Bread & Circus Provisions

Careful there: Bread & Circus Provisions aims to enchant you. This clever Lafayette restaurant has distraction built right into its name, drawing on the panem et circenses (“bread and circuses”) that politicians in ancient Rome were said to dangle before the common folk—Pretty, eh?—while they went about their unsavory agendas, no questions asked.

But Chef Manny Augello and co-owner Abi Broussard Falgout have turned the jab at hedonistic pleasure on its head. A meal taken within the white cinderblock walls at Bread & Circus will give you an hour, maybe two, of worry-free immersion in a world of house-smoked meats, signature condiments, and a range of influences from the expected Cajun and Italian (Augello, son of a chef, hails from Palermo, Sicily) to the just-as-welcome Japanese. You might as well make it count.

One Tuesday in late June, I met a friend for a long lunch at Bread & Circus; I’d surveyed the online menu and fasted in advance, so my percolating appetite was approaching the level of a dull roar. We parked just as the contest for spaces in the small strip-mall lot was really heating up.

As we stepped through Bread & Circus’ front door, condiments glinted in a flood of daylight. The restaurant’s entryway doubles as a market; floor-to-ceiling shelves stagger with curry ketchup, bloody Mary mix, fig balsamic, and the other housemade attractions that cemented Bread & Circus’ early fanbase at the Lafayette Farmers and Artisan Market at the Horse Farm, where they first appeared in a booth in summer 2013. “Our first day there, we sold out within fifty-five minutes,” said Falgout. A full restaurant seemed inevitable.

Table service doesn’t start until dinner, so we filed our intentions with the woman at the counter: “We might have to do this in rounds …” I hesitated, then grew steam. “We’re gonna eat a lot.”

For the first course, we ordered light. The pad Thai had a fresh crunch, not too slick or salty, with a studded swatch of sesame peanut sauce keeping the rice noodles warm. Positive reports of the smoked salmon & cucumber on rye, with its slap of dill mayo, came to me via Rachel’s mid-chew exclamations. I’m still surprised she shared half.

Embodied in these ethereal condiments (their Worcestershire, each batch fermented in-house for three months, “will make you think all Worcestershire sauce has been lying to you up to this point,” said Falgout) is Bread & Circus’ frequently uttered oath: housemade. Other potent examples are their pickles, dressings, charcuterie, and even the ramen broth, its muscle derived from shrimp shells smoked out back.

“Ironically, we don’t bake our own bread,” said Falgout. “But we do make our own circus.”

Along with salads and larger plate lunch specials, sandwiches make up the majority of the restaurant’s lunch offerings. “Time for round two!” I said, now at full throttle, to the woman at the counter, who had come to know us fondly as “the only ones who ordered cocktails at lunch.” Rachel sipped at the Chocolate Cherry Coke—chocolate-infused bourbon, Mexican coke, and bobbing brandy-soaked cherries, again housemade, finished with a film of cocoa powder—while I savored my Citrus Ginger Smash, laced with rum and the Bread & Circus ginger syrup I’ve got in my own pantry.

With our next selections, we showed no restraint. The Fig-eta Bout It!, detailed in chalk among the daily specials, married pork and beef in one burger patty, brushed with fig jam, sprinkled with feta, and delivered on a kaiser roll. That description alone won the burger a place on our increasingly crowded table. (And the pun didn’t hurt its chances.)

The Bay of Pigs, an updated Cuban, stood out as Bread & Circus’ strongest argument yet for succumbing to the “housemade”-mania. The spicy ham and smoked sausage from the charcuterie department bedded beneath melted Swiss, crunchy pickles, and a pineapple mustard that ranks among Chef Augello’s most nuanced concoctions. “They’re very layered,” said Falgout of the original condiments, most available for purchase at the front.

Admittedly, the baguette that brings it all together is not a Bread & Circus creation. “We get all our bread from Poupart’s,” said Falgout. “Manny can’t bake and he can’t make rice. I don’t know why!”

To borrow from John Donne, no restaurant is an island, even if they’ve got “provisions” for days and pickles that inspire poetic outbursts. Bread & Circus engenders a community with the farmers, artisans, and other creative chef-entrepreneurs working in the area, including those at Saint Street Inn, Village Café, and Jolie’s Louisiana Bistro, where Augello worked as executive chef for several years. “We send customers to other restaurants, and people get sent our way. There’s plenty of business to go around,” said Falgout.

A summer shower closed in as we wrapped up lunch, grabbing a couple of Tin Roof Juke Joint IPAs and planning out the next Lafayette joint we’d try together. There’s a long list.

In addition to lunch and dinner, Bread & Circus offers a late-night menu, popular with the local chefs who convene there to eat, catch up with friends, and break out into the occasional Cajun jam at the end of the night. “Lafayette’s a progressive city, because it’s deeply grounded in this Cajun heritage,” explained Falgout. “So people aren’t afraid to try something different.”

Details. Details. Details.

Bread & Circus Provisions

258 Bendel Road

Lafayette, La.

(337) 408-3930 • bandcprovisions.com

11 am–10 pm Closed Sunday & Monday