Another Friday night in the library. The floor-to-ceiling windows spanning one length of the East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s main branch give way to an inky black night, save for the lamp-lit walkway to the parking lot, and the strangers around me all share the same studious bent. The room then echoes with a collective inhalation.
Along the long, communal tables, a corps of servers clad in black have just deposited hundreds of bamboo trays gleaming with shrimp and coconut stew nestled into a pillowy bed of lemon rice. It’s the third dish borne out to us that evening, from a menu crafted by Chef Alejandra Espinoza to highlight her Ecuadorean roots translated through classical French training. Moments later, diners are slurping and sighing—in the public library of all places—and they’ve got Dinner Lab to thank for it.
The quasi-underground supper-series started in New Orleans in fall 2011, with Baton Rouge joining the register earlier this year. “Since the onset of Dinner Lab in NOLA, we’ve had a significant number of members commuting from Baton Rouge to NOLA for events, so they’re happy to stay home,” said Brian Bordainick, co-founder and CEO of Dinner Lab.
Now operating in over thirty cities, Dinner Lab holds pop-up events nationwide in “unique spaces that exist for only 24 hours,” according to the company’s website. Become a member and you’re included on emails that advertise the next dinner in your city, a link to purchase tickets (which tend to fly), and the full five-course menu dreamed up by an emerging young chef. The location remains “TBA” until the day before your dinner, when an email arrives to direct you to a furniture warehouse, an old church, a backyard, a library …
Supper clubs are nothing new. Emerging at the tail-end of Prohibition, these cabaret-style dining destinations came into vogue in the Midwest, with a full evening of socializing and entertainment that embarked with cocktails and dimmed after dinner with live music, particularly jazz. The current renaissance tends toward the premium—limited seats, quickly sold-out tickets, secret venues—branding dinners of this ilk with maddening exclusivity.
But it’s no hard bargain to get a Louisianan to the supper table. Other savvy organizations in the area have established their own events in recent years with the adventurous, or at least enthusiastic, eater in mind.
Dinner Lab may tap chefs from its cross-country network to showcase more unusual flavors and foodstuffs—Bordainick promises more local chefs at future Baton Rouge Dinner Labs, enthusing that “the ground conditions of the local talent are perfect for the work that we do”—but Pig & Plough Suppers out of Lafayette finds plenty of soil to till at home. “We try to make it very circular,” said coordinator Tyler Thigpen. “We’re not asking the farmers to donate the food; we’re purchasing the food from the farmers. We keep it as local as we can, down to the salt in the pasta. Everything stays within the local food scene: sourcing, service, local chefs, where the proceeds go.”
Thigpen merely moonlights—in her words, “volunteers”—as a culinary ambassador. By day, she’s a wetland scientist. But in 2011, she joined with Whitney Broussard, Kristen Kordecki, and the late Jillian Johnson in founding the Acadiana Food Circle, a comprehensive directory of outlets for purchasing local food. “It became a network of farmers, farmers markets, and artisans,” said Thigpen, who developed a special interest in the events side of the nonprofit.
In summer 2013, Thigpen entered talks with Chef Jeremy Conner on engineering a more collaborative food scene in Lafayette, connecting the area’s chefs, resources, and rapidly growing community of “locavores” and putting them all at one table. The two launched the first Pig & Plough Supper in September 2013, led by Conner and Chef Manny Augello of Bread & Circus Provisions. “Now we’re in our third year,” said Thigpen. “It’s evolving.” The series’ early attendees came to the events by different avenues, “because they loved B&C or they loved Social, or they loved the non-profit we chose,” said Thigpen. “We’re literally fortunate in that we’re taking things that already have quite a following and mixing them together.”
Pig & Plough’s ticket sales are more immediate now. “[We have] repeat customers buying right away; they follow the series. They’re asking, We don’t know this chef, I wonder what he’ll do?”
Magpie Café hooked its Baton Rouge disciples with coffee, well-tended espresso, and rustic lunch plates, housed under the unofficial slogan “Live what you love” that doesn’t feel far removed from a battle cry. Since opening in 2012, Magpie has met popular demand with expanded hours; a second, larger downtown location in the works; and even made-to-order “street bowls” for evening drop-ins.
Speaking of made-to-order, Magpie’s regulars eventually clamored for a supper club done in the style of their favorite local coffee shop. “We weren’t doing this type of dinner, but our customers started asking for it,” said owner James Jacobs. Jacobs’ wife Lina, co-owner and “culinary strategist” of Magpie, worked with the café’s new executive chef Tanner Purdum, brought in from Dallas ahead of Magpie’s expansion to downtown, in concocting the restaurant’s first Supper Social this past September.
The locally sourced, seasonal menu cycles through four or five courses and rests on Magpie’s reputation for earthy creations. November’s chill brought cider-glazed stuffed chicken breast and sweet potato purée for one course; honey-roasted carrots with fuchsia eggs, pickled with English radish and arugula, for another (the eggs came straight from a Magpie devotee’s backyard chickens); and a bourbon pumpkin sponge cake slathered with apple spice jam and a chilly mint whipped-cream to close. On an average day, Magpie seats thirty guests inside—with half-a-dozen hopefuls idling nearby—but the Supper Social scrapes up just sixteen chairs. “We wanted it to be more intimate,” explained Jacobs.
At the October social, he added, one guest was seated across from “a gentleman who had just come to town on a corporate move. This guy had a background that was just intense, working in the DC area.” But conversation developed between the two unlikely companions throughout the evening. “They just struck up a real accord,” said Jacobs.
A shared meal has that power. My husband and I sat across from an older couple at a Dinner Lab back in June. By the second course, we had warmed to small talk, ignited perhaps by the strange but likable molasses glaze on our bulgur salads. We spent dessert exchanging contact information between spoonfuls of rice and barley pudding. A few weeks later, we met our new friends at La Reyna, the Latin restaurant off Siegen Lane that proved as delectable as they’d promised.
When Pig & Plough Suppers made a Baton Rouge visit with an event at Beausoleil Restaurant celebrating the Caribbean, Louisiana, and West Africa, all three linked by food and commerce, I took my seat at the long main table and looked around at strangers. But that night I laughed and dined with a dazzling contingent from Lafayette, learning that conversation comes easy when you’re all cheerfully mired hip-deep in regional food culture. We even grabbed a handle of whiskey from the market next door to make the night last just a little longer.
Like minds and libations do their part to enchant the evening, there’s no doubt; and when I walk away at the end of such a night, my head swims with bright details, aromas, and dozens of names to remember. For three hours, though, it’s invariably a table that holds us close.
Details. Details. Details.
Dinner Lab
Basic membership is free, though some events are reserved for a paid set of Select Members, who also receive advanced dinner notifications and discounted dinner tickets.
Pig and Plough Suppers
On December 6, Pig and Plough hosts its third annual Bayou Teche Brewing Fundraiser. See event listing here.
Magpie Café 3205 Perkins Road (225) 366-6885 magpie.cafe
