It feels like there’s a nightly party at Pappadeaux, with the perpetual floods of people clamoring to pay pretty high prices for pretty huge portions of generally pretty good seafood. The staff is well trained, if at times young and awkward, and the restaurant always seems to be brimming with excitement; a quiet night is out of the question.

With Dixie blasting in the background, this restaurant might not appear to be Greek-owned—until you see the streams of orders for the special tableside-prepared Greek salad, which would probably give Paul Prudhomme a heart attack if he saw it. If you get a heart attack here, though, it’ll likely be from the reliable, tasty fried seafood and cream-laden bisques.

Precious little on the menu—aside from decent raw oysters—is allowed to retain its natural flavor (and cocktails will taste like anything but liquor, if you like that sort of thing). The appetizer section of the menu reads like a bypass-surgery sampler of everything from gator to shrimp, and you can opt for all of it fried or blackened. Gumbo’s lukewarm and tasteless. Shrimp or oyster po’ boys are your best bet, as they’re the lightest of all the fried foods. They’re also the best value on the menu. Whatever you get, though, the food is what it is: salty, crunchy, creamy, sometimes tasty, and hell-bent on destroying your waistband.