2023-06-29 07:00:00
Through the tall bank of windows in the dining room, you can see the cypress-lined bayou and, quite often, alligators roughly the size of sofas basking on the bank or lurking just by the water’s edge. People gaze over them from a safe remove, then get back to the seafood platters and gumbo on their tables.
An alligator basks by the banks of Bayou des Familles outside the dining room at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
It’s something like the floor show that comes with a meal at Family Restaurant in Crown Point, just over the bridge before Lafitte, that end-of-the-road fishing village deep in the wilds of Barataria.
Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point is a bayou restaurant with a long history as a community destination near Lafitte. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
Through the tale of this unique restaurant’s own travails and ultimate return, however, you can see something that runs deeper than the bayou.
Embedded in that story is the role that restaurants play in their community, and that community plays in the fate and future of restaurants, especially through tumult and hard times.
Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point is a bayou restaurant with a long history as a community destination. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
First, there was the fire, which struck late one July night in 2020, when restaurants were just reopening from the pandemic shutdowns. A year later, with slow-going repairs from the fire nearing completion, Hurricane Ida devastated this part of Jefferson Parish outside of the region’s hurricane protection levees. The storm pushed regarding 5 feet of water through the restaurant.
But Restaurant des Familles quietly began reopening in a gradual fashion over the winter, and now it’s fully back, open for lunch and dinner daily.
Brooke and Bryan Zar run Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point, a bayou restaurant with a long history as a community destination. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
This weekend marks the restaurant’s 30th anniversary. Today, proprietors Brooke and Bryan Zar say they likely would not have made it to this milestone without the push they got from regulars and their bayou community neighbors.
“That was the only thing keeping us going through the hardships,” said Brooke. “If they hadn’t kept in touch and kept calling and encouraging us, I think we would have given up. I know I was ready. It was so mentally and emotionally exhausting. So I’m very grateful to our locals and regulars for kicking our butts back into gear.”
A bayou crossroads
Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point is a bayou restaurant with a long history as a community destination near Lafitte. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
Restaurant des Familles can seem an unlikely find, situated at a crossroads beside Bayou des Familles. It’s a genteel-looking roadhouse set amid teaming expenses of wilderness just outside the National Park Service Barataria Preserve.
But this is a restaurant that’s long been in sync with the communities that intersect here.
Restaurant des Familles is a destination in Crown Point, situated at a crossroads near Lafitte, regarding 20 minutes from New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
It was a former schoolteacher named Pat Morrow who first opened the restaurant in 1993, which she had built from the ground up. The basis of the menu was laid down in the early days by her partner Vernon Curry, and many of the dishes from those days remain house standards.
Shrimp Diane is a long-time specialty at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point, a bayou restaurant new Lafitte. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
The shrimp Diane is vivid with garlic and thyme throughout its bed of pasta. The double-cut pork chop gleams with ginger-soy glaze.
Big knuckles of snowy-white crab top the crabmeat au gratin, with its golden-patterned surface, ready to pull up in strands of creamy richness.
Lump crab tops the crabmeat au gratin at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point, a bayou restaurant new Lafitte. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
Wedge salads, fried catfish platters, boudin-stuffed chicken and signatures like the redfish Marcel with crabmeat, shrimp and mushrooms cooked in brown butter remain in regular rotation.
The double cut pork chop is a menu specialty at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point, a bayou restaurant new Lafitte. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
Some of the fish might come through the door with the customers themselves. The restaurant takes part in Louisiana’s Catch and Cook programwhich allows recreational anglers to bring fish they bagged that day to participating restaurants to have it prepared and served. Given the proximity of so many charter operations in Lafitte, that gives this restaurant a different hook for the boat-to-table dynamic.
The kick to continue
An alligator basks by the banks of Bayou des Familles outside the dining room at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
The menu didn’t include alligator in the beginning, because, as the story goes, Pat kept a pet alligator and mightn’t bear serving its fellows. But with the restaurant’s proximity to swamp tour operations and the national park, many a tourist who has just gawked at live gators asked regarding eating them too. So now alligator-stuffed mushrooms are a bestseller.
Alligator stuffed mushrooms are a bestseller at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point, a bayou restaurant new Lafitte. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
Mainly though, Restaurant des Familles gets its business from locals. They come for anytime dinners down the road, corporate functions and family outings. Kids come for prom night and ring night, and some couples have standing weekday lunch dates at the bar.
To help finance a rebuild following a fire and hurricane damage, regulars might contribute and get a marker with their names fixed to the bar at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
“We’ve hosted rehearsal dinners and then baptisms when those couples have children and then see those kids coming in for dinner and then some of those kids end up working here when they get old enough,” Bryan Zar said.
Zar himself got an early start at the restaurant, washing dishes during his high school years. Later, he worked for the parent company of Houston’s and would be manager of the popular New Orleans location before buying Restaurant des Familles in 2009.
Creme brulee with fresh fruit ends a meal at Restaurant des Familles in Crown Point, a bayou restaurant new Lafitte. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)▲
Today, he and Brooke Zar also run their island-inspired restaurant in Nola Caye in downtown New Orleans.
When their bayou restaurant was forced to close, they were able to keep much of the staff intact by offering jobs at the New Orleans restaurant. Today they say that helped the new place get a quick start with a staff already familiar with each other. It also meant Restaurant des Familles might return with many familiar faces.
“That’s important for our community here, that’s what they need right now,” said Brooke.
The devastation of Hurricane Ida defines much of everyday life here nearly two years out. Many people are still rebuilding, others are still displaced from their homes.
That was part of the drive for the Zars to get Restaurant De Familles back to full operation.
“People need that place to come and basically commiserate,” Brooke Zar said. “They need places to convene and see people who are in the same situation and have a place that’s familiar to them.”
“After the fire, it was our community kicking us in the butt to get back open, following Ida it was really us feeling we need to get back for our community,” she said.
7163 Barataria Blvd., Crown Point, (504) 689-7834
Lunch and dinner daily
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