I sat there picking at some pre-dinner pistolettes under an enormous painting of a blue dog. I was brought to near hypnosis by the way the creature’s pale green eyes appeared to spin.

“I wonder what the story is to this one,” I said to my friend Devin, dipping the warm bread into some honey garlic butter. I walked in closer to read the title. “Loup-garou.”

The name piqued my curiosity. Since I didn’t have time to cull the shelves of a musty library to learn what this meant, I had to rely on the Internet. Much less romantic, but it worked.

I learned that “loup-garou” is the name of an old French mythical creature used by Cajun parents to keep their children in line. The creature has the body of a man and the head of a dog, and roams the woods at night searching for bad little children to devour. A pretty effective parenting tool, I would imagine.

The famous George Rodrigue first painted the blue dog as an illustration of the loup-garou for a children’s book on bayou legends. Rodrigue said in an interview that he painted it blue because the loup-garou roams the earth by moonlight.

The rest is, as they say, history. Rodrigue also said he chose to paint the dog “always at eye level” so that people would experience the dog’s eyes staring back at them, as equal, locked into a sort of abstract conversation.

I was certainly experiencing this abstract conversation as I craned my neck to get another glimpse of the dog’s inexplicable stare. I just couldn’t get over the painting’s otherworldly dynamic.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I ate lunch at the Blue Dog Cafe downtown, and if you haven’t been there yet you certainly won’t be able to stay away for long. It’s quickly becoming a hot spot in the Lake Charles area. It’s a whole restaurant dedicated to the artwork of George Rodrigue.

But off of art and on to food — though the food at Blue Dog Cafe qualifies as art in my book. The honey garlic butter was a masterpiece all its own, and those pistolettes — a brush stroke of genius.

At the suggestion of my waiter, I ordered the crab au gratin, a classic French dish. This came with a side of creamy corn and a mound of dirty rice. I waited patiently. Well, maybe not so patiently. But I did have a room full of paintings to explore.

Shortly after ordering, we got our food. I dipped into the crab au gratin, ready to be critical, as I consider myself a bit of an au gratin connoisseur. I was not disappointed.

The crab meat was sufficiently “lump,” as they call it, and not the least bit fishy. The cheese and potatoes and sauce all came together beautifully, creating a colorful experience for my palate.

The corn had a complex flavor as well. There was a bit of sweetness on the front end and then a spicy kick at the back, similar to the feeling I get when I look at a blue dog painting. I’m drawn in by the cuteness, but if I stare too long into those eyes I get a shiver up my spine.

I finished off the meal with the dirty rice, which gave it that home-cooked, comforting finish, not unlike the effect of familiar scenery in the blue dog paintings around me that made them all a little less frightening.

To put a cap on the meal, it started to rain just as Devin and I got ready to leave. The blackening clouds mingled with the sunlight the way they sometimes do on warm afternoons. I was left with a feeling that life, art, food — sometimes they all intersect. Sometimes we can learn so much from a painting or a meal or an experience about our lives, how complex and interesting they are, if we can just stand looking at them long enough.

If we can outlast the urge to look away, as I looked away from the blue dog’s eyes at first, and examine something long enough to risk getting a little caught up and maybe a little confused, we can experience the joy of relating with something and learning something new.

I believe it was Socrates who once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I’m sure Mr. Rodrigue would agree.

My experience at Blue Dog today was surprisingly profound. I walked away feeling, well, not entirely sure what, but very happy to be feeling none the less.

And feeling very, wonderfully full.

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Blue Dog Cafe