It's Baton Rouge: Out To Lunch

The petro-chem sector may be Louisiana’s largest industry in dollar terms, but food is no doubt number one in the mindset of the collective culture. Louisiana is blessed with so many regional cuisines, restaurants and food entrepreneurs. On this edition of Out to Lunch Baton Rouge two colorful, local food entrepreneurs share their unique journeys, including how COVID has impacted the way they do business. Spuddy Spuddy Faucheaux is owner and chef of Spuddy’s Cajun Cooking, a local business based on the River Road in Vacherie that specializes in Cajun smoked meats. For more than 25 years, Spuddy’s was a small restaurant too, beloved by locals. But that all changed in December 2018, when a crane on a passing barge hit the bridge over the Mississippi near Spuddy’s restaurant, changing traffic patterns, rendering the restaurant unprofitable and forcing Spuddy to lay off half of his employees. So Spuddy reinvented his business. In September 2019 Spuddy launched the Cajun Cooking E