Pat’s Cajun Steak and Seafood eyeing late summer opening

Jefferson Highway will add a Cajun restaurant to its list of attractions later this summer. Pat’s Cajun Steak and Seafood will open its doors around the end of July or early August, according to owner and head chef Jude Huval.

The restaurant will replace the former Las Palmas Mexican Restaurant at 8200 Jefferson Highway. Huval says he and his partners are now in the construction phase and have a little less than two months of work left to do, including remodeling the space to give it a Cajun look and feel.

This will be the third Pat’s location. Huval’s parents, Pat and Agnes, opened the original Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf in Henderson more than 60 years ago. Huval’s sister and brother-in-law, Nancy and Ricky Perioux, opened the second location, Pat’s of Henderson, 30 years ago in Lake Charles. Huval says the city’s population and local interest in the Pat’s restaurants drove him to establish a Baton Rouge location.

“A lot of people from Baton Rouge like our food,” he says. “We want to give people here a bit of Cajun cooking from the swamps of Henderson and flavors from the bayou.”

Huval is a graduate of Louisiana Culinary Institute, and has spent his life working in the family business. In 2012, he competed on Food Network’s Chopped. Pat’s Cajun Steak and Seafood will offer dishes such as crawfish bisque, baked catfish topped with a crawfish étouffée sauce, red snapper with jumbo lump crab meat and a lemon-Cajun seasoning cream sauce, as well as platters, ribeyes and filet mignons. The restaurant will also offer desserts such as pecan-crusted blackberry cobbler. Huval says the new location will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. The 4,900-square-food restaurant will have room for around 90 patrons.