What to expect: Legit Creole-Cajun in a funky old Forest Park house. Counter service with a small bar. Indoor, outdoor, and covered outdoor seating. Creative daily specials. Always check the specials and daily burger board.
Favorites: Best gumbo in Birmingham. The beef debris and BBQ shrimp po’boy are fantastic.
Call: (205) 518-6677
Map: 817 39th St S Birmingham, AL 35222
Web: rougaroux.com
The Full Story
The Rougaroux dwells in a house on a hill in Forest Park. The old, pink house is a pirate ship in disguise, creaking back and forth on the sea. It’s haunted, of course.
The original 1800s house has been added onto with covered alleyways and homemade open air rooms. Nothing matches. I imagine these additions were built by feral children from materials scavenged from around the neighborhood. This is the stage for an ongoing house-party called the Rougaroux.
It’s from this haunted kid-fort/pirate ship that Chef Ryan Champion is putting out serious food. He did a stretch at Commander’s Palace, a rite of passage for many New Orleans cooks. (Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudehome both came through CP.) Champion is also an alum of Bottega, which doesn’t hurt.
The Rougaroux roast beef debris and BBQ shrimp po’boys would be at home in any storied neighborhood joint in New Orleans. They’re slinging the best po’boys in Birmingham by a wide margin.
In addition to New Orleans standards they run daily specials that range from small plates to sandwiches to plated entrees. The menu is campy but the food is confident and brash.
For example, the Bayou Bomb was a fried hand-pie with alligator sausage and kimchi. The BBQ Dreamin’ was a po’boy with mortadella burnt ends, mustard-based barbecue sauce, slaw, and pickles.
And on the same menu, at once or days apart, one can find a classic pickled shrimp or an expertly fried soft-shell crab. Their gumbo is as by-the-book classic New Orleans as it gets.
The Rougaroux does whatever they want. They’re pirates, after all.
If they want to throw rum and rose wine into a daiquiri machine and call the slushy concoction a Frose, I’ll be the last to stand in their way. And if they want to top it off with a splash of Prosecco, we should let them. They clearly live by a finely nuanced code that we can celebrate if not fully understand.
And yet somehow, the Rougaroux is a family neighborhood joint. Bored toddlers in strollers pick at baskets of fried shrimp with their parents at the outdoor tables. Service industry workers shoot whiskey and sip beer at the bar. Accountants in golf shirts stand in the ordering line with Goth kids and grandmas. Someone’s uncle is getting loud and holding court. They get busy.
Get a bar seat if possible. There are only three so you’ll need to be lucky or early. Then sit back, order a sandwich and a drink, and see what happens.
The Rougaroux could only exist in New Orleans, or perhaps, in an old, pink house on the south side of Birmingham.
-SB
Birmingham Food Scene 