Chris West hates the pasta that’s sitting in front of him. “I actually worked at Cajun Italian restaurants,” he tells me. “But it's a whole other [legit] culture in New Orleans.” Said culture does not include “pastalaya,” a noodle version of jambalaya, which is a good way to classify the Cajun noodle dish that’s parked on the table between us at an East Tulsa Applebee’s.
West would know, because New Orleans is deep in his DNA. He has tattoos of Trombone Shorty and other NOLA musicians, and moonlights on bass with Medicine Horse, whose fiercely Native American presentation and lyrics ride a distinctly New Orleans sludge-metal undercurrent.
With his wife Amanda, the New Orleans native owns and runs Lassalle’s French Market and Farm; previously, they ran Lassalle’s New Orleans Deli downtown, before Covid closed it. The farm provides the raw materials for his OklaNola hot sauces and Cajun/Creole cuisine sold at Gambill’s and other restaurants, and their produce is a staple at area farmers markets. West does various pop-up menus around town, including regular crawfish boils at The Pump.
West is a serious Cajun chef who hasn’t gotten used to being called one. He rails regularly against false Cajun food online, and not without blowback. In one particularly memorable Facebook post, West criticized a “Cajun vegan spaghetti poboy” so thoroughly (he called it “spaghetti on bread”) that he got doxed and cursed by the owner of the food truck that produced it. “I guess a ‘friend’ of mine gave her my number,” he said while doing air quotes.
Knowing all this, it felt only natural to take West to sample Applebee’s Big Easy menu. The week after Mardi Gras, the two of us sat down to an aggressively average spread of food items with “Bourbon Street” and “blackened” in their names. This was right after St. Patrick’s Day and Applebee’s was still offering their festive green drink specials. We each ordered a Tipsy Leprechaun so we could bastardize both his and my heritage simultaneously.
“I hate pasta as a food in general,” he said as I cautiously slurped up my “Cajun” noodle dish (penne alfredo). “That tastes like there’s Velveeta in it,” he said after trying it, though he assured me he didn’t judge me for ordering it. “Velveeta with thyme on it,” he finally pronounced, shaking his head.
I thought it’d be funny to take West here, given his passion for good food and Applebee’s lack thereof. But the Big Easy menu was more mediocre than atrocious, more Easy than Big, with only a few offerings (most of them featuring pasta, to West’s great chagrin). Each item was “jazzed up,” whether with “cajun spices” or butter—even if the potency of the “jazz” was closer to Utah’s than NOLA’s. The food simply existed, devoid of passion or justification: the opposite of New Orleans’ endlessly rich and complex culture.
I asked West how he liked his Bourbon Street Chicken and Shrimp. “Well,” he said through a mouthful. “It’s chicken. And there’s shrimp. And Tony Chachere's on top. So … yeah.” I commented on the firmness of the boudin link on my plate. “Bro, that’s a breadstick … they don’t have any fuckin’ boudin here,” he laughed.
***
West has no formal culinary training, but entered the food world in New Orleans in the other archetypal way: as a dishwasher. He ended up in Tulsa after Hurricane Katrina. His wife, whom he’s known since seventh grade, has family in Owasso, and the couple have been growing roots in the Tulsa suburb ever since the levees broke.
In 2014, they opened Lassalle's New Orleans Deli, an authentic lunch spot popular enough to warrant an expansion a few years later. (Lassalle is Chris’ grandfather's last name. “He's French, not Cajun,” he told me. “My grandmother on my dad's side is Cajun French. It's all confusing. There's Cajun French and French Creole … and just French.”) Then Covid hit, taking the deli down with it. The couple turned their attention to their farm and industrial kitchen, which not only provide ingredients for their Cajun/Creole cooking, but also employ sustainable practices that result in better-tasting food.
“Regenerative farming is the exact opposite of industrial farming,” West told me. “We take care of the soil first and don't use sprays or pesticides. We go above and beyond organic on most occasions. We rarely till the ground to not disturb microbes and other beneficial organisms. We believe in [working from] the ground up, as opposed to spraying fertilizers every season, tilling the ground every crop, and drenching crops in pesticides to have pretty produce. Regenerative produce isn't gorgeous, sometimes, but it's so much more nutrient dense [as] opposed to commercial produce.”
While the Wests transfer their plants to a smaller nursery to focus on some new Lassalle’s food projects, I paid a visit to their industrial kitchen in Collinsville, where they make all of their hot sauces, seasonings, and soups. The nondescript space sits on the small town main street, with reflective tape on the outer windows and black curtains obscuring the view from the inside.
“I put the curtains up because Collinsville is nosy as hell,” Chris said. “When we approached the landlord to lease this space, he thought we were money laundering.” While the kitchen is camouflaged by its “hidden in plain sight” appearance, the inside is painted and decorated to resemble the original Lassalle's brick and mortar as closely as possible.
Between the NOLA Jazz & Heritage Fest posters and the “DEFEND NEW ORLEANS” flag, I spotted the other piece of the Lassalle’s puzzle: Amanda, who oozes that fabled “Southern hospitality,” with a biting wit that snaps like Crystal's Hot Sauce. I told Amanda I wished she’d been at Applebee’s, and she told me she had no such desire herself.
It sounds crazy that she and Chris have known each other since seventh grade, but when you see them together it’s obvious they were made to love and work with each other. “Amanda’s the fucking talent, bro,” Chris said. “It’s fifty-fifty. I’m just the dickhead everyone happens to see.”
On the day I visited, the couple were engaged in hot sauce production, working together as they fielded my questions between pepper-fume-induced coughing fits.
The first sauce of the day: Creole Garlic, made with a fire-truck-red fermented pepper mash. Amanda was excited to show me Claire, their steam jacketed kettle, of whom the couple is particularly proud. Steam circulates between Claire’s double walls, cooking their sauces evenly without hot spots or scorching. “Everything that’s cooked, or is a sauce … it’s Claire’s show,” Chris told me. After bottling the red sauce, Amanda produced fresh black garlic that would soon get the fermentation treatment for a different one.
All Lassalle’s soups and sauces are a mix of family recipes and tried and true Cajun/Creole templates. Before I left the kitchen, Amanda gifted me a container of Crawfish Monica, a dish the Wests only offer for catering. A crawfish-forward dish finished with Parmesan, the end product calls for pasta. As Amanda wrote thawing and cooking directions on the Monica container for me, Chris explained I could perfectly cook the pasta by “throwing it in the fucking trash.”
After preparing the Monica and rotini at home (on the stove, not in the trash), I was reminded of just why Lassalle’s is tops for me. The flavors of holy trinity (the “Cajun sofrito” of onions, peppers, and celery), cream, wine, crawfish, and Lassalle’s signature Creole seasoning, topped with their Creole garlic hot sauce, came through with an exceptional depth and complexity.
No one’s doing it like the Wests. I love the Nola’s Creole and Cocktails spin on New Orleans cuisine, and will chain smoke over Crawpappy’s brunch. But for the highest level of authenticity, I put my trust in the Lassalle family. I routinely pick up a to-go container of their chicken and sausage gumbo at Gambill’s and am reminded I can’t make a deep roux for shit.
***
Local Cajun/Creole restaurants that meet West’s standards came up in conversation at Applebee’s, but he wouldn’t weigh in on any other crawfish boil in town out of respect. He hates any and all restaurant chains, not on food merit but because they’re owned by private equity groups. He raises an eyebrow at any poboy not served on a proper Leidenheimer roll.
I asked West what he thought about il seme, not realizing it’s located in the spot where Lassalle’s had planned to open before the pandemic extinguished their dream buildout. “I love [Lisa Becklund, who runs il seme], and I hear it is excellent, but I can’t bring myself to go in,” he said. “It’d be heartbreaking.”
“But I have good news,” he said, rebounding with a proud grin. “I’m bringing the Lassalle’s menu back at The Pump.”
Lassalle’s pop-up offerings at the 6th and Lewis hangout have proved popular enough to earn a permanent spot at the table. West’s excellent poboys will be served alongside other traditional Cajun/Creole flair in a slim menu modeled after the OG Lassalle’s at 5th and Boston. Foodies with a brown pelican’s keen eye (that’s the Louisiana state bird, I just found out) have surely spied cryptic images of poboys in Tulsa food groups as of late. Those beautiful images, posted by West, were the soft bulletin for his return to the Tulsa food scene.
“We’re literally betting the farm on it,” he told me.
***
“Any last words on that Big Easy meal?” I asked West as we pushed away our plates, not nearly tipsy enough on our depressingly mid cocktails. “Classic Applebee’s, but with Cajun seasoning added,” he said. “Chicken dry as the Sahara. Shrimp were cooked to rubber band doneness. Everything I’d expect from a restaurant owned by investment firms.”
Thanks to chefs like the Wests in town, we have far better Louisiana options than the “jazzed up” bullshit at Applebee’s. With the Lassalle’s menu relaunching at The Pump, we’re soon to get even more.
