Restaurant Impossible Follow-Up — Coffee's Boilin' Pot (Madisonville, La) Closed

A married couple took over the restaurant they meet and worked together at. What should have become a dream come true turned into a nightmare. After Year 1, business began to quickly decline. The stress of a failing business lead them to divorce. Doesn't sound like a recipe for success, but it does sound like some good drama for another episode of RI.

Coffee's Boilin' Pot | No restaurant website available

[table]
Problems Robert Had to Address
1. Dirty and smelly restaurant
2. The owner produces bland food completely lacking salt
3. Their seafood boil is only freshly cooked when they run out
4. The fried food is greasy
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Lesson for Home
At first I thought it was the failed marriage that lead this place into massive debt, but there is some major problems with the food. The guy doesn't salt anything. Without salt food tastes bland. That is because salt turns up our taste buds. When something it properly salted it doesn't taste salty, it tastes more like itself. It's always best to salt as your cooking, so that salt is better incorporated into the food. If you just left salting to at the table, your more likely to over salt the food and that is where people take in too much sodium.

The Recipes

Crawfish Spring Roll | Click here for the recipe
A two classic southern favorite featured in this spring roll - collards and crawfish served with a Creole style Aiol

Shrimp Boil | Click here for the recipe
This restaurant's main feature was it's seafood boil. Yet their was severely lacking in flavor. So Robert taught them a recipe for a shrimp boil with andouille sausage.

Follow-Up
Another restaurant bites the dust. The restaurant's website is gone and I read on several restaurant review websites that the place closed down before Hurricane Issac hit Madisonville. The flooding that came with the hurricane pretty much wiped out any hope of the place being revived.

Want to find out when I post my next RI follow-up. Make sure to follow me on Twitter.

If you want more Robert Irvine recipes, here are some of his available cookbooks:

This cookbook contains 111 recipes many with complete timelimes and several that are gluten free. An example of the kind of recipes you will find are Lime-Cured Shrimp and Roasted Corn Chowder, Porcini-Dusted Pork Chops with Cremini Mushrooms and Golden Raisins over Horseradish-Scented Potatoes.

In this book Robert shares his personal stories (including cooking for First Lady Laura Bush) and cooking philosophy. There are also recipes to be had like Black Angus Beef Tartare with Toasted Brioche and Fried Quail Egg, Roasted Duck with White Bean Ragout.