Cafe Roux

They wouldn’t let us order lunch at 12. Which is what we wanted. One of the waiters was pretty fine.

I tried Café Roux the other night. It’s definitely worth a visit. I had the Crawfish Étouffée at the bar. The meal was excellent and so was the service.

I am confused as to why this place gets bad reviews because the food that we had was very good and the service was just fine. I had the Fried Green Tomato salad and a cup of gumbo. The gumbo had an after kick and great flavor. The fried green tomatoes were perfect. Very lightly battered and not over fried. The salad was occompanied by a very tasty light fried green tomato vingarette. We’ll definately go back! The setting in Park Place is much nicer than Town Center as it has a more intimate feel to it.

How many more Cajun/​Creole places will open before somebody can get it right?
Roux is just another of the many imposters that have come up over the years. Dissapointing Gumbo, Jambalaya with no soul, and mediocre menu items to complete the screwup. As usual, it’s not that the food taste «bad», it’s that it’s not «authentic».
And I’d like not to hear that it’s impossible to get authentic cajun/​creole outside of Louisiana. La Croix Creole Bistro did it for years in Westport and closed only becasue the owner was sadly shipped out to Iraq.
Do keep this in mind though, as all other wannabe cajun/​creole joints I will say this. They kick Jazz in the groin sooooo hard. And if you do eat one menu item, There is one thing that I will say it’s a must have:
The Corn & Crab Chowder is PERFECT. .. .. Sad thing is the portion is small. The flavor will make up for it though!

Decent N’awlins-style cuisine… Probably as good as you will find in the confines of KC… Not all that authentic but still pretty tasty.
I’ve been here for lunch and dinner multiple times over the last 6 months and I always walk away wishing that I could go for dessert at Café Dumond and drinks at Pat O’Briens… So, it has enough hint of authenticity that I wish that I was actually in N’awlins!
The gumbo is decent, not very spicy… I’ve also had the red beans/​rice… Also, not very spicy… I’ve had a variety of dishes for entrée ranging from etoufee to jambalaya to muffaletta…
All decent but not enough kick for a boy who spent part of his childhood in Louisiana!
The costs are roughly equivalent to other restaurants in the area… Lunch will be $ 15/​person and dinner for $ 30/​person without drinks.

This place still gets 3 stars because I’m so bias to cajun restaraunts. But the 50 cent oysters during happy hour and the Abita beer can’t be beat. The fried green tomatos are good! There’s a bunch of other stuff we want to try. Just DON’T GET THE LOUISIANA BOIL! It’s suppose to be a cajun boil of the standard crawfish, shrimp, potatos, corn, and then clams (?). It reeked of nutmeg, it’s the only seasoning to be tasted/​smelled. Shrimp were falling apart, crawfish had soft bodies so they’ve been dead too long, and so on. I had to send it back. They handled it great and the service was good. So I won’t let this one thing ruin the restaraunt, I just won’t order it.

Had the Fried Green Tomato Salad last night (replaced the greens with baby spinach). It was delicious. The salad included the greens, an onion vinaigrette dressing, goat cheese, and four slices of fried green tomatoes.
Tonight, I returned for a sample of beers by Abita and several dishes including oysters on a half shell, a hominy and grilled vegetable salad with smoked trout, pork loin with braised greens and goat cheese (I love goat cheese), and chocolate bread pudding topped with Turbo Dog Chocolate ice cream. Thank you, Larry at Aloft, for recommending Café Roux.

Had a Groupon and decided to try this place out. When looking online noticed that they have a brunch, menu but was really wanting the lunch menu, oh well. The areas is really nice and the décor is rustic and the blues music was playing. Don’t do the brunch menu there is not much too it. I order the eggs pontchartrain and some smoked bacon and the wife ordered creole omelet. Mine was ehhh… The fried oyster was ok and the egg was not bad but the hollandaise sauce was bitter very bitter and it ruined the plate. I ordered a side of smoked bacon which was great. My wife enjoyed her omelet and I snuck a piece of the andouille sausage that was in it, which forced me to order a side of andouille sausage which would have been the best of the meal but darn it it was cold. I could not believe that the sausage was cold because there was us and another couple in there and that’s it. Overall I was disappointed in the food and was wanting more from it. I will have to try sometime during dinner time to see if their regular menu is any better.

It’s been a while since I’ve visited Café Roux, but there was a 3-​month period of time where I visited about six times. I’m not experienced with Cajun food, so all I can do is compare this place to Jazz (a place I quite enjoy). My apologies to all those who are rolling their eyes right now.
I only ate dinner/​meals here twice. Both times, I had the crawfish étouffée, and I enjoyed it very much. It’s different than Jazz’s, but not any less good. My son had the shrimp and grits, and he thought it was great. I did too. I ordered my own side of cheesy grits, as I do at Jazz, but Café Roux’s is much better. It’s a creamy bowl of yummy goodness. We also ordered a side of braised greens, and loved them. But their gumbo was nothing compared to Jazz’s. I can make a tastier version by doctoring a box of Zatarain’s. Really. Also, the entrée prices are really too expensive, especially considering their very small portions. I’m used to leaving Jazz feeling overly stuffed. I left Café Roux feeling only partially satiated.
The other visits I’ve made to Café Roux were for their oyster happy hour. You get a half dozen Blue Points and a glass of champagne for $ 3! My son and I can really down some oysters, so we would get a dozen a piece. Theirs are much fresher than Jazz’s. MUCH. But one weird thing — after the first time we’d had oysters there, they stopped serving their oysters on a bed of ice. Instead, they began to serve their oysters on a bed of aquarium rocks. It was the oddest thing. At first, I thought they were chilled rocks… but no, they were room temperature. WTH? Whatever, the oysters were still fresh.
Service — The servers have all been good, but there is one hostess there who lacks any bit of friendliness.
Overall, I like this place because the food is good and it’s closer than Jazz… but I find it problematic to open my wallet to order their entrees when I know I won’t leave feeling full.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: I AM NOT FROM NEW ORLEANS.
As a baby, I was not weaned on roux instead of milk. I am not a Cajun food expert. Some of the other reviewers’ complaints referred to issues of authenticity. I cannot speak to that, as I am from Overland Park, KS. I CAN say, however, that the food was VERY good. I got the Crawfish Étouffée, and it was ridiculously good. Spicy and chock full of crawfish. Considering what I got, I thought the entrée price was reasonable.
I thought the service was good. Our server was very friendly, and with the exception of taking awhile to get us our check in an attempt to accommodate the tool at the table next to us who wanted to meet the chef, she was timely in getting things to us. We ordered fried pickles to start. I typically don’t love fried pickles, but husband wanted them, so we got them. They came out as long slices of pickle rather than chips. When she brought them out, she admitted to us that one had fallen on the floor in the kitchen, and they were making up a replacement right away which would be brought out ASAP. We wouldn’t have known the difference and told her really not to worry about it, but when she returned to the kitchen, they had already replaced it and so we got our missing pickle slice anyway. The pickles had a crunch and the breading was crispy. They could have given us more of their house pepper-​ranch dressing for dipping, but otherwise much enjoyed. Husband got Andouille Hash entrée and said it was somewhere between good and very good.
Others mentioned the space itself as a problem, and we thought it was just fine. I didn’t have an issue with the sound echoing off the tables, and it was aesthetically pleasing I thought.
We didn’t have dessert, but husband DID find a microbrew beer that he had not seen offered other places in the past. We had a great time, and with the couple next to us groping each other for dear life, we got both dinner AND a show.

Our experience in a word… awful
bad service
mediocre food
and expensive
1 + 2 + 3 = Sad
I should start with, I am a Cajun food fan and I should have known better but one can always hope right? We started with the fried pickles (they were burnt). Our server put in a wrong order (she got it 15 min after ours the rest of us and it was bland. yum) and did I mention that it was expensive to boot? Lets see high points. they serve Abita.

I held off reviewing Café Roux until I visited for a 2^nd time. I was hoping the first time was a fluke, and I gave them another try, but this review can’t be held back any longer.
Let me start off with a few positives. The space is nice, the outdoor seating is terrific, and the server was fantastic. Oddly enough, one of the highlights was the restroom! It was beautifully designed. There is only one women’s room, so I could see that being a problem on busy nights, but the restroom itself is 5 stars. Strange, but true.
Food positives:
— The oysters were tasty (Blue Point from the Chesapeake Bay area — no Gulf BP oil infused oysters for obvious reasons). They were also reasonably priced during the 50 cent Happy Hour special.
— The dirty rice was the most flavorful item we tried on the menu. We tried to order red beans and rice as a side item, but were told it wasn’t available as a side item. This seemed strange for a cajun restaurant. It had to be ordered in addition to the entrée.
Moving on to the negatives:
— The shrimp po boy had good flavor, but the shrimp is not fried and they were few and far between on the sandwich. It was really more of a coleslaw sandwich (the slaw, admittedly, had good flavor) with a couple of shrimp tossed in for good measure. I’m not saying a shrimp po boy has to have fried shrimp, saving on calories is always a bonus, but I do expect it will have more shrimp than slaw. In addition, it wasn’t in a traditional hoagie type roll. The slaw and juices made it a mess and the sandwich ended up falling apart.
— The «Southern Style Fried Chicken» was the blandest I’ve ever had. The batter was crispy, but there was no flavor whatsoever. For «buttermilk» chicken, it certainly didn’t taste as moist as one would expect. My significant other said he thought it was oven baked, not fried, and I tended to agree. While it is entirely possible to make delicious «oven fried» chicken — this wasn’t it.
In the end, I gave them 3 stars over 2 stars because of the effort of the staff. If they could retool the menu and add more flavor (a la standard cajun/​southern cuisine), they could definitely move up a star and become a regular spot on our restaurant schedule.

Food was wonderful. Value of food is perfect. Beer and wine list was a great little selection. Server was a little new or not trained well, but he’ll get the hang of it soon I bet. We started off with some oysters which were great and fresh… they were completely shucked with liquor remaining something the Bristol doesn’t always get right. Pork boulettes were wonderful and cooked perfect! The four of all shared and we couldn’t decide what was the best, but the crawfish pie was a definate favorite. I just wished we would have left room for beignets.

Delightfully surprising. I was so worried there wouldn’t be a vegetarian option. I ordered the Roux BLT no bacon and it was so good I still remember how good it is. I couldn’t even finish it, it was a huge portion. The server was super friendly.
My only complaint is the atmosphere is pretty boring. And though they did have a vegetarian option there was not a lot to choose from.

Café Roux might be worth at least three stars on a good night, but I guess I haven’t caught them on a good night. I’ve had soggy, undercooked (but very tasty!) pork boulettes; bland, boring gumbo; a chicken and sweet potato hash which tasted OK but was not delivered as described on the menu (more on that later); and a crawfish étouffée which was pretty decent. Taken as a whole, I’ve been totally underwhelmed by the food, and that’s before I even mention the hot-​on-​top, frozen-​on-​the-​bottom pecan pie which would have been more aptly named «corn syrup pie» since while there was a layer of pecans on top, the filling was entirely devoid of nuts. Yes, really.
The space is pretty nice, well decorated, but situated within a weird faux-​urban block in the middle of a cornfield. I don’t really get what people find attractive about these developments. Why build what essentially amounts to a large movie set so that people can pretend they’re in a city, when there is an *actual* city like ten minutes away? People are nuts.
Anyway, service has been decent. One guy in particular was super friendly, very obviously trying hard, but also very obviously not trained well. At a minimum, I tend to expect servers to know what the dishes look like; when my hash came out topped with an egg that was clearly not sunny side up, I said, «I’m not complaining here, just making an observation, and that egg isn’t sunny side up. No big deal, just wondering what’s up with that.»
I was merely hoping for a reasonable explanation – maybe the menu changed, or the cook wasn’t paying attention and flipped it, or it sat in the window too long under a heat lamp (although, I figure, a server should catch that!) – but what I got instead was, «Oh, I don’t know. I don’t even know what sunny side up means. Maybe they changed the recipe.»
Really?! Come on! That’s just embarrassing. How can anyone be expected to serve quality food to their customers when they don’t even know what the finished product is supposed to look like? For shame. Granted, that was just the one time; but it’s still pretty sad considering that the place wasn’t very busy, and if that server were still being trained he should have had some help.
I’m sure I’ll be back, someday. Maybe next time I’m in the mood to sit around in a cornfield dolled up to look like a city block.

Went with my parents for a happy hour meal after seeing the recent review in the Star. All of us have lived in New Orleans (my dad is a native) and know and love Louisiana cooking. For the most part our experiences at so-​called Creole/​Cajun restaurants outside of Louisiana have been disappointing. The food never tastes right. Café Roux was an exception! With happy hour oysters at 50 cents a piece, I ordered half a dozen as a starter. They tasted fresh and briny. My dad (who’s 98) ordered the shrimp and grits, which was very spicy, and scarfed it all up. I ordered the crawfish etouffé which reminded me a lot of the dish I fondly remember from New Orleans’ Bön Ton Café. There’s a debate about whether etouffé should be red or not, and if it is red, whether the ingredient should be tomato or paprika. Café Roux seems to have opted for the tomato version. The sauce was light, mildly spicy (compared to the shrimp and grits) and full of tasty crawfish meat. My mother ordered a muffuletta sandwich and sampled our entrees. The muffuletta was good, but there was an odd taste that detracted from it’s authenticity. Could there have been mustard added? If so, not authentic. With authentic olive salad easily available, it shouldn’t be hard to reproduce a muff worthy of the Central Grocery in the French Market. For dessert we split an order of beignets and ordered coffee. Our bill for the entire meal came to $ 55!!! Very reasonable. The highest priced entrée on the menu was $ 19.
We were there on a Sunday afternoon around 5:00 p.m. and the noise level was OK (my dad is very sensitive to loud noise). The restaurant is attractive and has an urban feel to it, although the Park Place development in which it’s located (just north of Town Center Plaza along Nall) has a stage-​set atmosphere to it. Still, it was very pleasant, the price was right, parking was easy in the adjacent garage, and as former New Orleanians we’ll definitely go back. I’d love to see more New Orleans classics on the menu, like jambalaya, oysters Bienville and Rockefeller, turtle soup, seafood-​stuffed eggplant, etc., and some desserts like bread pudding, but hopefully the menu will expand as the restaurant settles in and gets its feet on the ground. I wish the place all the best. We need a good Louisiana restaurant in Kansas City!

I stumbled upon this place with my parents as we were driving through the new Park Place area near Town Center. When we went in, the place was empty, but we figured we’d give it a try. We sat inside to avoid the rain, although we later noticed that there was covered outdoor seating. A couple other tables were seated while we were there, but it never filled up.
The lunch menu (not sure if dinner is the same) looked excellent. My dad ordered the gumbo and my mom and I ordered the catfish po’boy. I had sweet potato fries as a side and my mom had potato salad and cajun coleslaw. The gumbo was delicious despite it not having any seafood in it like I’m used to. The catfish po’boys were incredible — perfectly cooked and dressed. The sweet potato fries were some of the best I’ve had. I’d venture to say they’re even better than Blanc Burgers’ sweet potato fries.
My parents loved the place so much that they went back the next day for lunch before leaving town. My dad described the shrimp po’boy much differently than the catfish po’boy, but loved it just the same. The shrimp was not fried, but seemed to be sauteed.
The service was excellent… attentive, but not overwhelming. I would guess that this place will not be so empty next time we go as word spreads about these great sandwiches.

After much deliberation about where to sit (we had the whole place to ourselves), we went with a street-​side outdoor table. A great choice. The echo-​y, climate controlled, sparkling clean dining room just didn’t seem appropriate for our Cajun affair. True, the streets at Town Center are about clean enough to eat off of — certainly not the endearingly grungy southern bayou setup you find at Jazz and most other Cajun-​themed joints — but the slight humidity and fresh air helped. So did the food.
The menu was quite small, but contained just enough of the classics to please those of us who knew what we had come for. As we pondered what to order, I hailed a spicy martini (Cajun-​tini?), made simply with Absolut Peppar and vermouth, garnished with an ingenious skewer of two green olives stuffed with pickled jalapenos. I enjoyed it so much, I look forward to purchasing the ingredients needed to make my own and consuming them the rest of the summer. Elizabeth got some nutty concoction containing every kind of juice Dole makes and a spritz of some type of booze. I skeptically tried a bit and found it to be just as I had expected — spiked fruit punch. No thanks. (But undoubtedly refreshing.)
For dinner we settled on splitting several things, ordering up the crawfish boil, crawfish étouffée and «green» redfish. We each added a $ 3 cup of gumbo, too, as a starter, which was brought to the table accompanied by four mini baguettes, perfect for mopping up sauces the rest of the night. The gumbo was the shining star of the evening… hot, moderately spicy, and rich but not too thick. There was rice included in the bowl but not too much, which allows the soup’s flavors to shine and speaks to the chef’s opinion of his dish. As I picture my return to Café Roux, I debate whether I might go for a bowl, a side of grits, and just mop it all up with the delicious french bread. A more delicious and affordable dinner would be hard to come by anywhere.
The crawfish boil was as should be expected. Simply boiled four to five inch long crawfish came in a big bowl with some large, skin-​on boiled potatoes and half cobs of corn, all swimming in a murky natural jus.
The flavors were all there. This was the classic crawfish boil, lacking nothing. It may have been slightly more enjoyable served by some guy named Boudreaux out of a smoldering pot behind his withered swamp shed in the hazy heat of a N’awlins night, but that’s about the only improvement I can think of. Salty juice went streaming down my hands and writs each time I cracked another open from the bountiful portion we were served, and I enjoyed slurping and sucking at the shells in attempts to extract as much flavor as possible from the meaty tail and juicy head. A key to the potatoes: I made sure to split mine open in the broth, like a matzoh ball, so they’d soak up as much moisture and flavor as possible. The corn, too, benefited from the naturally briny cooking liquid, needing no extra salt or butter.
The étouffée was slightly fancier than those I’ve had before. It was apparently heavy on the tomatoes — bright red in color and containing a noticeable tang from the acidity. The texture of the étouffée, too, was fancy, in a delightful way. Etouffees I’ve had before have all been somewhat thick and creamy from the richness of the butter-​laden roux. This one was a little chunkier — less congealed — and its celery, peppers and onion still had a little bite to them, which was nice. The texture was a plus in this version of one of my favorites in the genre. The crawfish content in the dish was plentify, too, which was a huge plus. Often, the crawfish in an etoufee can be impossible to locate. Café Roux clearly takes pride in their generous allotment.
The «green» redfish, perhaps, would have been better had I not eaten it last. I think that during the time I spent dismantling crawfish from the boil, it lost its delicacy. The hearty fish seemed a tad overcooked — pretty dang solid and hard to cut with a fork’s edge. And the bed of rice sweetened naturally with the corn’s cream had lost its temperature in the breezy evening air, seeming more like a leftover dish straight out of the fridge than a nice seafood accompaniment. I could easily tell, though, that had this been my entrée of choice, it would have been perfectly satisfying eaten piping hot, straight out of the kitchen. The ample sweet corn kernel salad mounded on top of the meat added a pleasant juiciness and complimentary sweetness to the dish, bringing all the flavors together. I’d guess that the vast majority of patrons who order the «green» redfish would be perfectly happy with it.
In the end, we loaded up on some tasty classics that satisfied a hunger in my belly not satiated since our trip to New Orleans almost a year ago. In summary: Café Roux was Johnson-​County-​does-​Cajun, and pretty good at that. I’d certainly recommend it and I look forward to going back and sampling the menu further.

I ordered a side of Cheese Grits & Braised Collards, plus a cup of the Crab & Corn Soup. The grits were creamy & delicious, which was completely unexpected. I never knew they could be that way, like a risotto! The Collards were perfect, no bitterness at all, just right for me, although, I do like a little more spice. The soup was sensational; a rich corn chowder with tons of real quality crab. I am looking forward to my next visit.