The former chef of Restaurant IPO and his wife will open later this year a homegrown Louisiana restaurant on Government Street that will double as a teaching kitchen for at-risk youth.
Gouter Restaurant is the brainchild of Sommer and Chris Wadsworth, the founders of Triumph Kitchen, and will occupy a 2,500-square-foot building on Government Street formerly occupied by a clothing store.
In the restaurant, Chris Wadsworth, the former head chef of Restaurant IPO, will serve down home Louisiana meals with a modern twist, like Cuban-tobacco smoked fish in an old Cuban cigar box.
“The whole atmosphere is that you are walking into a modern-day but rustic sporting lodge,” Sommer Wadsworth says.
The pair left the restaurant business a few years ago to open Triumph Kitchen and teach at-risk youth life and survival skills via the culinary arts. After a few years of relying on support from others and paying out-of-pocket costs to keep the school going, the duo decided to jump back into the business they know and open a restaurant that will double as a school.
Students will train alongside the staff, learning how to cook with industry veterans while also serving tables with college students.
“They have a live audience, they have real customers, they get to train side by side cooks that have been licensed, in the industry for 30 to 40 years, servers who are waiting tables to get through college, so it gives them kind of a different perspective,” Sommer Wadsworth says.
She says they hope to finish the renovations later this year, but she did not have a set date. The restaurant will seat about 54 people.
The Wadsworths have applied with the Planning Commission to rezone the building from light commercial C1 to a restaurant commercial alcoholic beverage license. A hearing on that application is set for Nov. 16.
—Ryan Broussard
