Finding comforts in Shreveport-Bossier City

| Join Sara Hebert and Chris Jay as they go on dates and share their local activities and restaurant choices.

Two of our favorite stress relievers are Vietnamese soup and afternoon bowling.

All of us have our favorite “comfort foods,” foods that encourage us to slow down, relax and enjoy. For most of us, these are foods from our childhood. That’s not the case with my wife, Sara, whose comfort food is a Vietnamese soup called ph .

Ph , a popular Vietnamese street food, basically consists of flavorful broth, rice noodles, herbs and chicken, beef or other meats. You can spice the soup up to your taste using jalapeño slices or hot chili sauce. If there’s a restaurant in Shreveport- Bossier City that serves ph , Sara and I have probably been regulars for far too long, especially on Sunday mornings. Did I mention that for some reason ph is also Sara’s brunch food of choice?

Suffice it to say, and with all due respect to the popular Vietnamese restaurants in town, that we had sort of burned ourselves out on all of the local ph options.

Recently, however, I heard about Noodle Bar – a Vietnamese noodle bar tucked away inside of Eldorado Resort Casino’s Sportsman’s Paradise Café in downtown Shreveport. Sportsman’s Paradise Café, it deserves to be pointed out, is a chicken fried steak kind of place serving American diner food like burgers, patty melts and breakfast 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While there’s nothing at all wrong with gigantic chicken fried steaks – I’ve happily eaten more than my share of them – it’s not every day that you wind up in a restaurant that serves both chicken fried steaks and authentic Vietnamese soups. Sportman’s Café is one such place.

Sara and I ordered shrimp and pork spring rolls as an appetizer to share – they were fresh and delicious and surprised us by being stuffed not only with the usual strips of grilled pork, shrimp, fresh herbs, lettuce and vermicelli noodles but also with spears of cucumber. For our entrees, Sara and I both ordered huge, steaming bowls of Bún bò Hu , a dish our server described as “not as popular as ph but more flavorful.” The soup was fantastic – filled with lemongrass, beef brisket slices, wide rice noodles and lots more. Sara left happy, and when she’s happy, I’m happy.

Before heading downtown to enjoy the soups at Noodle Bar, you may want to either call or go online to make sure the restaurant is open, as Noodle Bar keeps different hours than most restaurants.

–Chris Jay

There’s not a proper way to describe it, but I suppose I’m casually obsessed with bowling.

I keep a pair of bowling socks and Nike bowling shoes in my car at all times. I don’t want to watch “The Big Lebowski.” I want to live “The Big Lebowski.” The unfortunate fact is I’m bad at bowling. I’ll never get to do the Jesus dance after making a strike. I’ll never blow a kiss at Steve Buscemi.

On the other hand, I’m a workaholic.

It’s not a secret. It’s by a stroke of luck that I married someone who understands that as a workaholic, I need someone to say: “Slow it down. Take a day off. Let’s go bowling.”

Bossier City is home to my favorite bowling alley in the world Holiday Lanes, a beautifully restored 1960s classic building, complete with a bar that exists only in any obsessive bowler’s dreams. If you’re lucky, the bartender will pour you and your friends a 100-ounce tower of beer (I repeat, tower) on a bar made out of a repurposed bowling lane. There’s a gorgeous psychedelic mural running above the alleys.

It’s the best place to spend a rare Friday off. Chris definitely called in the cure for my compulsive obsession with work: beer, bowling and a giant plate of nachos. Try alternating between cheesy fingers and dry fingers for the perfect spin. It’s not an easy task.

From now until the end of the year, Holiday Lanes is running a special: 9 to 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday is 50 Cent Mania. $5 cover charge, 50 cent games, 50 cent shoes. With all the money you’ll save, you can buy a rug that will really tie the room together.

–Sara Hebert