Pat’s Cajun Seafood & Steak restaurant on Jefferson Highway closed for good Sunday afternoon, marking the end of the restaurant’s third attempt to break into the Baton Rouge market after just nine months in business on Jefferson Highway.
Chef Jude Huval, owner of Pat’s Cajun Seafood & Steak, says Chef Don Bergeron Enterprises bought out the lease and will take over the building. Huval says he will move back to Henderson and work as a chef at the original Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf.
Huval, a graduate of the Louisiana Culinary Institute, moved into the location at 8200 Jefferson Highway after Las Palmas, a Mexican restaurant with three locations in Baton Rouge, closed that location in 2014. That building is adjacent to Mama Della’s, a New York-style pizzeria that also closed in January.
George Kurz, of Kurz & Hebert Commercial Real Estate, says the deal was too good for Huval to pass up.
“He made them an offer they couldn’t refuse and gave them an opportunity to move home,” Kurz says.
A representative with Chef Don Bergeron Enterprises could not provide additional details on the company’s plans for the Jefferson Highway location as of this morning’s deadline.
Huval is the son of Pat and Agnes, the couple who opened Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf in Henderson more than 60 years ago. The Jefferson Highway location was the third Pat’s restaurant, along with Pat’s of Henderson in Lake Charles opened 30 years ago by Huval’s sister and brother-in-law, Nancy and Ricky Perioux.
Pat’s first came to Baton Rouge in the 1980s when the owners opened a restaurant on Bluebonnet Boulevard near Perkins Road in the location that now houses Buffalo Wild Wings. Then in the 1990s, the owners tried again, that time on Sherwood Forest Boulevard in the building where Hunan Chinese Restaurant is located.
—Ryan Broussard
