Moving in: Sake Sushi Japanese Restaurant is taking over the former location of Lasseigne’s American Grill at 7520 Perkins Road, near Essen Lane. Multiple efforts to reach Wei Na Zhang, the registered agent for Sake Sushi, have been unsuccessful. Lasseigne’s American Grill permanently closed after Thanksgiving. General Manager Karen Hayden in a Facebook post cited “unfortunate circumstances” as the reasoning for the restaurant’s closure. Lasseigne’s American Grill had been open for about 10 months. The space at 7520 Perkins Road previously was home to Frankie Marcello’s, a short-lived Mexican restaurant and Calendar’s Restaurant.
Sprouting up: Southern University AgCenter is hosting a mandatory pre-bid conference today for potential vendors interested in cultivating and producing medical marijuana for the university. The conference was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. at the Southern AgCenter. The state Legislature tapped Southern and LSU to be licensed medical marijuana growers in Louisiana. Both universities are moving ahead with the venture. Seven companies have submitted proposals to grow medical marijuana for LSU, which expects to select a contractor by June and to produce the first crop by the end of the year.
Under scrutiny: An animal rights group wants a federal investigation of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s primate lab, saying six reports of major trauma to monkeys indicate problems at the New Iberia Research Center, The Associated Press reports. Officials at ULL did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment about the statement from Michael Budkie of Stop Animal Exploitation Now. He asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate six monthly health reports from 2016 and 2017 for a colony of about 540 monkeys. The reports are signed by a research center veterinarian and were obtained from the National Institutes of Health. Read more.
