.

Had lunch there with a colleague who had just been «liberated» from his job and needed some laughs. He dines there often and I’d been a big fan of the original Dodie’s years ago; never been to the Addison location before.
What a great experience! The server was attentive and friendly and the food was perfect. I enjoyed my meal as did my guest, and it was much better than my experience had been at «another location». I will certainly come back to this one.
Why three stars? Maybe because after two unpleasant Dodie’s experiences, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop…

We heard some pretty good things about Dodie’s, so we gave it a try for dinner on a Thursday night.
As you step in, you seat yourself. The atmosphere was a comfy sports bar/​cajun restaurant mix that wasn’t very populated. It took a while to get menus, and I don’t think there was a set waiter/​waitress. Anyways, we finally get menus and ordered drinks (water, bottled Stella, and a hurricane). The hurricane tasted awesome but I couldn’t taste any rum in it whatsoever.
Ten minutes later, a different waitress takes our order. Since we had already waited so long, we ordered apps with entrees just to hurry it along. Our onion rings and messy fries came out pretty fast. They were what to expect (gravy didn’t have much flavor on the fries).
Two of us ordered the crawfish ettoufee which was good in that I was hungry, but I think Razoo’s dishes have more flavor. It was definitely lacking some cajun spice. When I think «cajun» I expect to be suckerpunched with spices! My boyfriend ordered the jumbalaya that was equally okay and lacking the cajun flavor.
We could never find the waitress/​waiter and the place wasn’t even packed! It’s a small restaurant, but there must’ve been only about 3 – 4 booths occupied (everyone else was at the bar). They might’ve just been extremely understaffed that night, but we definitely waited a good 25 minutes after we were done eating to get the checks.
All in all, I wouldn’t come back :(There are more flavorful places with better service!

If you go at lunch and stick to the fried food offerings or the poorboys and forget that it’s supposed to be a cajun place, you’ll probably be satisfied. If you come just for the drinks, you’ll be happy, also.
Those 2 things and the attentive and friendly waitstaff make this an ok place.
However, we came for dinner and we came for cajun food. So we were very disappointed. You CANNOT be a cajun place if your gumbo, étouffée and jambalaya are awful. Those are the staples. The seafood gumbo and the étouffée very obviously started with a sauce from either a mix or a can. The étouffée reminded me of something from Cambell’s soup. The chicken and sausage gumbo was… gulp…white, with no spice. It was chicken and rice soup! The jambalaya was also soup. Just terrible.
And the price. We had 2 dinners, one dessert, a coke and one $ 2 beer. Our total was $ 50 for less than mediocre food.
speaking of dessert… we tried to bread pudding. At first we weren’t happy. It’s the wrong texture and sitting in liquid. Yummy amaretto liquid, but just liquid, no creaminess. But what we thought were raisins turned out to be chocolate. LOL ok… it’s not bread pudding, but anything can be redeemed with good chocolate :-)

I would recommend Dodie’s if you want Cajun food but don’t want to shell out $$$ at Pappadeux’s. The food is not as good but its okay. Feeling homesick and craving a fried shrimp Po’boy I went here for dinner on a Saturday night with my kid. Having dined at the Carrollton location a few times before I was familiar with the menu. Usually their po’boys are always a winner. Along with my shrimp po’boy I also order a cup of seafood gumbo and a cup of dirty rice (for my son).
The shrimp was breaded with corn flour, proper! and lightly seasoned. I got it dressed with unseasoned fries. The french bread was not N’awlin’s standard but far better then any you could get at the grocery store. (Why the hell can’t we get decent french bread in N. Tx?!! we’re neighbors for crying out loud. Then again we can’t get decent Tx-​Mex outside of Tx. End of mini-​rant). The seafood gumbo at this location was pretty good, the roux was the right color, texture, flavor… if a little bland. There were 2 juicy large oysters in my CUP of gumbo which were cooked just right. Usually most places will put the oysters in too early and you get shriveled chewy former-​oysters. There was also plump large shrimp in every bite. The dirty rice was the only fail dish that I ordered, really bland.
There were lots of drink specials but I did not partake this time. This would be a good place to watch Saints games (WhoDat!) as there are many flat screen tv’s scattered about and a rather large bar. Good atmosphere overall. Recommended!

I went today at lunch with some coworkers and found this place seriously disappointing. The food was bland like cardboard? I thought this was a Cajun place! When I have to add Tabasco just to taste anything were in trouble!
I had the beans and rice with sausage. Beans are watery as hell, rice is plain white and the sausage was OK, little smokey flavor. Overall it was rather tasteless. Cajun Cole slaw was terrible, chunky cut cabbage with what the hell is this, for dressing? I had to choke it down because I was starving.
After we finish the inedible meal we find out that they had to reboot their computer to run the tickets? So we wait, wait some more and wait some more… I did mention this was lunch didn’t I? So much for getting back to work. Finally she comes over and explains that she has to write down how much it is on some paper and it’s best if we pay with cash… I’m not happy. The one time I have zero cash in my pocket! A coworker spotted me for lunch and I really hated that, how embarrassing.
Save your money, save your time, go somewhere else! I felt bad for the waitress who had zero control over anything!

I don’t smoke, but I have friends who do. We go to Dodie’s pretty frequently, since they allow smoking. I have kind of a love/​hate relationship with Dodie’s.
I’ll start with the loves: They have a really long happy hour with good drink specials on just about everything. The servers are great. They have really big windows on one side that they open when the weather is nice. This is great if you’re in a group with smokers, because you can enjoy their company and not have to go home smelling like a bar whore.
Now the hates: I hate that they allow smoking, but it’s their decision, and I’m sure they get a lot of business specifically because of this. As previously mentioned, this is also the reason they get my business. The food doesn’t taste particularly fresh, and I found it less than enjoyable. I’ve tried quite a few dishes here, and now I just make sure I eat before I leave the house.
With that having been said, the loves outweigh the hates. I consider Dodie’s to be a five star hanging out experience when the weather is nice, the windows are open, and I just get drinks and no food. Under any other circumstances, however, it’s probably closer to three stars.

I had the great fortune of dining with a native Louisiana-​ite the other night, but made the easy mistake of asking said native Louisiana-​ite a rather dull question — «What’s the difference between Cajun and Creole food?» Long answer short — like the difference between a carrot and a parsnip, these two schools of cooking are similar on the surface, but sport two very distinct flavor profiles.
I was informed that in particular, Cajun food such as the type found at Dodie’s, draws its roots from the Acadian people of Nova Scotia, who settled in Louisiana in the 1700’s bringing their gastronomié with them. There’s certainly French influences such as the complicated roux (a little too light for our Cajun born epicure) found in the rather pedestrian seafood gumbo (filé failed to make an appearance in this gumbo)
However, the French and Francophiles would likely cringe (as I did) at Dodie’s «Cajun Quesadilllas», a dubious dish consisting of a jalapeño pepper stuffed with canned crab meat, breaded and deep fried.
I was informed that the fried catfish, moistened by a creamy Bienville sauce, hit very close to home. I opted for the more mundane option of a somewhat bland muffaletta which required vigorous attention from the readily accessible bottles of hot sauce.
Overall, the restaurant was charming in that informal fashion that seems to suit the masses (Joe’s Crab Shack, Hooters, et al) just fine. Service was scattered but congenial, and the price was right.
My Louisiana born associate confided throughout the meal that Dodie’s is as «good as it gits in Dallas», which could be loosely interpreted to, «this is the only gig in town, so take it or leave it» or «hunger makes the best sauce, you fools!». My interpretation of Dodie’s however, is that it’s a fairly sanitized version of an otherwise great culinary culture that is Cajun.