Under new chef, Bin 77 offers an updated menu – David Dickensauge traveled across the literal and culinary map for 14 years.

David Dickensauge traveled across the literal and culinary map for 14 years, working everywhere from Birmingham, Ala., to Boston and under big names such as Thomas Keller and more. When Dickensauge returned to Louisiana, he didn’t go home to New Orleans, where he started cooking in 1994 at Commander’s Palace. Instead, the chef came to Baton Rouge.

Right after Valentine’s Day, he took over as chef and general manager of Bin 77 (Map it!). Whereas the menu used to focus on bistro-style dishes from the mind of chef Blake Abadie, who is now running Le Bon Temps Bar and Grill, Dickensauge says the new menu is now 42 items long, including foods appropriate for showing off the bar’s wine selection.

“We’re a wine bar,” he says. “But, we’re bringing Louisiana flavors. We’ll never try to do things people won’t understand, but we grew up in the South. We like our food, but we want it to be stepped up a notch.”

Some of the ramped-up flavors include duck beignets, tuna carpacchio, duck confit, fois gras-stuffed quail and an heirloom tomato salad.

“Before it was simple foods,” he says. “Now, it’s composed of all layers of flavors to go with the wines.”
In the future, Dickensauge wants to incorporate a farm-to-table mindset at Bin 77, as well.

“When you have these items, it’s so easy to make the food taste better,” he says. “We want to lock arms with that and get the freshest produce and meats as possible and stay as local as we possibly can.”

The Perkins Rowe wine bar also offers an inexpensive Thursday night three-course wine dinner. Tonight’s menu features a Louisiana watermelon salad, blackened Ahi tuna and butter-poached scallops. Each course is paired with a wine and costs $35 per person. For more information, click here or call 763-2288. —Matthew Sigur