Spencer and I visited longtime Baton Rouge/LSU favorite The Chimes this week for lunch. Surprisingly, I can’t find any historical information on the Chimes and why it’s so well-loved, other than that it’s a college bar with an extensive beer selection and great food. Does it even need anything else?

I decided to try one of The Chimes’ most raved about dishes–the seafood pasta (shrimp and crawfish in a tasso cream sauce), while Spencer had the half and half seafood platter (shrimp and oyster with fries and hush puppies).

My huge portion of seafood pasta was also huge on flavor:

I really enjoyed the tasso cream sauce and generous number of crawfish tails. The shrimp were fairly small and probably previously frozen, but they didn’t take anything away from the dish. Spencer doesn’t have a first bite photo because he was expressionless as usual, but said that there was “nothing special” about his fried seafood. He did, however, love the fries, and after tasting one I agreed. There wasn’t anything outstanding about the fries themselves but they were seasoned really nicely.

The Chimes offers a 35 cent oyster special every day from 4-7pm and all day Tuesday. They also have an “Around the World” challenge involving drinking 60 beers from 20 countries for a t-shirt and permanent recognition on a plaque. Who’s up for the challenge?

www.thechimes.com