By Maggie Heyn Richardson, Benjamin Leger and Jennifer Tormo • Photos by Collin Richie
With nearly 1,000 restaurants in Baton Rouge, we’re not short on places for a great meal—or talented chefs to cook them. But we’ve always secretly wondered: Where do chefs and restaurant owners eat when they’re not running the kitchen? We asked eight local culinary professionals from different backgrounds to tell us about the dishes they can’t get enough of, from soul-warming soups to nostalgia-inspiring hot dogs. They shared their favorite hole-in-the-wall hidden gems and Capital City classics. Click the names below to see what they had to say:
Favorite chicken dish? I love the chicken tandoori at the Bay Leaf with naan and basmati rice. The chicken is cooked perfectly in that clay oven. It’s really tender and flavorful.
Few eateries in Baton Rouge command the kind of neighborhood loyalty as Zeeland Street Market, the breakfast and lunch restaurant on Perkins Road near the Garden District and Hundred Oaks neighborhoods. Dishes are named for local streets. Regular customers queue up to order daily specials like pot roast and seared fresh tuna salad. There’s a lot of meeting and greeting among tables.
Mississippi native Stephanie Phares and ex-husband, Hayden Phares, opened Zeeland Street Market in the early ’90s, transforming then-Marino’s convenience store (where Stephanie had run the deli) into a full-fledged restaurant. Stephanie’s first foray in the Baton Rouge culinary world had been as a Louie’s waitress while completing a degree at LSU. She also worked at Louie’s as a cook and manager.
It didn’t take long for Zeeland Street Market to establish itself as a go-to breakfast and lunch spot, consistently drawing the Perkins overpass area dwellers for a modern take on the meat-and-three plate lunch. Phares recently obtained a liquor license and hopes to add more dog-friendly outdoor seating soon.
She says that while it’s been good to see the food scene evolve in Baton Rouge, she laments the proliferation of so many chain restaurants. “There’s something about a family-owned local place,” she says. “That’s where I like to eat. Being in the business, I have a real appreciation for that.”
—M.H.R.
Favorite steak? The porterhouse at Doe’s Eat Place, cooked medium rare. They really do a great job in the kitchen with those steaks. And I love that it’s in the neighborhood.
Favorite dish for a family celebration? We have always loved Gino’s. When I go with my family everybody always orders something different so we can share, and my favorite thing to get is the veal Parmesan. I love it.
Favorite healthy dish? I really love the bún (vermicelli) noodle bowl with vegetables and shrimp at Saigon Noodles. They’ve also got really good fresh spring rolls.
Guilty pleasure? One of my favorite dishes in Baton Rouge has always been the Rama Duck at Rama, right down the street. It’s got this great sort of jalapeño soy sauce and comes with rice and a bunch of vegetables. I have a routine of ordering the steamed dumplings, the lemon grass soup and the duck. I eat way too much when I order from Rama.
Favorite vegetarian? I like Serop’s Express because you can get Lebanese vegetables, but you can also just get some really nice clean things like broccoli and cabbage. I get those and the eggplant and potato casserole and the hummus when I’m in the mood for vegetarian.
Favorite soup? I like MJ’s Café’s black bean soup. It’s fresh and has different seasonal toppings. It’s great to see black beans become popular, and I love what [Maureen Joyce is] doing there.
Jesse Romero
Chef, ‘MasterChef’ season 6 competitor
Favorite sandwich? Chelsea’s grilled cheese with tomato soup. Add basil pesto—they have a really good pesto—and dip it in the tomato soup.
Every kid has a different way of coping when things don’t go their way.
For Jesse Romero, it was escaping to his grandparents’ house for the ultimate comfort food: fried chicken.
“Every time I got in trouble, that’s where I went,” he says.
His grandfather’s recipe was simple: chicken coated in all-purpose flour, black pepper, salt and cayenne pepper, and fried in oil in a cast-iron pot.
Romero loved it so much he’d insist his grandfather cook two chickens—one for his family and one for him to eat all by himself.
No doubt he made his grandparents proud when he showed off his cooking skills this summer on MasterChef season 6. Though he did not make it to the finals, serving his food for judges such as Gordon Ramsay had a huge impact on Romero, who works as a petroleum landman and had previously considered cooking a hobby.
Now, his culinary career continues to grow as he participates in cooking competitions and pop-up dinners in Baton Rouge and beyond.
“The more people enjoy your food, the more you just want to keep cooking,” he says.
—J.T.
Favorite appetizer? Galatoire’s Bistro’s liver and onions. The best thing about that is the sauce. They cook it down with some bacon and gravy over it.
Favorite comfort food? Dream Berrie’s pho. Something about their broth is really refreshing. … Sundays after the LSU game, you’re tired, you’re hungover—it gets you your energy back.
Favorite burger? I like to go to Dearman’s. It’s an old-school, simple burger, and you can get a milkshake.
Favorite special-occasion meal? If I’m going to a nice dinner I’m going to go to Ruffino’s. … My favorite dinner dish is the veal marsala in a marsala wine reduction with mushrooms.
Favorite po-boy? I like the Crescent City Combo at Rocco’s: ham, turkey and roast beef with gravy.
Favorite drink? Tin Roof—one of my favorite beers is the Smoke Stack.
Tracy Nguyen
Tsunami executive chef
Favorite special-occasion meal? Mansurs on the Boulevard. They really do have the best steaks ever. And the atmosphere … It’s very romantic. For dessert, they have a flan. The texture and creaminess of it; it melts in your mouth.
Tracy Nguyen never planned to become a chef.
The Thibodaux native was studying biology at LSU and looking for a server job when she fell into the culinary world. She applied to work at Tsunami and ended up working in the kitchen preparing sushi.
It didn’t take long for her to find a connection between cooking and the sciences she loved. She became fascinated by molecular gastronomy and the way flavors meld.
Nguyen worked in a kitchen full of men, but she proved to her coworkers that even at 19 she was a force to be reckoned with.
“I got picked on a lot—this is a ‘man’s job,’” she says with a laugh. “But it takes a lot of dexterity to do sushi.”
Eight years later, the 27-year-old oversees the kitchen at Tsunami.
Along the way, she’s taken home a few awards, including first place in the seafood category at this year’s Fête Rouge.
Cooking is an outlet for Nguyen.
“When I’m in a bad mood, my food looks better than everything,” she says. “There’s an art to [cooking]. There’s a science to it.”
—J.T.
Favorite seafood dishes? If I want fried seafood, Parrain’s really does have the best thinly cut catfish. During crawfish season, Sammy’s Grill has the best crawfish in town.
Favorite hot dog? Frankie’s Dawg House has the best hot dogs ever. I think last time I had a hot dog with pulled pork on top, and it was awesome.
Favorite desserts? Dream Berrie. Their green tea shaved ice cream is so good there. It’s more fluffy for ice cream; it’s not as thick. I’m about to go for some right now—forget work!
Favorite indulgent breakfast? I love going to Coffee Call for hot chocolate and beignets. … For doughnuts, Tiger Deaux-nuts has bacon doughnuts, red velvet doughnuts, king cake doughnuts. It’s so good.
Favorite Vietnamese? Saigon Noodles and Dang’s are my two favorite Vietnamese restaurants. Saigon Noodles has a really great pho.
Favorite salad? At The Chimes I’ve had a good salad with blackened salmon on spinach with pepper jelly dressing. The dressing is sweet but not overpowering and goes really well with that salmon.
Lina Jacobs
Magpie Café co-owner
Favorite brunch? The crabcakes Benedict at The Chimes. I’m a sucker for a good crabcake. If you’ve ever had their crabcake sandwich, it’s basically the same thing, but with eggs and hollandaise sauce on top. It’s so good.
It was a trip to Italy for their 15th wedding anniversary that changed the course of Lina Jacobs and her husband James’ lives. Both had been working in sales at the time of the trip, and they returned to Baton Rouge with a renewed interest in quality food and coffee that sparked the idea for Magpie Café.
Several years later, the almost four-year-old café is one of the hippest hangouts in town with a loyal following for its pour-overs and healthy lunches.
That trip to Italy also changed Lina’s eating habits. “I went the entire trip without eating any meat. I felt great, and I even dropped a few pounds,” she says. “I realized over the next few weeks when I tried to reintroduce things I had eaten before, it just wasn’t working. I didn’t feel as good.”
She never aimed to become a vegetarian—she still eats seafood—but the change in diet helped build the framework for the breakfast and lunch options they offer at Magpie.
The success of the small menu led them to grow the kitchen staff and recently start a monthly dinner series that tends to sell out quickly. Next up is a second Magpie location in the Commerce Building downtown in early 2016, where they plan to haveevening hours.
Jacobs says they had been entertaining the idea of a second location for a while. “Once you start getting that process going, you start thinking about what it would look like and you say, ‘OK, when we get the right space, this is what we want to do,’” she says.
—B.L.
Favorite soups? I love MJ’s Café. I’ve always enjoyed her soups. I don’t get to go there as often as I used to, but I love Maureen [Joyce] and what she’s doing there.
Favorite entree? DiGiulio Brothers. They do this delicious grouper with an Italian salsa. We live by City Park so it’s just a five-minute drive to DiGiulio’s. It’s such a good institution.
Favorite salad? The marinated seafood salad at French Market Bistro. If I’m going to treat myself, that’s where I’ll go. The salad is just loaded with crabmeat and shrimp and the dressing is light. It’s just great.
Favorite dessert? My husband is more of a sweets person than I am, but I love the tiramisu at Nino’s. It’s just a classic style of tiramisu with coffee.
Jeremy Langlois
Ruffino’s Restaurant corporate chef
Favorite soup? The turtle soup at Galatoire’s Bistro is really well done. The stock is rich, and it’s balanced and full of flavor.
Over two decades in the culinary world, Chef Jeremy Langlois has seen serious success, landing numerous awards and earning national acclaim. But cooking was never something Langlois imagined himself doing. He had no interest in the profession at all until he got a job at age 16 washing dishes at Chef John Folse’s White Oak Plantation. Folse’s team of focused cooks, who would arrive for work with toolboxes full of knives, piqued Langlois’ attention.
“It was the knives,” jokes Langlois. “I thought it looked like a cool thing to do.”
Folse gave him a shot on the line and spotted potential, providing Langlois a scholarship after high school to the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University. By age 22, Langlois had earned a culinary arts degree and secured the executive chef position at Folse’s restaurant, Lafitte’s Landing at Bittersweet Plantation.
Success at Lafitte’s brought another offer three years later. Langlois was hired to open and run Latil’s Landing at newly restored Houmas House plantation, quickly putting the fine dining eatery on the regional and national map, and later competing on Food Network’s Chopped with his reinvented Louisiana style. This year, after a decade of running the show at Houmas House, Langlois became the corporate chef at Ruffino’s Restaurant. He says he was eager to get back to more actual cooking rather than managing.
“I’m an in-the-trenches kind of chef,” he says. “I still enjoy coming up with new things, and to me, even the basics of prepping for a busy night, just chopping an onion, are the best part of the job.”
—M.H.R.
Favorite burger? It’s so simple, but I really like the Cabin Burger at The Cabin Restaurant in Burnside. It’s all done right. It’s a regular bun with a half-pound patty and hot melted cheese. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s consistent. When I get it today, it tastes just like it did 10 years ago.
Favorite breakfast? The Coffee Shop at the Cajun Village in Sorrento, near where we live, has these amazing beignets, which you can order finger-sized. I love to take my kids there on the weekends. My daughter calls the powered sugar “snow sugar.”
Favorite appetizer? Stroubes in downtown Baton Rouge has this fantastic crab and corn gnocchi. The dumplings are perfectly made. They have a great pillowy texture, and the crab and corn pair really well together. The cream sauce is rich, but not over the top.
Favorite date-night fare? On the rare occasions that my wife and I get to go out, we love Tsunami. The view is awesome, and the lava roll is one of our favorites. It’s got crunchy shrimp, cucumber, salmon on top, and it’s baked and served with this great aioli.
Favorite oyster dish? The chargrilled oysters at Mansurs, eaten at the bar. It’s hard to find a better bite than that.
Favorite Baton Rouge classic? I love soft-shell crab, and I really love the deep-fried Hallelujah Crab at Juban’s. It’s got that seafood stuffing and Creole beurre blanc. There’s a reason it’s so popular and they sell so many.
Dori Murvin
Beausoleil floor manager, Baton rouge Epicurean Society
Favorite thing to snack on at a restaurant? I really like going to DiGiulio Brothers. As far as I’m concerned, having their roasted garlic appetizer with a bottle of sangiovese, that’s one of my favorite things in the world. They brush them in olive oil and herbs and roast them. You pop the cloves out on crostinis with cambozola cheese. You can’t talk to anybody else afterward because of all that garlic, but it’s delicious.
Back when Chelsea’s Café was the Colonel’s Club, Dori Murvin was learning the ropes waiting tables. In 1992, she had just been laid off and a friend at the Colonel’s Club suggested she wait tables there until she found something else.
“Back then no one really trained. My training was they handed me a tray and said, ‘Go take an order and you’ll figure out the rest yourself,’” Murvin says with a laugh.
She soon worked her way up to bar manager, then general manager. And thus began a long career for Murvin, who has had stints at familiar favorites like Mansurs on the Boulevard, Ruffino’s, Fleming’s and others.
She’s been a fixture on the local restaurant scene and a founding member of the Baton Rouge Epicurean Society, helping launch Fête Rouge in 2007.
Going into the 10th iteration of the popular food and wine festival, Murvin will take the reins as board president for the first time in 2016.
Five years ago, she joined the owners of Beausoleil as they launched their restaurant on Jefferson Highway, where she serves as the floor manager and runs the wine program.
“I like how [chef Nathan Gresham] takes something that might be a comfort food dish but kind of gives it his own twist,” she says.
—B.L.
Favorite place to bring someone from out of town? It’s probably going to be Nino’s. It’s super farm to table, and [Elton Hyndman] is really creative in what he does. Their charcuterie board is excellent. I just like his style, it really is kind of an Italian countryside style. I usually just go along for the ride with whatever they are offering.
Favorite cocktail? I love Radio Bar because I’m addicted to the Crosley. Even if I look at the seasonal menu, I’m getting the Crosley.
Favorite appetizer? When I go to Gino’s, their burrata is the best. I don’t care what I get for dinner or lunch, I’m getting that burrata.
Favorite lunch? Mom and I love to go to MJ’s whenever we do our mother-daughter lunch. You’ve got to love a place that when you order a salad, they literally chop all the ingredients for the salad right there.
Jim Urdiales
Mestizo Louisiana Mexican Restaurant chef/owner
Favorite pizza? I think Red Zeppelin has the best pizza going in Baton Rouge right now. I love the crust. It’s really thin and chewy. As far as pizza toppings go, I avoid meat and go for veggies.
Mestizo owner Jim Urdiales is part of one of Baton Rouge’s legacy restaurant families. His uncle, Joe Urdiales, founded El Rio Grande in 1962, an iconic Tex-Mex spot on Airline Highway run today by his cousin, Raul. His father, Carlos Urdiales, still operates the Tex-Mex stalwart, Carlos’. Urdiales cooks the basics, too, but at Mestizo, his menu is centered on fresh seafood, grains and vegetables. It’s the result of Urdiales’ interest in healthy eating and culinary education trips to Mexico.
He’s also a champion of the regional restaurant business, having served on the Louisiana Restaurant Association board for 15 years. Patronizing the restaurants of his fellow chef-owners has always been a priority. Urdiales and his partner, Y’zell Williamson, the assistant general manager at Capital City Grill, usually seek out cuisine they don’t make themselves.
“Usually when we eat out, it’s Italian because it’s the one thing that neither of us cook,” he says. “But there’s a lot out there to choose from. Baton Rouge has a plethora of great places to eat these days.”
—M.H.R.
Favorite Italian entrée? I joke with DiGiulio’s owner, Mike Johnson, that he’s my biggest competitor because my clients eat at his restaurant, and vice versa. We’re in the same neighborhood. I love his veal picatta, pounded veal with white wine, lemon juice and capers and served with the spaghetti G.O.P [garlic, olive oil and parsley].
Favorite bar meal? The Little Village has the best seafood arancini anywhere in the country, and it’s become the standard bearer for that dish when I travel. There’s a lot of complexity in the stuffing.
Favorite oyster dish? I love chef Nathan Gresham’s truffle fried oysters at Beausoleil. They’re lightly fried and are in this amazing truffle dressing with shaved Parmesan.
Favorite soup? I recently discovered Ideal Market on Sherwood and Old Hammond, a newer Latin market in Baton Rouge. It’s crazy big. The caldo de res (beef soup) is incredible. It’s in this really savory beef broth that is unlike anything I’ve ever had before, with big hunks of corn on the cob and vegetables.
Anne Milneck
Red Stick Spice Company chef/owner
What do you like to eat when you’ve got guests in town? I love a dinner of wine and cheese, and the cheese board at Blend downtown is one of my favorites. What’s so great about it is that it’s not the same cheese board every time. They’re working with what’s local and abundant. And, the accoutrements really make it special.
When Anne Milneck bought Red Stick Spice Company in 2012, she figured her clientele would be mostly food-obsessed gourmands in search of trendy spices. Indeed, informed cooks are part of her base, but she also caters to a growing number of busy people who just need straightforward kitchen advice. “They come in because boneless, skinless chicken breasts have gotten boring, or they want to eat more fish or they want to transform ‘taco Tuesday.’” Milneck says. “Whatever it takes to help them put dinner on the table, we get them there.”
Food has long been Milneck’s passion. A few years back, with two children at home, she was so eager to pursue a culinary career that she commuted from Baton Rouge to the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, earning a culinary arts degree in 2010. She opened a lunch catering business, then bought Red Stick Spice in 2012, the popular gourmet retailer on Jefferson Highway. Milneck expanded the store’s inventory, holds regular cooking demonstrations and partners with sustainable foods organizations like Slow Food Baton Rouge. The store will relocate in early 2016 to a bigger space in Mid City.
Milneck’s personal food philosophy reflects her inclusive style around the shop. She balances fine dining with casual dives, seeking out precious, composed bites as often as she does nostalgic pub grub.
—M.H.R.
Favorite sandwich? One is the Jazz Daddy special from Jazz Daddy’s Poboys. It’s got ham, turkey, roast beef, Swiss cheese, mayo, lettuce and tomato. I get it on po-boy bread instead of muffaletto bread and order a side of au jus. Their po-boy bread is correct.
Favorite late-night fare? The Seafood Louie (as a sandwich, not an omelet), at Louie’s Café, has been part of my life since 1986. It’s the ultimate hangover food. It’s got shrimp and crawfish, vegetables, Swiss cheese and cream sauce, and I get it on po-boy bread.
Favorite breakfast? I really like the alligator sausage at Frank’s in a simple omelet with maybe just cheese and bell pepper.
Favorite fish dish? French Market Bistro is great for fish properly prepared. I’m hard-pressed to find salmon seared medium rare around town, the way I prefer it. They do it right.
