Small Town Chefs 2022: Chef Trent Bonnette

For first-timers, the name Broken Wheel Brewery can be a bit of a misnomer, at first—the good kind, I mean. The pleasant surprise kind. The kind that, if slightly factually questionable, is only due to the fact that it is also so much more than. Upon pulling up to the packed parking lot on Tunica Drive in Marksville, Louisiana, and walking up to the tall entryway, it’s evident the brewery is also a full-service restaurant, with a large pet-friendly patio and beer garden (jumbo Jenga and cornhole included), banquet room, and main dining space with spacious bar seating. On a warm Tuesday evening in mid-spring, the bar has an unmistakable Cheers air about it as the locals’ unofficial town hall; this designation is further confirmed when a group of older men break out into song at one point, craft beer and camaraderie flowing.

While “brewery” is indeed part of the name, it’s the restaurant that comes first and foremost for this operation; the beer is a bonus, said Chef Trent Bonnette. “Chris is the brewmaster, I take care of the kitchen, and John mostly does front-of-house and helps with coordinating catering. We’re a restaurant first. And then the brewery follows.” Bonnette is referring to Jonathan Knoll, who first opened Broken Wheel as Fresh Catch Bistreaux in 2009, and to Chris Pahl, the longtime friend Knoll joined forces with in 2015 to bring Broken Wheel Brewery to life, rebranding the name of the restaurant to reflect their handcrafted beers, produced to pay homage to the local culture.

The packed parking lot at Broken Wheel is due, in large part, to its recently revamped menu, which can in turn be attributed to Bonnette’s (also somewhat-recent) presence. When Bonnette was forced to close the doors of his daytime lunch hotspot, Brown Bag Gourmet, in 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to do what locals had been suggesting for years—merging with Broken Wheel Brewery. 

“We’ve always joked about combining the two restaurants,” Bonnette said. “And this time it actually happened and it’s been the most amazing thing that we’ve ever done, business-wise. We’ve quadrupled revenue.” Helmed by Bonnette, who brought nearly thirty years of restaurant industry experience into the venture, today Broken Wheel is known for serving authentic Cajun cuisine featuring powerhouse seafood platters, elevated savory dishes such as crawfish étouffée and crab cakes, and rotating daily specials. “So we kept the name and merged the two menus, and like I said, it’s been the best thing.”

Growing up, Bonnette worked for his parents’ restaurant in his hometown of Moreauville, a village in Avoyelles Parish. “I swore I’d never open a restaurant,” he said. Thankfully, he would go on to break his promise; hindsight (and a proper appreciation for irony) are twenty-twenty, after all. It wasn’t until Bonnette moved to New Orleans in his early twenties, though, that he began to fall in love with food, honing his craft as a line cook at Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House Restaurant. “That’s when I fell in love and really understood the restaurant business more. There was a lot more than what my parents’ restaurant had to offer.” He moved back to Central Louisiana when the opportunity arose to help open Red River Grill in downtown Marksville in 2001 (which reopened in 2017 under the new name ​​Maglieaux’s Downtown Grille) and spearheaded a menu based around staples such as Gulf seafood, prime steaks, and wild game. Bonnette stayed at the beloved local spot for ten years, before serving as the executive chef of Legends Steakhouse at Paragon Casino for another three. 

[Read about Chef Bonnette's original Marksville restaurant Brown Bag Gourmet, here.]

After eighteen years of working in the restaurant industry, Bonnette finally decided to open his own venture, Brown Bag Gourmet, in 2010. Bonnette’s inspiration for the name derived from the artisan farm-to-table takeout fare he served, though this was far from your average bag lunch. Bonnette intended to provide something different for rural Marksville; in a sea of casino buffets, fried chicken joints, and plate-lunch places, Brown Bag offered an inventive selection of delectable salads and sandwiches, with all of the dressings and sauces made fresh in-house. The restaurant’s hearty salads became colorful best sellers, and locals lined up for the Brown Bag Burger (a frequent favorite since the restaurant’s opening; the “farm-to-table masterpiece” featured Louisiana beef, a grilled portabella mushroom topped with caramelized onions, and avocado, all served on a fresh onion roll baked that morning and picked up by Bonnette at a local grocer). “I don’t have any formal training,” the forty-five-year-old said. “So to please people with food, you know, especially people that I have grown up with, I’ve lived here my whole life and for them to enjoy what I provide and what I create is incredible.”

The success of Brown Bag came as a surprise even to Bonnette, who, by that point, had built a small following in the region; but with the lack of fresh seafood in the aftermath of the BP oil spill, and the challenges presented by the eatery’s tucked-away location, Bonnette had not expected to be so highly sought out by quite so many people. But in small towns especially, word gets around fast when good food is involved. “When I opened Brown Bag, I knew I wanted to provide something that was different,” Bonnette said. “Off the bat, we started doing a lot more gourmet food than what was previously available, and it just took off. During the first week we were like, ‘what the hell did we open?’”

Once you’ve tasted Bonnette’s food, though, it’s no longer a mystery. “I like to call my style of cooking a global cuisine with Louisiana flair,” Bonnette said. “That’s the best way I can describe it because I enjoy so many different types of cuisine, but I always like to put a little Louisiana spin on it, whether it’s using local ingredients or some of our different spices.” His most popular dish by far (and for good reason) is the andouille-crusted redfish with pan-roasted shrimp, Louisiana hot sauce cream, green onion aioli, and roasted corn grits. Speaking from experience, all of it—the pecan-crusted crab cakes topped with crawfish cream, the potato-crusted chicken with bacon cream gravy and roasted sweet potato chipotle mash; the white chocolate mocha bread pudding—lives up to the hype.

The brewery is named after an old story that tells the origin of Marksville’s founding—as the folktale goes, Marksville was first settled by a merchant trader who traveled the area selling his wares to the local Native American tribes and French settlers. On one such trip, the trader was stranded due to a broken wheel on his wagon, prompting him to throw his hands in the air and declare, “That’s it, I’m not going anywhere else.” Like the brewery’s namesake, the name of each beer shares a bit of local lore, too. Broken Wheel’s offerings include seven beers total, with four rotating on tap: the Páchafa Pale Ale is named after an old Marksville legend of a half-man, half-horse boogeyman who roamed the woods, while the AP IPA honors Avoyelles Parish; there’s also the Spring Bayou Blonde Ale (“clear, crisp, and clean”) and the Grand Chien Milk Stout. Seasonal brews include: the Hunter’s Moon Oktoberfest Ale; La Vielle Wheat (La Vielle is Cajun French, a kind invitation to come pass a good time); and 82 Schwarzbier—a German black beer named for Marksville’s elevation above sea level. 

While their craft beers are made in-house, you won’t find Broken Wheel brews in stores just yet. The issue with bottling and distribution is a legal matter, Bonnette said; according to state law, if a brewery begins to distribute, it is considered solely a brewpub, and can no longer sell other liquor, beer, or wine. At Broken Wheel, they can’t risk losing the revenue brought in by their wine list (curated, notably, by Mystic Vine in New Orleans—an import and wholesaling arm of an old legacy and family-run company, Si Sherman Inc., which began business as a rum-runner in Central Louisiana during the Prohibition Era and was officially founded in 1940 as the retail outlet, Hokus Pokus Liquors), house cocktails, and domestic beers. In the months to come, however, the Broken Wheel crew is focusing on expanding their off-site catering options, as well as completing a patio renovation. Having access to cuisine of this caliber in a place like Marksville, and Central Louisiana as a whole, is no small feat. The success of Broken Wheel, as well as Bonnette, shows that when you produce high quality, fresh food, people will show up for you, no matter if the name above the door is brewery or bistreaux. Some will even go the extra mile to drive in for the experience; while Broken Wheel boasts a large local clientele as the go-to neighborhood hangout, Bonnette says, they’ve also seen an increasing number of patrons coming in from out of town thanks to positive word-of-mouth and boosting their social media presence.

“As crazy as it sounds, I’m kind of thankful for COVID, because something really great came out of it,” Bonnette said. “It hurt a little bit to lose Brown Bag. But you know, it’s still alive, in a sense. I mean, we had everything against us. And it succeeded just beyond our expectations.”  

brokenwheelbrew.com