Photos by Paul Kieu
Cory Bourgeois and Ryan Trahan are proud foragers.
Bourgeois, executive chef, and Trahan, chef/owner, scavenge the Acadiana region for what they describe as “super seasonal” specialties for their restaurant Dark Roux. Faithful to the farm-to-table trend, Dark Roux sources all of its food from a 150-mile radius, and Bourgeois and Trahan both thrive on the get-to-know-your-farmer aspect of the business they’ve built. “We love to form those relationships with the people who are working the fields, making the cheese, or feeding the cows,” Bourgeois said. “I believe that kind of love and nurturing gives food more of a soul.”
Dark Roux’s Louisiana- and Southern-inspired menu changes often. The restaurant has also traveled beyond regional cuisine to host monthly pop-up events with menus that hail from beyond these horizons. “With the pop-ups, we like doing different cuisines. We’re always looking for ways to learn,” Bourgeois said. “Once a month, we select the food of a different nationality and have a special event.” Thus far, they’ve served Spanish-style tacos with charred pepper salsas as well as a wildly popular dim sum night that brought more than six hundred people to the restaurant, which holds about seventy. After seeing crowds of people wait for so long, they decided that future pop-ups should be reservation-only.
“Everything we do at Dark Roux, including the pop-up nights, is made from scratch,” Bourgeois said. “Even for the bacon, we have a subsidiary program we use to get whole hogs—and I break them down. We get whole chickens, whole fish, whole cows. We thrive by working with the raw ingredients.”
Bourgeois estimates that about eighty-five percent of the meat the restaurant serves arrives in whole-animal form, but the nature of sourcing food locally means that sometimes you can’t get requested quantities. “Part of why our menu has to be changed so often is that if you’re going to buy from a farm, you have to be flexible,” Bourgeois said. “You can’t say I want fifty pounds of meat and expect it to be there every single time. The weather affects yield. The season affects it. A family’s circumstances could affect it—and we’re okay with that.”
Bourgeois and Trahan met while they were both working at the restaurant location’s predecessor, Brick & Spoon. When Brick & Spoon closed its original location, Bourgeois and Trahan stayed to build something new. Fourteen months later, they are all in. They practically live and sleep the details of Dark Roux.
“Even our landscaping is edible,” Bourgeois said. “We have four beds in the back. We grow a variety of herbs—bay leaf, rosemary. Ryan and I had this idea. We got kind of caught up in the plants when we would go out to visit all the farms.”
So, they decided to call Marcus Descant, Lafayette’s Urban Naturalist. “He came over and helped us also build a vertical garden set up,” Bourgeois said. “We’ve joined the cause of growing the food we serve.”
Both Bourgeois and Trahan come from deep Louisiana-food roots. When Trahan was growing up, his grandparents owned the legendary Frosto diner in Crowley. One of Dark Roux’s most popular desserts hearkens back to Trahan’s childhood memories of his grandparents. It’s called Cookies and Milk. He uses a little science to recreate the way his grandparents always kept their refrigerator a touch too cold, causing a thin layer of ice to top the milk. These days, at Dark Roux, they use liquid nitrogen to barely freeze the top of a glass of milk, served alongside four baked-to-order cookies.
“We love playing with the memories of his childhood and how he used to drink milk,” Bourgeois said. “We just really love to cook Southern food. Through our skills and practice in the kitchen, we’ve started to get better. When we decided to open Dark Roux, we took a lot of time and started experimenting with cuisine so we could serve favorites from childhood.” Tugging on those familial heartstrings, at lunch the restaurant serves a pain perdu straight from Bourgeois’ grandmother’s kitchen.
Dark Roux’s weekend brunch has gained momentum and popularity with menu hits like fried chicken biscuits, served with buttermilk sausage gravy, local honey, and sunny-side-up farm eggs. Shrimp and grits are another local favorite. The grits are ground in Dark Roux’s kitchen—and the shrimp are, of course, from the nearby Gulf of Mexico.
Like any good Louisiana restaurant, the most popular element of Dark Roux’s brunch menu is its cocktail list. Bartender Paige Tait is gaining quite a reputation around Acadiana for her innovative drinks. For example, any juice used in drinks is made from scratch. She’s mixed bitters and gin and aged it for five weeks in a whiskey barrel.
Noted area food blogger, Tiffiany Epnett Decou (lafayettefoodjunkie.blogspot.com), said that Tait’s creations keep her interest and keep her coming back for more. “Paige is doing alcohol alchemy with the infused whiskies,” said Decou. “She’s young, bright, and imaginative, and I look forward to see how she progresses in the bartending world.”
At 28, Bourgeois is one of the senior members of the Dark Roux family of youngsters. “Yeah, we’re all pretty young. The oldest person who works here is 31. We’re young and energetic—makes for a great workplace,” he said. “Most of our employees have been with us since the beginning. We enjoy being together, creating something special and giving back to the community.”
Server Jacob Gibson agrees. “It’s a good atmosphere, good people—and obviously, it’s good food.” 3524 Kaliste Saloom Road, Suite 101 Lafayette, La. darkrouxla.com (337) 504-2346 Live music on Saturday mornings from 10 am–1 pm
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