Lasyone’s Meat Pie Kitchen

The meat pie created by the late James Lasyone is a brightly seasoned mélange of pork and beef enclosed in a half-circle pastry crust. It is deep fried until the crust is golden crisp and the meat inside is steaming hot. Most people get one for lunch, sided by dirty rice and a good southern vegetable such as okra or greens, but it’s not uncommon to see someone having a meat pie at 7am alongside a couple of fried eggs and grits glistening with melted butter.

Lasyone’s true Louisiana menu also lists fried seafood (shrimp, oysters), red beans and rice with powerhouse sausage, and such Dixie classics as catfish platters and chicken and dumplings with cornbread and black-eyed peas. We have eaten first-rate banana pudding for dessert, but the sweet tour de force here is a dish invented by Mrs. Lasyone called Cane River cream pie — a variant of Boston cream pie, but with gingerbread instead of white cake.