What’s up

Zeeland Street Market has for many years been a dependable and friendly lunch spot for locals and residents of the Garden District. Its elevated take on comfort food, like pot roast, sauteed greens and cornbread dressing, shares the menu with flavorful salads and sandwiches.

Up until the late ’90s, Zeeland was open for dinner, but with much of the close-knit kitchen staff raising young children at the time, owner Stephanie Phares decided to focus on breakfast and lunch.

Now that the kids are all grown—Phares also has two teenagers—they’ve decided to expand their hours and answer the call of many residents in the Garden District area who were searching for a quality dinner nearby.

“We were missing all these people who were looking for dinner service,” Phares says. “That was a big incentive—to be here for this neighborhood.”

Phares’ team is crafting a nighttime menu—dishes like redfish topped with crabmeat in a lemony sauce or jerk drum with mango salsa—as well as seeking rezoning to serve alcohol.

“We’re trying to make it a little more grown up for the evenings, a little swankier,” she says.

As of press time, Phares was preparing to go before the Metro Council in late August to request rezoning. Zeeland already serves to-go dinners from 4:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Once the sit-down dinner service gets going this fall, Phares plans to extend the hours to 9 or 9:30 p.m. zeelandstreet.squarespace.com

Stephanie Phares is just one of several women in the Baton Rouge food industry we’re highlighting in this month’s issue. Check out more profiles on women who are finding success in the mostly male-dominated culinary world.

Fall concert series returns downtown

This month brings the return of Live After Five to downtown Baton Rouge for the fall season. Every Friday in September and October, starting at 5 p.m., live music will spill out from The Crest stage at North Boulevard Town Square. Bring a friend, bring a lawn chair—or don’t, you should be dancing instead—and welcome the cooler fall nights with some great music. The series opener will be a doozey with bayou-soul musician Marc Broussard headlining and local singer-songwriter Jason Martin starting things off with his brand of Southern rock. Go to downtownbr.org for more information, or Music: Best bets for more music events to check out this month.

SEPT. 5: Marc Broussard with Jason Martin
SEPT. 12: Chris LeBlanc and the Spanish Town Big Band
SEPT. 19: Flow Tribe with Dulac Smack
SEPT. 26: Werewolf and AM/FM
OCT. 3: Foret Tradition
OCT. 10: After 8 with the LSU Jazz Ensemble Horns
OCT. 17: Perkins Road
OCT. 24: Colin Lake with Startisan

The transportation app Uber is in 156 markets worldwide and about 90 U.S. cities. Baton Rouge joined the club recently, becoming home to a fleet of Uber-contracted independent drivers. In fact, LSU coach Les Miles was its first official rider in July, dubbed “rider zero,” which sounds ominous and like he should possibly be quarantined, but whatever. Just how many Uber drivers are traveling our jumbled street grid is unclear because Uber officials won’t divulge that information. An August Business Report story said Uber recently paid the city $2,250 in licensing fees at a cost of $75 per driver—so about 30 drivers in the local market. “That number is growing every day, though, and some drivers say they’ve been told it’s actually closer to 100,” the story says. By comparison, there are about 130 licensed cabs operating in Baton Rouge, most through Yellow Cab. In August, Uber began talks with the Baton Rouge Metro Airport to offer ride-sharing services there. Looks like residents are seeking out uber-convenient new ways to get around the city (our apologies for that joke). uber.com