The Shortest Commute
Three unusual blends of personal and professional space
There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the character which draws them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I keep telling myself that when I have more time—when there’s one more chair at the dinner table, when my daughter’s toys and loose crayons are all in the smartly purchased Fisher Price box—I will have two or three well-mannered guests over for dinner. But recently I met with some folks far busier than I ever will be, who open their homes not only to make a living but also to make a cultural and social contribution. Is this blending of personal and professional space evidence of exceptional hospitality, vocation separation anxiety, or social extroversion taken to its greatest heights? Read on to find out.
When B&B Means “Bite and Booze”
In the business of being himself, Jay Ducote finds it hard to clock out. Days without catering gigs or speaking engagements, he still must keep tabs on his taco stand in White Star Market. His social media feed stays hungry for check-ins from South Louisiana’s most recognizable consumer of local food and drink.
And when he gets home … well, his home near Highland Road in Baton Rouge also serves as headquarters for a burgeoning culinary media company, and the fourteen people it takes to make Jay Ducote an omnipresence. Most of those employees work at Gov’t Taco, his debut restaurant on a culinary scene he’s been documenting on the Bite & Booze blog since 2009, “but everyone comes here to use the printer,” said Blair Loup, Ducote’s very first employee and—as their easy back-and-forth makes clear—the translator of Ducote’s instincts and impulses into shrewd business decisions.
Ducote’s enterprises as a food personality play out on a variety of stages, around the state and online, too; but he designed this home office himself, intuiting from nearly ten years of experience what he’d need as well as want in his own venue. He spent last year, with the help of local vendors like Acadian House Kitchen & Bath, contractor Norisha Kirts of NRK Construction, and woodworker Chad Townson, renovating a family-owned house (which he purchased from his father upon the older Ducote’s retirement) to serve as offices, a product-packing line, a test kitchen, a den-sized pantry, a private-dinner venue, and even a studio for his frequent on-camera cooking. Down the hall, backstage, sits a couch and a cow-printed chair where Ducote can unwind. There’s also a bedroom, where he presumably sleeps once in awhile.
[Read this: How Airbnb is changing travel in Louisiana]
The public spaces soothe with a neutral palette, cheerful pops of color courtesy of two pieces of art Ducote’s mother, Phyllis, painted in high school. Cabinets contain pots, pans, and sundry cooking gadgets, while open shelves are stocked with the Jay D’s products: barbecue sauces and rubs, molasses mustard, coffee, and wine. The likeness of Ducote—head tilted, smile wide—decorates nearly every product except the coffee and coffee chile rub. These foodstuffs are an extension of Ducote’s brand, which by all accounts aligns with the man himself quite closely. “Jay doesn’t need that separation,” shrugged Loup, who keeps her own office down the hall, next door to Ducote’s.
When he’s not projecting himself out into the world, Ducote has people over. Guests at the dinner table, which holds ten and regularly fills up for private dinners, can look right into the kitchen—the wall between has long since been removed—and see Ducote at the gas-range stove. More important, he can look right back. No swinging steel door, no bob of a white toque like a shark’s fin … Ducote shrugs off the persona of chef overheard shouting orders and invective in the back. He’s a performer, there to have a good time himself and often partaking in a last tumbler of whiskey with the stragglers after everyone else has gone home replete.
For a man who makes his living having a good time, Ducote can’t call himself content. “People think I’m rolling in it, but this is a small business I’m running,” he said. His 2015 bid on Food Network Star put Ducote, who ended as runner-up, on national television sets all summer long. “That was six weeks I was out in California, not earning any money,” he said, though the exposure changed his life. As Gov’t Taco grows—with a possible second location in the future—he hopes to refocus his attention on his product line in the new year. His barbecue sauce and rubs show the most potential, but he can’t leave behind “passion projects” like his coffee and wine. “They won’t ever make me money, but with the coffee, I get to work with my best friend from grad school to source the beans from the Dominican Republic. I’ve gotten to visit that farm. And I roast the beans with Cafeciteaux, two other Baton Rouge guys following their dreams. For the wine, that’s an opportunity to collaborate with Landry Vineyards and help them promote that grape [Blanc du Bois]. Plus, I get to have my own coffee and wine. That’s cool.”
Even standing in his own kitchen, backed by a fridge of cold local beers, his mother’s bright familiar art in his periphery, a wall of framed accomplishments down the hall, he’s anxious for the wide-open future, happy meanwhile to keep putting himself forth as the face of Louisiana’s culinary enthusiasm. Ducote’s home will remain bright and open, the printer whirring, as he and his team scout out his next culinary opportunity. Maybe later, he’ll pour a few glasses of whiskey for guests-turned-friends.
The Whirlybird Welcome
“The secret is not showing people how to turn on the lights,” said Jim Phillips, covertly hitting switches. Bulbs flickered to life down the length of the bar. Strings lining the room’s back wall now burned red and the stage became girded with two beams of spotlight as The Whirlybird woke in Phillips’ backyard.
But it was just a half-life in the handbuilt honkytonk. The Whirlybird, once a Texaco train depot and named for a vintage amusement ride once installed in front of grocery stores, exudes Saturday night promise with just two people chatting inside. The ‘Bird needs stomping boots, flying fingers on its old upright piano, and a star onstage to make the experience complete. Those ingredients will come, but meanwhile Phillips and his wife Christy Leichty must guard against the outside world. “We’re vigilant about keeping money and pop culture out of The Whirlybird,” said Phillips.
By pop culture, Phillips does not mean the fiddles and washboards still wielded by all ages across the Acadiana music scene. These tradition bearers fuel The Whirlybird, which has seen performances from the likes of Yvette Landry and the Jukes, Bill Kirchen, Sabra and the Get Rights, and Dirk Powell. Until 2006, Phillips and Leichty were Bay Area residents and frequent visitors to Cajun Country, whose trips tipped forward into obsession. “The year before we moved here, we must have come twelve times,” said Phillips. “Now some of that time, we were moving,” laughed Leichty. But they agree that their hearts relocated first, when a spontaneous roadside concert they were privileged to catch left them with no choice but to become full-fledged Louisianans. Phillips remembers: “I looked at Christy and said, ‘We’re moving here!’”
Their current home, the circa-1899 Stonewood Plantation, overlooks the honkytonk as well as a large, renovated barn that sleeps seven, and a cozy 1966 Fireball Camper that does not. Behind the honkytonk, Phillips is in the process of updating two former train depots, joined at the center with a light-filled wooden tower, to serve as “The Whirlybird 2”; the building previously stored school supplies including an extensive library, but the couple donated the lot to Denham Springs schools following the August 2016 flood.
The two are both educators, notably having founded the Steampunk and Makers Fair in Lafayette; the instinct to guide a group through cultural awakening shows in the mere existence of The Whirlybird as well as the strictures that make pure joy possible within. Along with the concealed light switches, Phillips keeps the property’s address off the internet. Event listings direct newcomers to “email Jim for secret directions.” He insists on dealing directly with musicians rather than with their booking agents. And he highly recommends leaving political, religious, and other differences at the door. Strife has no business in The Whirlybird.
It’s a precarious way to find personal and professional fulfillment, but one worth sharing. In January 2019, Phillips and Leichty will welcome thirty-two travelers from Vancouver in search of a rich, real Louisiana experience; they’ll spend five days between Opelousas and Arnaudville and another five days reveling in New Orleans. Phillips purchased a school bus with the intent of ferrying his visitors from the airport and back. “When I pull back up at the airport, I’m going to take out a microphone and say, ‘Get off the bus!’ And if someone cries, I’ll know we were successful.”
The Family Trees
After her mother passed, Esther Carpenter returned to her native Natchez in 2006 with armfuls of accolades—recognition from Architectural Digest for her art, and from USA Today for her cuisine, among them. She also had no intention of keeping The Elms, the historic home her family has owned since 1878, in the family. Not entirely, anyhow.
Yes, it would be her home—and eventually that of her husband Mark Lowrey. She’d cook in the kitchen, sit in the Victorian parlor, and sleep upstairs each night. But so would many others. Carpenter embarked on extensive renovations to transform The Elms into one of the city’s most stately B&Bs, quite a feat since the circa 1804 mansion stands surrounded by well-kept grandeur.
She began with small luxuries, like hand-stenciling for the wallpaper and a bathroom for each of the four bedrooms she planned to offer, then necessities like a new roof and updated electrical and plumbing, and finally the sort of amenities that four preceding generations of her family had done without. “There had never been HVAC in the main part of the house before,” said Carpenter. She also sought to make the parlors more livable. “Victorian furniture is not very comfortable to sit on. In my grandmother’s [Alma Kellogg’s] day, she just accepted all that. Comfortable furniture wasn’t even made then!”
Carpenter and Lowrey have the third floor to themselves, an attic space which had not been used as living quarters for over a hundred years and instead was filled with keepsakes of several lifetimes. “There were fifty steamer trunks, all kinds of furniture, frames and pictures, and lots of newspapers and magazines,” said Carpenter.
The Elms can be visited for just an afternoon, or an evening, too. Tour buses to town bring newcomers to enjoy Chef Esther’s cooking (“French with Southern influence”) and locals gather often to enjoy the elegant private dinner parties she hosts. Carpenter has enjoyed dusting off her grandmother’s china and other vintage appliances for both occasions. The house passes down through the women of the family; Carpenter has her sister’s children in mind for the next owners. In the meantime, she thinks the women who preceded her would be pleased with how she’s aired out and updated the home. “All my ancestors are feeling pretty good about me being here and using things. It’s certainly what I would want.”