The problem with the suburbs--especially newer ones--is that the neighborhoods are hostile to neighborhood cafes. Casual restaurants with inexpensive local food are pushed out onto the arterial roads, which gives them a different dynamic than if they were on backstreet corners. The hottest place to look for such restaurant in West St. Tammany Parish is LA 59. During the past several years, the mix of residential neighborhoods, commercial and industrial development, and a couple of very large secondary schools have created enough traffic for many restaurants serving poor boys, burgers, blue-plate specials, and seafood. Quite a few also serve breakfast. The Fat Spoon is an excellent new example of the genre.
The Fat Spoon--aside from its less-than-alluring name--is everything one hopes to find in a local neighborhood breakfast-and-lunch place. The owners actively disdain the widespread practice of cutting open cloned plastic bags of food and warming the contents. Almost everything is made in house--including such troublesome items as soups, red beans and rice, roast beef, and hand-made burgers.
Attorney Sonny Garcia and his daughter Lisa Schwing opened The Fat Spoon in mid-2011, in the strip-mall space originally built a few years earlier for the extinct Zydeco Cafe. In the pre-food-court 1970s, Davis operated a few light-bite restaurants in shopping malls called The Red Caboose.
One big room, with walls painted with the logo and slogans and a bar along one of them. It's furnished more richly that the typical neighborhood place, with tables and chairs more handsome than in a restaurant with twice these prices.
The breakfasts are solid throughout, even to details like the coarse-ground grits. The Monday red beans are outstanding, and can be had with a very good link hot sausage.
| Attitude | 2 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 1 |
| Hipness | 0 |
| Local Color | 0 |
| Service | 1 |
| Value | 2 |
| Wine | 0 |
