The long line of patrons happily moves fast at Yvette Marie’s Café, a relaxed lunch spot specializing in gourmet sandwiches, salads, soups and specials tucked inside the Mid City architectural salvage and gift shop, Circa 1857. Yvette Marie’s Café is a family operation run by Stephanie Bruno, who got into the restaurant business after her husband, David, and his brother, Jay, opened the Mellow Mushroom 10 years ago on Nicholson Drive. The group, which also includes Jay’s wife, Tricia, later bought Bonanno’s Fine Catering and Yvette Marie’s Café in 2007. The café is one of the anchor merchants in Circa 1857, a building renovated a decade ago and once occupied by Griffon’s Drug Store, the beloved Baton Rouge soda fountain famous for drinks such as the egg cream. Griffon’s is long gone, but the dishes produced today by Yvette Marie’s are sterling representations of their own times, including pulled pork with pepper jelly glaze on a jalapeno cheese roll; sensation salad with candied pecans; homemade soups; and a “triple A” BLT with roasted garlic and sriracha aioli, applewood smoked bacon, Roma tomatoes, provolone and more. Click here to read the whole story. —Maggie Richardson
Du Jour: Stephanie Bruno, Yvette Marie’s Cafe
