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All in the family: The restaurant groups behind some of your favorite Baton Rouge spots

While the average diner might not realize it, a new restaurant hitting the Baton Rouge scene is often the brainchild of an existing restaurateur: someone who understands what local diners crave and what new dishes they’d be willing to try. Scratch the surface of the regional dining market, and you’ll find that many of the spots you love are run by the same owners or groups.

About a year after opening Creole restaurant Eliza on Jefferson Highway in 2017, chef Russell Davis and his wife, Sally, launched a second concept: specialty po-boy shop Jed’s Local in Mid City. The two restaurants enable Davis to reinterpret familiar dishes from the Cajun and Creole culinary tableau in distinct ways.

“It’s easier, in some ways, to have two restaurants—and harder in some ways,” Davis says. “It’s almost like having young children, where it’s twice as much work in the beginning, but you get to share things, like products and systems, between them. You also get to serve different demographics.”

In the September 2019 issue of 225, we took a look at the local spots that share branches on the same restaurant family tree. Read on for the full story.