Eleven a.m. on a Thursday morning, hunched in my writing hole, gulping my second cup of coffee, scanning the news on the net, and Times-Picayune restaurant writer Brett Anderson puts brunch in my face. It’s not fair.
Anderson has a story about the restaurants in New Orleans — small restaurants with high profile chefs — who have begun to make brunch a calling card. He lists Patois, Coquette and Cochon Butcher, some of my favorites, and then makes a flying leap across the Atchafalaya Basin to Lafayette.
And the brunch fever does not appear to be restricted to the New Orleans area. At the French Press in Lafayette, chef-owner Justin Girouard, a former Stella! sous chef, is selling foie gras, fried softshell crabs and picture-perfect flapjacks to overflow crowds during weekend brunch service. It’s worth the trip.
It’s rare for Anderson to write about restaurants outside of the Crescent City, but I do know, because I talked to him about his breakfast chez Justin, that he was wowed by the French Press. Thanks for the Acadiana shout-out Brett, and kudos to Justin Girouard. I think I’ll make that trip, for me, a stroll across Vermilion St. (ah, the benefits of working downtown) for that dazzling bellykiller, Cajun Benedict, ie, french bread toast under boudin patties, topped with poached eggs and sauced with a ladle full of chicken and sausage gumbo. Just what the doctor ordered. Or didn’t. Who cares. I’ll die happy.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Plains Exploration and Production, the Houston company Flores has been running since 2002, is building a deepwater Gulf of Mexico warehouse and storage facility on Bernard Road in Broussard.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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