When you’re re-launching a restaurant that is this significant, you want to get things right. It’s perfect.ĭamien Chapman, interviewed on May 2, guessed that the restaurant would be opening within a few weeks, but had not identified a specific date. Some folks are going to find it too spicy. It is a thick, deeply flavored stew that’s smoky, spicy and immensely delicious. There are some very bad gumbos out there, y’all. I married into a family of Heberts who hail from a city that is promoted as “the most Cajun place on earth,” so I can be kind of snobby about the whole gumbo thing. “Why would they change?!” I understood what he was saying I had asked a stupid question.Īt the risk of sounding too breathless about this place, I have to add that the chicken and sausage gumbo at Orlandeaux’s Café is among the best I’ve tasted in Louisiana. When I asked if he’d changed the recipe at all, he shot me a glare. Damien was kind enough to share a few stuffed shrimp during my visit. One thing hasn’t changed, however: the stuffed shrimp recipe. The whole place is brighter, bolder, and hipper. An inviting-looking bar has replaced the walk-up counter from Brother’s. Reclaimed wood surfaces, polished concrete floors, and a booming stereo system blaring modern zydeco greeted me when I arrived. Once a small, diner-like space with a homey but dated feel, the dining room has been opened up and transformed into what feels like a modern gastropub. This place means too much to too many people.” “My family has a 100-year legacy in the restaurant business. “When my father passed, I knew that this was something that I had to do,” Damien said. Damien showed me around the extensively renovated space recently and shared a bowl of gumbo and a few stuffed shrimp. The new name, Orlandeaux’s, does what the previous name did: honors a father and chef who contributed to one of Shreveport’s most authentic and lasting culinary traditions. It is poetic and, honestly, awe-inspiring that 29-year-old Damien Chapman has stepped up to breathe new life into the restaurant. Damien Lewis Chapman, the spitting image of his father, holds a plate of stuffed shrimp at soon-to-open Orlandeaux’s Café in Shreveport. Chef Orlando passed away suddenly in 2013, and Brother’s Seafood to Go – a restaurant named in honor of Orlando Chapman’s father, “Brother” Chapman – declined and eventually closed. Along the way, Chef Orlando and Brother’s Seafood contributed mightily to the popularity of Shreveport-style stuffed shrimp. Chef Orlando Chapman opened Brother’s Seafood after parting ways with Pete Harris Café, which had been born of Freeman & Harris Café. Damien Lewis Chapman, the son of late Shreveport chef and restaurateur Orlando Chapman, is currently putting the finishing touches on Orlandeaux’s Café, a Creole eatery that will occupy the space that formerly housed his father’s restaurant, Brother’s Seafood to Go, at 4916 Monkhouse Drive in Shreveport. With all due respect to several other really exciting restaurant openings that are in the works, the opening of Orlandeaux’s Café is likely to be the most significant happening in Shreveport’s restaurant scene in 2018.
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