img 0103 150x150 The shrimp are flat in Shreveport...or at least at Herby Ks!Shreveport has been much maligned as the red headed stepchild of the Louisiana culinary scene.  People make it seem like someone routinely steps into the kitchens of Shreveport restaurants half naked and painted cardinal red, yells “Pig-SOOOOEEEEE” and steals the salt, leaving the chef little option but to serve tasteless food.  Seriously, native Shreveportians will be the first to tell you the food gets blander as you go further north up I-49, but there are bastions of hope that remain strong and Herby-K’s has been showing other places how to cook seafood for a long time.

Since 1936, Herby-K’s has been putting out cold suds and hot food.  Indeed, the place is a veritable time capsule.  In the middle of what some would consider to be a rundown area of town, Herby-K’s is surrounded by dilapidated buildings that once housed vibrant businesses.  Don’t let it scare you, just look for the lights.  From the outside of Herby-K’s, the neon signs clearly proclaim what they are most proud of: Shrimp Busters, cold beer and liquor.

I knew I had made the right choice when I first stepped in and saw the ice chest.  Sitting in a claw foot tub was one of those long green ice chestsimg 0105 150x150 The shrimp are flat in Shreveport...or at least at Herby Ks! that you can sink a whole redfish in, but it looked oddly out of place (ice chest…check, big tub…check, wait…I’m here to eat!), until someone ordered a beer and the waitress/ (possible) owner opened it up to pull out a couple of glistening cold ones.  You can have your Viking coolers and frost chillers, this is how you chill beer when you don’t give a darn about anything else besides chilling the beer.  7 minutes and the Rockies will turn blue every time.  That’ll be a Bud Light for me please!

Looking over the menu, there were several tasty items, but I had come for one thing.  The dish that is talked about all the way to the Gulf: the Shrimp Buster.  The Buster is a bit of an anomaly.  You take a large shrimp, butterfly the heck out of it, then give it a bit of a pounding to further flatten it out.  The effect they’ve gone for is akin to Middendorf’s style of frying catfish, where paper-thin is the ultimate goal.  They then take the shrimp and lay them over pieces of buttered img 0110 150x150 The shrimp are flat in Shreveport...or at least at Herby Ks!french bread, put a lemon on top and give it a side of Buster sauce.

I squeezed the lemon over the top and took a bite of my shrimp and it was, well, pretty good.  I mean, I didn’t text everyone I knew that this place was awesome on that very first bite.  I figured I was doing something wrong here, because here I was having the Shrimp Buster and the fireworks weren’t going off.  So I took a piece of shrimp and dipped it in the sauce.  Now we were getting somewhere.  The sauce is similar to a thin Heinz 57 sauce, something I had long ago relegated to being used by people who ordered their steaks “burnt” at restaurants only to float them in pools of 57, but here I was liking the combo.  Somehow, the super crispy shrimp dipped in this Worcestershire heavy concoction was really working for me.

Alas, I knew there had to be more to it and then it struck me, put the shrimp on top of a piece of the bread, squish it down a little and dip it au jus style.    Bam.  That’s when the magic struck.  Halfway through my Baby Buster (a smaller order because I try to eat “healthy every now and again) I had figured it all out.  They had let the tourist sit at the bar and try to figure out how to eat this thing, stumbling and bumbling his way to learnimg 0111 150x150 The shrimp are flat in Shreveport...or at least at Herby Ks! what they already knew…the Buster was not meant to be picked apart and analyzed, it was meant to be a package deal and that package is awesome.  I have to admit that I didn’t turn around to watch how the locals ate their Busters, but knowing what I know now, their is only one way to eat it, the squish and dip.

I’d be remiss to not talk about the onion rings also.  9 times out of 10, if given the choice to substitute onion rings for fries I do it, especially if they are homemade.  It’s hard to find people doing there own onion rings,  but it is MUCH harder to find a place with house cut fries so I generally choose the former.  Herby-K’s onion rings are great!  The batter was crispy and crunchy, falling apart at all the appropriate times by never totally disintegrating off the onion ring.  Good stuff all around.

My experience at Herby-K’s left me feeling happy and full.  I’d found a great meal in a town many declare is hopelessly lacking good eats (at least at decent prices).  While I’d never seen a kitchen flatten shrimp and fry them up, there are a lot of things I haven’t seen and who I am to say shrimp scallopine is the wrong way to prepare the prawn.  I loved the result and while I may be eating the Buster wrong no one told me any different and while I am not one to use cliches that often, if I’m wrong… I don’t want to be right.

Contact info:
1833 Pierre Avenue
Shreveport, LA
(318)424-2724

A brief aside:

I did notice a banner hanging behind the bar, green in color and about 14 inches long.  It commemorated an event that people in Louisiana either hold near and dear or just choose to forget.  A stenciled Green Wave was below the year 1973 and next to the score of Tulane -14, LSU- Zip.  I stepped behind the bar to take a picture of the pennant, because it was significant  for two reasons.  When I was going to img 0113 150x150 The shrimp are flat in Shreveport...or at least at Herby Ks!college, I contemplated attending Tulane and when I approached my grandfather and told him I had a scholarship he said simply “do you want to be a Fighting Tiger or a Greenie Weenie all your life?”  Of course, I became a Fighting Tiger on that advice and I’m proud I did.  Now I have Tulane alums for in laws  and they still talk about that win in 1973 and believe that one day the “Battle for the Rag” will be won by Tulane again.  I knew they would get a kick out of seeing the flag.  Heck, as I took the picture of the pennant a wizened gentlemen said “I was at that game young fella.”  I responded, “was a it a good day for you or a bad one?”  He said “one of the best.”

Ah well, we agree that we love the Shrimp Buster.  GO TIGERS!!!

minilogo The shrimp are flat in Shreveport...or at least at Herby Ks!