To France with Jane

In Lafayette, Chef Will Baxter Cultivates a Little Corner of Paris

by

Upon walking into Jane’s, my husband Julien and I were greeted by the glowering visage of Vincent Van Gogh. The recreation of of “Self Portrait with a Straw Hat” sets the European tone of Chef Will Baxter’s restaurant, a space suffused with the French eclectic style of his late grandmother, the antiquarian Jane Fleniken. The décor is all hers, remnants of her legendary assemblage of fine French furnishings: gold-framed Marie Therese de Jaham paintings of dogs and ducks, a glittering chandelier with two glass roses extending outwards. A massive armoire filled with crystal occupies an entire wall. Some of the lanterns hanging in the courtyard still have price tags on them, in Fleniken’s  handwriting. 

Around twenty years ago, Fleniken, a recognized authority of French Provincial furniture for more than sixty years, worked with a contractor to create this building in the image of France’s Maisons à Colombage—a Tudor Revival style construction technique known in English as “half timbering,” which was popular in France in the late nineteenth century. A distinctive style consisting of exposed wooden beams with masonry filling the spaces in-between, Jane’s yellow bricks look conspicuously continental alongside the other homes lining Lafayette’s residential University Avenue. “I know it looks much older,” said Baxter of the building where his grandmother  lived and operated her antiques store for nearly twenty years. “But she worked hand-in-hand with the architect to design and make it look this way. She was a big fan of all things French.” 

[Read about another fine dining experience in Lafayette, Chef Ryan Trahan's Vestal, here. ] 

The antique shop’s transformation into a contemporary Parisian restaurant was part of Fleniken’s  vision, too. In the final years of her life, she’d tell her grandson, who had just moved home after a Michelin-starred career on the West Coast, "I’d love to see you turn this into a restaurant after I’m gone.” 

Our waiter asked for our seating preference. Afternoon rainstorms excluded the courtyard from consideration, despite the charm of lush greenery and red stucco. There is even a gazebo, partially enclosed by stained glass panels, with a table set for two. I was about to request we be seated in the room to the right, luxurious with deep blue walls, wood furnishings, and that remarkable chandelier. If you eat in that room, I’d heard, your wine is served in Jane’s crystal glasses. 

But Julien was quicker, drawn to the activity in the main dining room—where we were delivered a front row seat to the drama of Jane’s open kitchen. There was Chef Baxter, absorbed in vegetable prep. For this, in the end, I was grateful (all the restaurant’s glassware is top-quality, anyway). After taking our wine orders (a 2020 Bouchard Père & Fils, Pouilly-Fuissé for him, a 2020 Réserve de Bonpas Côtes du Rhône for me), our waiter explained that the dinner experience here was to consist of three courses, all ordered together to ensure optimal timing. And then he, with great fondness, told us the story of Jane’s. 

Earlier that day, I’d had the pleasure of meeting with Chef Baxter himself, whose expanded version of that story centered around a grand sojourn through France with his grandmother in 2015. During those days, Fleniken would travel to France twice a year and load up shipping containers with antiques. “She took me to some of the best restaurants in Paris,” he said. “And man, you know, it just leaves an impression on you. Going there—eating that kind of food?” 

“French is in people’s blood," said Chef Will Baxter. "But I didn’t want to go up against the people who have been doing the Louisiana French cuisine for decades. I wanted to do something different.”

He wanted to serve food like he’d eaten with his grandmother, “as French as you can get”. 

Baxter at that point had already completed his training at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. He’d cooked at fine restaurants such as the Upper East Side’s French brasserie, Orsay, serving three hundred people a night. “Coming out of school and working in Manhattan, it was like out of the pan and into the fryer,” he said. “The standards were very high. Everything had to be perfect. Everything had to be consistent. That experience was really eye opening. It taught me what can be accomplished when you apply yourself.” 

He spent time in Miami, cooking upscale Latin American cuisine under James Beard Award-winning Chef Michelle Bernstein, who he described as “an amazing influence”. And then, longing to get closer to home, he moved on to the New Orleans scene, where he worked under Susan Spicer and at Scott Boswell’s ambitiously experimental Stella!—where he frequently cooked for the movie crowd, serving celebrities the likes of Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro, Ryan Reynolds, and Blake Lively. 

Baxter embarked on his French food tour with his grandmother around the same time he was getting started in the Michelin scene of San Francisco—an experience that showed him “how far you can take it”. 

“You have to be obsessive, and unyielding,” he said. “It’s certainly not a way you can live your life. It takes a toll on your body, your mental state. But in San Francisco, that really instilled my passion for cuisine.” 

All the while, Baxter was taking notes, storing information away for a future restaurant of his own. “At that point, you know, I had been cooking for a while, but I hadn’t really zeroed in on French food,” he said, describing his interests in Spanish and elevated Asian cuisines. Being in France with his grandmother, though, lit a spark. And anyway, here in Lafayette, “French is in people’s blood,” he said. “But I didn’t want to go up against the people who have been doing the Louisiana French cuisine for decades. I wanted to do something different.” He wanted to serve food like he’d eaten with his grandmother, “as French as you can get”. 

“Premium ingredients, you know, even though we can ship them from other countries and grow them in greenhouses, ingredients are really the best when nature tells them to grow. So, I do go entirely by the seasons. And then, I change things whenever we start to feel like a food factory. We’re craftsmen, artists. When we get bored with stuff, we change it.” —Chef Will Baxter

After almost five years in San Francisco, Baxter moved back to Lafayette to be near his family again. When Jane Fleniken died in 2018, aged ninety-three, Baxter’s mother and aunt inherited her French-style home on the corner of University and Taft, and the exquisite French antiques with which it was filled. “We had to do two estate sales to get all the furniture out,” said Baxter. “There was so much in here.” Together, they began the process of transforming the space into Jane’s French Cuisine. 

Baxter describes his initial vision for Jane’s as something similar to Chef Thomas Keller’s (of The French Laundry fame) Bouchon in Yountville, California: a French bistro experience marked by exceptional ingredients and next-level intentionality.

Today, that experience begins, appropriately, with a baguette, straight from the oven, and a hunk of imported French butter—simple pleasures of luxurious quality, quietly setting the precedent for the meal to come. 

Baxter’s menu is ever-changing—“I am one of the only restaurants in this area that changes my menu entirely each season,” he claimed. The menu is a tableau of the best possible ingredients he can get his hands on, and the possibilities—all drawn from the French culinary archive—they inspire. “Premium ingredients, you know, even though we can ship them from other countries and grow them in greenhouses, ingredients are really the best when nature tells them to grow,” he said. “So, I do go entirely by the seasons. And then, I change things whenever we start to feel like a food factory. We’re craftsmen, artists. When we get bored with stuff, we change it.” 

The menu itself is small and tightly curated. On the night we visited, Course One options included Caspian Sea Osetra Caviar, Spring Vegetable Chowder with Gulf Shrimp, an Endive and Watercress Salad, Seared Foie Gras, and Steamed Mussels. We opted for the chowder and mussels, which came to the table one following the other. The mussels, steamed in garlic, white wine, saffron, and mustard, were presented in a generous, dark bloom—their buttery centers little bright delights of flavor. We soaked up as much of the liquor in the bowl as the beautiful bread would accommodate, and I had to stop Julien from scooping the rest out with a spoon. The chowder, a well-balanced sorcery of light textures and rich flavor, went down just as easily and we returned both plates practically clean. 

The second courses offered that night included a classic A5 Wagyu steak from the Miyazaki Prefecture of Japan (some of the highest quality beef in the world), seared in tallow and topped with smoked marrow butter. A life-changing dish, if you can swing it, with the $100+ price tag. As Baxter puts it, “I am slightly more expensive than most other restaurants in town, but it’s not because I’m getting rich. It’s because of how much these premium ingredients cost.” 

Julien ordered lamb—a spring specialty at Jane’s and a favorite with regulars. Before it left the kitchen, we watched Baxter oversee his line cook’s meticulous preparation of the dish, quizzing him with the intensity of a master over his apprentice, “Did you season it? Did you taste it?” The boneless Colorado lamb loin came bathed in a Mediterranean Bagna Cauda sauce and accompanied by baby turnips, baby carrots, fava beans, and French breakfast radishes. 

After agonizing between a Bacon Wrapped Boneless Rabbit Loin and Wild Caught Salmon, I took to heart our waiter’s point that the salmon—sourced from Oregon’s Columbia River—would only be available for a few short weeks. “This is really special stuff,” he promised. “I saw them bring the fish in earlier. It’s beautiful.”  As the dish was prepared, a sweet, exotic aroma stole into the room. Listening in, we learned from the kitchen that this came from the fig leaf parcel in which the filet was encased. When the fish arrived it was drizzled in spicy garlic honey and served beside Black Beluga Lentils and Charred Broccolini (which, I admit, knocked me out of the water for a relatively unassuming vegetable). The fish was perfectly flaky, the fig leaf drawing out its sweetness and buttery undertones. Plates were again returned cleaned, but with the portions so thoughtfully prepared—we gladly anticipated the third course, dessert. 

With just two options that day, we simply ordered everything on the menu. The Belgian Dark Chocolate Crème Brulée came with biscotti and fresh berries, the decadent sugar cap breaking oh-so-satisfyingly to reveal thick chocolate custard beneath. Julien ordered the Mille Feuille, a crispy French puff pastry layered over a cream made of Madagascar vanilla bean and Mascarpone cheese, dusted in powdered sugar and adorned with fresh sliced strawberries. We went back and forth between the airy pastry and the indulgent chocolate crème, finally sitting back in our chairs and declaring ourselves finis. 

On our way out, I was sure to make eye contact with Baxter, who beamed as we thanked him for the meal. Throughout the evening he’d been wholly absorbed, though not frantic, issuing orders like “Throw it in there—no butter! No butter at all!” and “Get a photo of that rabbit, that’s beautiful.” But now he grinned, and I remembered how he had described his craft earlier that day—"as a way to take science and art and fuse them into an amazing experience for people.” As we stepped through the front door, I noticed a photograph right beside it: Jane, fabulous in a blonde bob and pearls, holding a massive Persian cat. Bonsoir, Jane.

Et merci.

[Read our other 2024 Cuisine Issue Features—celebrating French cuisine in Louisiana, here: 

Hours at Jane's French Cuisine are 5:30 pm–9:30 pm Tuesday–Saturday. Reservations may be made at (337) 534-0442 or janesfrenchcuisine.com.