Mid City vegetarian restaurant MJ’s Café enters a new era

It takes a certain amount of determination to start a vegetarian restaurant in a meat-loving town, but back in 2011, MJ’s Café founder Maureen Joyce believed in such a spot. Armed with homemade vegan soups and vegetarian salads and sandwiches, her modest restaurant in Goodwood Shopping Center was the first in the Capital Region to fly the plant-based flag.

A lot has happened since then. Joyce sold the business in 2017 to then-MJ’s employee Mary-Brennan Sensing, who relocated it to Government Street in 2019. Now, it seems MJ’s is entering its third era. Former City Group Hospitality managing partner Stephen Hightower bought it from Sensing this spring, refreshing the interior, updating kitchen equipment and expanding the menu. The restaurant reopened in March after a two-week closure with a broad selection of vegan, vegetarian and—perish the thought!—flexitarian options. Yes, chicken is now on the menu as a protein add-on for salads, along with shrimp, salmon, tuna and tofu.

“A few dishes with proteins had always been on the menu,” says Hightower, now a restaurant consultant. “And they’re really popular. We saw a lot of upside in adding more of those kinds of dishes while staying true to the mission.”

Hightower couldn’t have predicted his next professional move would be owning a vegetarian cafe—especially after building meaty concepts like City Pork, City Slice and Rouj Creole. His initial motivation stemmed from MJ’s proximity to Mid City Daiquiri, the popular business he owns next door. Hearing the plant-based eatery was for sale, Hightower considered buying it just to expand the daiquiri shop and to control the modest parking lot both businesses share. That changed once he talked to MJ’s staff.

“They were so passionate about what they were doing,” Hightower says. “The place has been about cultivating a lifestyle, and it’s been here for 15 years. That doesn’t happen by accident. There was enough of a sales base to say, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’”

The restaurant’s airy, breezy décor has been refreshed with the addition of white tablecloths and interior walls painted a mint green. A new half-wall creates a clearer division between the bar and the 60-seat dining room.

In the back of the house, new kitchen equipment is giving head chef Madee Slade, sous chef Camille Nesbit and their team the right tools for rolling out a menu that responds to the current popularity of flexitarianism with dishes like salmon cakes, edamame dumplings, patatas bravas, roasted beet carpaccio and seared tuna lettuce wraps. Purists can take solace in the kitchen’s existing practice of segregating plants and proteins.

Some original menu items remain, including the buffalo cauliflower wrap and Joyce’s “The Louisianan,” a sourdough sandwich stuffed with sauteed Gulf shrimp, mozzarella and provolone, jalapeño, garlic aioli, tomato and baby greens.

New breakfast selections include hearty fare like French toast, avocado toast, and a croissant with scrambled eggs, vegan or pork bacon, melted cheddar and housemade tomato jam. Specialty coffee drinks are made with beans roasted at nearby City Roots Coffee Bar.

Since selling the restaurant, Joyce has worked intermittently in the kitchen and still comes in three times a week to make vegan and gluten-free cupcakes and MJ’s signature vegan soups. Four soup flavors rotate through each season, and they all start with homemade vegetable broth made from slow-roasted vegetables.

Joyce says she had hoped more vegetarian restaurants would have opened in Baton Rouge by now but is excited that her brainchild is still leading the charge.

“I’m just happy that the mission continues, and that Baton Rouge continues to support a space dedicated and committed to providing flavorful and meaningful plant-based dishes,” she says. “Even if other eating styles are coexisting peacefully, we are certainly passionate about that original vision and goal.”

MJ’s Café is at 5162 Government St. and is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

This article was originally published in the June 2026 issue of 225 Magazine.