Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
Crab fried rice from Roots Lafayette
“Well this certainly isn’t anything like Pamplona’s,” I told my husband as we sat ourselves down in Lafayette’s newest eatery, helmed by Kris Allen, head chef of the famed downtown tapas bar. Where Pamplona’s brings ambiance, drama, and surprise—its new sister Roots takes you back home, especially if you’re from around here.
In the spacious dining area, backed with a bar and adorned with vivid photos of local swamplands, the still-sweetly-novel 7 pm daylight savings time rays pour through wide window frames. An outdoor seating area—littered with families sipping on Coors Light and sucking crawfish heads—seems to draw inspiration from long Sunday afternoons spent in some uncle or aunt’s backyard, all with the steady bounce of Cajun music in the background.
My first question for Chef Allen, though, had nothing to do with the seemingly radical chasm between his two enterprises: “So, I hear you get your crawfish from Ville Platte?”
[Read more about Sylvester Crawfish in this story from May 2020 issue.]
Acadiana residents will know what I mean when I say that restaurants boasting a “Cajun” identity are to be approached with caution, even right here in Cajun Country. Even knowing Allen’s pedigree—which includes a childhood spent in the kitchen with his grandmother, tutelage at Montana’s Rainbow Ranch, experience at some of New Orleans’ finest restaurants, which he brought with him to Chicago for a time, and finally a home landing in Lafayette—I decided against ordering the gumbo.
I pretty much instantly regretted it though, watching as two giant, steaming bowls wafting roux our way were delivered to a neighboring table. (I later learned that his gumbo has been dubbed a winner at the prestigious Black Pot Festival and Cook Off.) Challenged, we ordered the boudin and gratons, which, snobby as we are, we deemed the real damn deal—worthy competition for the collection of gas stations we frequent around our home in Scott.
This is the food that Allen grew up with, he explained, and the restaurant exists as an effort to get back to his roots—thus the name. Since opening in mid-March, he’s kept the menu pretty bare bones, essentially a listing of beloved local staples that include turtle soup, crawfish étouffée, rice and gravy, and fried catfish.
Now that he’s gotten settled in, though, Allen said he is excited to start offering more creative twists alongside the classics. He encouraged us to try the night’s off-menu special: crab fried rice. Digging into the blend of fresh vegetables, Asian flavors, and indulgent chunks of buttery crabmeat, I thought to myself, “There it is,”—the surprise factor Allen has so come to be known for at Pamplona’s. Except that here at Roots, that creativity joins with the freedom of simplicity and a respect for the classics. For Julien, we asked for one more recommendation, to which Allen smiled and replied: “Well, you’ve got to get some of that Ville Platte crawfish.”
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