In 2015, Sally and Russell Davis and their four children were living in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, a charming coastal town 40 minutes from Boston.
As 225 details in its latest cover story, Russell, a native New Englander, worked as a consulting chef for a development company opening restaurant concepts. Sally worked in marketing for a small coffee roaster.
The kids attended local public schools, and the family took full advantage of Boston’s cultural activities and high-quality health care. Idyllic fall foliage and cool summers rounded out a long list of quality-of-life amenities.
But that year, the Davises made a decision they’d been pondering for months—to leave New England and move to Sally’s hometown, Baton Rouge.
“There was always a tugging to come back,” she says. “At the risk of sounding cheesy, south Louisiana has this zest for life that we missed, including friends and family and a culture centered around food and music.”
Moreover, the Davises believed Baton Rouge was the right place for Russell’s next professional move. He had previously been a chef in New Orleans, working for several Brennan family restaurants and also had his own restaurant, the now-closed Saltwater Grill. But he was ready and eager to open another restaurant of his own.
Baton Rouge offered key advantages: An evolving culinary scene enthusiastic about local eateries and a network of personal contacts who could provide him and Sally everything from babysitting to grassroots marketing. After moving back in the summer of 2015, the couple launched their modern Creole restaurant, Eliza, on Jefferson Highway late last year.
“It’s been great to be back,” says Sally, who hadn’t lived in Baton Rouge since she left in 1994 for Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. “We feel excited about the food community. It was very different from the way I remembered it growing up. There are so many local restaurants and a thriving farmers market. … And it was really important to us that our kids experience being around a lot of family.”
The Davises aren’t the first family who made the decision to return to the Capital Region. They’re part of a demographic of native-born Baton Rougeans and LSU alumni who left the area as young adults for professional pursuits and are moving home now for professional and personal reasons.
Bringing back these so called “boomerangs” is part of a larger goal of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, which recently launched several initiatives to attract workforce talent to the area.
“Louisiana is a very ‘sticky’ state,” says Melissa Thompson, director of talent development for BRAC. “There is a real sense of pride among people who grew up here or who went to LSU. These are folks who have drunk the Kool-Aid. They know how great the region is, and many of them would come back if they have the right opportunity.”
