New Heights for Magpie
Magpie has opened its second location in downtown Baton Rouge, offering coffee, cocktails, and plenty of style
The cottage trappings of Magpie Café have rolled into the big city—or as big city as Baton Rouge's work-in-progress downtown gets. Another success story for the city's locavores, Magpie is the latest to "be fruitful and multiply," its second location landing on the ground-floor of the new Commerce Building on the corner of Third and Laurel streets.
The residential tower is promising in and of itself. Downtown hums along just fine when the offices are open and white-collar workers need lunch, but what about when they go home? Well, home can now include a city skyline in flux and the knee-knocking waves of fine coffee brewing and paninis on the press that float up, up, up from Magpie to your front door. And if you're not a downtown resident—or even an office worker—you can still find your groove in the spacious new location. The ceilings are high (and by extension, the wooden shelves of gorgeously-hued and -textured coffee mugs) and window after window of the corner-hugging restaurant is filled with downtown's light and movement. The effect is energizing even before your coffee arrives.
[You'll enjoy: Chef Tanner Purdum, of Magpie Café, and his wife Carlee have found a home in the Baton Rouge food scene.]
And on that note, there's a new kind of buzz on offer at this Magpie—the culinary edition of wielding a makeup brush or two to take your look from day to night: housemade cocktails, beer, and wine now occupy their own clipboard menu, available at lunch or dinner. Pedestrians are in luck too (and their growing numbers are another good omen for the neighborhood), as a walk-up window will fill your prescription—ahem, your coffee cup—right away.
Interior touches further transform this new, more consciously stylish Magpie, like the canopy of bare bulbs that hover, Mission Impossible-style, from the ceiling; the "take a number" system replaced with totems that bear some of Magpie's favorite phrases ("House Granola," "Weck," "Farm to Table"); patterned pillows cushioning a bench and pony wall; and a black-and-white-tiled bar that mesmerizes you toward the aforementioned hooch. (It's a plausible excuse!)
Keep in mind, a soft opening and a single lunchtime visit leave much more to be discovered, as the menu grows and the staff settles in, and we're just as excited as you to see what's next from owners James and Lina Jacobs and their already-proven executive chef Tanner Purdum. Take a look inside before your first visit: