Look At This Fucking Dish.

Alligator Cafe's Fried Oyster BLT Is So Good It Keeps The Rent Down.

Welcome to Look At This Fucking Dish, our recurring feature highlighting the craziest, most decadent dishes found in and around Dallas. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

Fried Oyster BLT.
Alligator Cafe.
Two Locations: 9540 Garland Road near White Rock Lake and 2912 Elm Street in Deep Ellum. (The Fried Oyster BLT is only served at Garland Road location.)

If Dallas is anything, it's a melting pot for all manner of regional cuisines. And, over at Alligator Cafe, head chef Ivan Pugh has crafted a menu based on the crazy taste buds of our state neighbors, Louisiana.

Pugh, a self-proclaimed “white boy who can cook soul food,” has been in the Dallas dining circuit for some time: He was a go-to caterer for many popular Dallas nightclubs in the '90s, and even spent a stint as the personal chef for former Dallas Cowboys cornerback and Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders. For the past 10 years, though, he's been the main man behind the New Orleans-styled menu at Alligator Cafe.

In an effort to further bolster the lunch menu at the Garland Road Alligator Cafe — and to capitalize off of Dallas' love-affair with anything slapped between two buttery slices of Texas toast — Pugh recently added his Fried Oyster BLT to the menu.

The concept of the sandwich is simple: Take the basics that make a kick-ass sandwich, and slap some fried oysters on that mother.

Two huge slices of bread, toasted to a glowing golden-brown? Check. Several slices of crispy, salty, hearty bacon? Yup. House-made tartar sauce slathered on to add the needed moisture? It is Cajun after all. Of course, a little bit of lettuce and tomatoes are added in for all you health-conscious folks out there. And smack dab in the middle of all that? Fresh-schucked oysters, fried to perfection in a spice-infused cornmeal batter.

Better yet? It's every bit as great to eat as it is to write about.

So dry off your keyboard and read what Pugh had to say about this beaut.

Let's start off with the basics: What was your inspiration for the Fried Oyster BLT?
I was in New Orleans about five years ago and I went to this place called Cochon. They didn't call it a [Fried Oyster] BLT, but it was fried oysters on a sandwich with bacon — and it was delicious. So I got it from off the beaten path in New Orleans. That was the inspiration.

Is there any one ingredient that is unique in the sandwich?
The tartar sauce is like a remoulade sauce. It's got hot sauce, worcestershire, lemon juice. Basically, it's a remoulade sauce minus catsup. In the world of remoulade, you would've added catsup to it to make it remoulade. But the beauty of this sandwich is its simplicity. It's fresh oysters, hand-battered. We use probably 22 different spices in that cornmeal batter, so you get the flavor from that.

How many oysters do you go through a day?
Well, we get fresh oysters about every other day. We have about nine gallons back there right now. We have a ton of oyster dishes. We just grab 'em, batter 'em, fry 'em and go, y'know?

How popular is the sandwich?
We only serve it during lunch. When it's busy we sell 25. On average, 20. [When] slow, 15. As a matter a fact, the landlord here gave me a really good deal on the building because it's his favorite sandwich. He was like, “I'll give you a really good deal, if you give me an oyster BLT.”

So if you ever add a new location, you have to bring a sandwich with you.
Yeah, I gotta bring an Oyster BLT with me and say, “This is what we serve,” and they'll be like “I'm in.”

OK, last question. We've got to ask: What was Deion Sanders' favorite meal?
Fried chicken. But he was as good a fisherman as he was a football player. That guy could catch some fish. So I did a lot of fried fish for him — fish that he would catch. I did a lot of scaling fish in his million dollar house.