Comfort Food Culture – North Baton Rouge restaurants offer tasty home cooking

Around noon, dressed in suits and slacks, state employees and other downtown businesspeople head out for lunch. With plenty of options in the area, they may be dining on tapas, salivating over a freshly made crepe or grabbing pizza from a food truck with a wood-fired oven.

About a mile north of downtown, urban charm quickly turns into a vast industrial labyrinth of concrete, steel and smoke. While the scenery may not be worth the trip, there’s guaranteed to be a good plate of food. Chemical plants and oil refineries demand a certain type of food culture that fits the needs of their blue-collar workers. They appreciate restaurants that are locally owned and can be counted on to deliver a fast, great home-style meal with extreme value.

On Airline Highway just east of the Huey P. Long Bridge, it doesn’t get more down-home than Dominique’s Stockyard Cafe. The restaurant has been in operation since 1938 and undoubtedly would have some stories to tell if its walls could only talk.

The eatery sits in front of an operating cattle auction and serves cafeteria-style, traditional daily lunch specials, including dishes like white beans and rice, fried chicken, mustard greens, yams and okra. Getting lunch from the Stockyard Cafe is kind of like buying a plate lunch from a local fundraiser, as it always comes in a Styrofoam box. Happy diners depart the stockyards after a hearty $10 meal while contributing to a local landmark.

About three miles south on Scenic Highway is a restaurant that serves “Cajun comfort food.” Bellue’s Fine Cajun Cuisine has a menu full of Louisiana specialties like Cornish hens and pork tenderloins stuffed with rice dressing, crawfish étouffée, red beans and rice, and tur-duc-ken. All the entrées include two side dishes that, for many, are the best part of the meal—including cornbread dressing, field peas, lima beans and many more.

Sometimes though, there’s nothing that hits the spot quite like an old-fashioned hamburger. In the debate over who has “the best burgers in town,” the Dixie Maid Drive Inn would like to throw its hat into the ring. Just off Evangeline Street on McClelland Drive, Dixie Maid is a corner store where customers order through a burglar-barred window. But don’t let that scare you off. The juicy burger is cooked to order and packed with enough flavor to keep any plant worker coming back for more.

Good food isn’t pretentious in Baton Rouge. If a home-cooked meal is what you’re in the mood for, you can definitely find it in North Baton Rouge.

Jay D. Ducote is the author of the food and beverage blog Bite and Booze, host of the Bite and Booze Radio Show and co-host of Raise a Glass. You can find him online at biteandbooze.com.