Noms de manger in Baton Rouge

Dishes with proper names—you see them on menus all over Baton Rouge. Caesar Salads and Oysters Rockefeller, move over: The tradition of naming food in a clever, ironic or salutatory fashion lives on in the Red Stick. Below are just a few examples of nearby noms de manger: Gino’s: At Gino’s Italian restaurant, dishes named after its proprietor, Gino Marino, or his mother, Grace “Mama” Marino, pepper the menu. But the famous Laurence bread appetizer has an interesting, little-known backstory. According to Gino, the family was sitting down to a meal between shifts when Mama Marino brought out a new kind of bread for everyone to try. Upon tasting it, everyone agreed it belonged on the menu but stalled on ideas for a name. Laurence, Gino’s brother, joked that since everything else on the menu carried Gino’s name, they might as well call it Gino bread. Mama paused and said, “No. I think we’ll call it Laurence bread.” Now everyone in Gino’s family has a dish named after him or her—including his sister Frances, whose name was Italianized to create Pasta Francesca. Mike Anderson’s: Former Tiger footballer Mike Anderson likes to honor the little guy in his dishes. As he struggled once for a name for a new dish at his restaurant, a refrigerator repairman walked in and was immortalized by The Norman, a tasty shrimp or fish fillet topped by crab étouffée. There’s also the Guitreau, a grilled fish fillet topped with sautéed crawfish and shrimp, named after a plumber—not to be confused with the Sid Gautreaux, a breaded fillet of fish named after the sheriff of the same name. There’s also the Howard, a marinated drum fillet baked scales-on, named for Anderson’s father. Find out more about Baton Rouge’s favorite dishes with a designation—click here to read the whole story.