Capital City Classics: 1919 — 1941

City Cafe (Since 1919)

4710 O’Neal Lane, Suite 113

It’s lunchtime on a weekday, and City Cafe buzzes with energy. Servers hoist trays heavy with Cajun and Creole favorites, beelining for tables of regulars. Solo diners drape the bar, chatting up owner Cody Miranda while sucking down chargrilled oysters. Friends and families occupy tables across two rooms and a patio, many keeping tabs on LSU sports via abundant TVs. This modern iteration of City Cafe is situated in an O’Neal Lane strip mall, but its roots stretch back 126 years. That’s when Cody’s great uncle, Martin Miranda, first opened it in downtown Plaquemine.

It’s been a family affair practically ever since. Cody’s grandfather, Jimmy, took over management in 1933. In the ensuing decades, City Cafe became an Iberville Parish institution, serving wholesome plate lunches and south Louisiana specials to locals and plant workers. Jimmy and his wife sold the restaurant in 1976, but four years later, their son Charles “Squeaky” Miranda bought it back. It closed in Plaquemine in 1998, but the family believed the concept still had juice. Squeaky reopened it in Baton Rouge in 2002, tucking his all-purpose comfort food into a suburban setting. It can be dicey when a beloved restaurant moves to fancier quarters, but City Cafe has proven how to do it.

Chicken Shack (Since 1935)

413 N. Acadian Thruway
3939 Pawtucket St.

These days, Baton Rouge is awash in fried chicken concepts, but the granddaddy of them all is unquestionably Chicken Shack. Founded in 1935 by Black businessman Thomas Delpit, the iconic fry house is now run by the family’s fourth generation. What makes the two-location fast-food joint distinct is its single-step prep. Pieces are submerged in a spicy, wet batter before a trip to the sizzling-hot fryer. At some point in its past, the business claimed the tagline “knuckle suckin’ good,” an audacious riff on Kentucky Fried Chicken’s finger-lickin’ flex. The Tuesday special is two pieces for $2, one of the best deals in town. Get in line.

Owens Grocery Market & Deli (Since 1938)

2444 Balis Drive

At 75, Cynthia Owens Green still begins each day before dawn, crossing the street from her home on Balis Drive to Owens Grocery Market & Deli, the family business her parents founded nearly 90 years ago. The former neighborhood filling station grew into a soul food haven, where Green and a few helpers still serve scratch-made breakfasts and rotating plate lunches of fried chicken, smothered pork chops, turkey wings, and red beans and rice. It’s one of the few places around you can find braised pig tails and a thrifty bygone breakfast dish called eggs and rice—as simple as it sounds.

Louie’s Cafe (Since 1941)

3322 Lake St.

Throw a rock in Baton Rouge and you’ll hit someone who remembers coating their booze-filled stomach with a Louie’s Big Cheesy Lou while a student at LSU. And today, that same person probably brings their kids to the beloved diner on weekends for animal pancakes. Now in its third location, Louie’s still carries the allure of classic movie diners, those iconic places where friends meet to solve the world’s problems, in this case over a fluffy three-egg Mitchell omelet or a serviceable Combo #1. Until he retired in 2022, longtime chef gadfly Marcus “Frenchie” Cox was the face of this rite-of-passage establishment. Loyalists were brokenhearted when he died this spring. But Louie’s lives on.

Read about more Capital City Classics here.