I guess you could say this is "Hello."- from the Pirogue. This is the first of many blogs you will be able to find from one of the owners of Frozen Pirogue, a soon to open Gulf Coast Cajun restaurant in Bossier City's East Bank District. My name is Beau Hays and I am one of several partners that are setting sail on another restaurant journey. You may know me as a co-owner of BeauxJax Crafthouse and you probably know one my counterparts Arron "Peanut" Hanning, too. If you have ever frequented our establishment then chances are you have met our friends next door at Bayou Axe Co., also.
Over the past year we have experienced a phenomenal surge of support from the loyal following we were privileged enough to meet on our food truck and we have had the opportunity to meet a ton of new faces. For that, we are beyond thankful (we will dig into that way more as we continue to blog, but for now let's get back on track). Some of those new faces we met just so happened to be our current neighbors at Bayou Axe Company, specifically their amazing owners, Doug Rogers, Geno Goodman, and Jenny Goodman. Over the last several months our two businesses collided perfectly in the East Bank District, feeding off of each others energy to create a perfect storm of a night out. Each day, each of our businesses have witnessed growth in our little end of Bossier City's newly created open container district. As we have seen the bike lane in front of our buildings fill up and scrambled to move and shift our waitlists to accommodate more people we have come to the conclusion that Shreveport-Bossier is looking for a new, fresh alternative to the typical dinner and a movie. So what do you do with that when all of your seats are full and the axe lanes are always booked?
Well that was the big question a few months ago and fairly haphazardly we stumbled upon what we think is the answer. A typical Friday night of hustling through the rush and finally winding down, Geno and myself both found ourselves standing in the back alley of our buildings trying to catch a quick "shake the high of the rush" cigarette. Yes we both know it is bad for us and I think we both would say we are working on it. As we often do in the alley, we struck up a conversation. That night's topic was "what do you think they are going to put in the building next to us that just went up for sale?" and it quickly became a "well I would do this and I would do that conversation". We both threw some pretty off the wall ideas out there but over the next 45 minutes we both started to notice that some of those ideas worked and a lot of them addressed the capacity issues we were both having. It wasn't long before our brainstorming session of two in the alley turned into makeshift conference table (the back of a pickup truck) of 10 with all of our owners and several key employees from both staffs. By midnight the foundations of what we are now calling Frozen Pirogue had been set. This partnership of excitement was inked the right way that night, with 5 firm handshakes and we all went to work on another crazy dream.
Well here we are just 2 months later typing a blog for our new website to introduce to you our new concept that is opening in the next month or so. Menus are tightening up, the new hire packets are coming together, electrical and plumbing are coming to a close, and there is already a little buzz about what we have been up to. So here it is . . .
The Frozen Pirogue will be a Gulf Coast themed Cajun restaurant specializing in grilled and baked oysters with two full service bars focusing on Cajun daiquiris. Both of these concepts are fairly unique to Bossier City. As both of our current concepts are draped in southern Louisianan flair, you may ask yourself what will make this concept different or standout. Well the answer is two-fold. First, Cajun is what we do and have always done. I hope ya'll weren't expecting a Mexican restaurant, cause we would have no clue. Second, the Pirogue's menu will be an evolution of the menu you currently find at BeauxJax. We often refer to BeauxJax as a Poboy Shop on steroids when in the kitchen and we love that. BeauxJax roots are from the food truck and we have always been proud of the fact that we can offer the festive atmosphere we picked up rolling around to different events while being able to offer our style of cuisine for a great price to people on the run. You got to be able to get em in and get em out when they are in a hurry, but it's time to slow it down a little and let Chef Peanut offer ya'll some of the stuff I've been lucky enough to eat over our almost two decade friendship. Frozen Pirogue is going to throw some things at you like, cochon de lait, marinated crab claws, red fish couvillion, biscuits and red gravy, and a whole bunch more. We hope our indoor outdoor blended space will lend itself to the date night crowd.
Which speaking of date night, if you haven't done dinner and axe throwing yet you are absolutely missing out. There is something magical about grabbing a bite in the East Bank and bouncing out of one door and into another to find something to do that you haven't done a million times. If you have experienced that at Bayou Axe and at BeauxJax then you already know that there is one other aspect you are sure to find in Frozen Pirogue and that's genuine service. This group of owners agrees first on one thing, and that is that the experience is driven by relationship first. We all work very hard to make sure that we are hiring people who want to get to know you and who are not afraid to lead with a handshake. If I haven't shaken your hand yet, I intend to. You guys are the one's who have really made this happen. All of the shared dreams of what our district can be have crossed our bars and filtered straight into our ears. We hope that we continue to be blessed by the ability to do what we love for a living. We hope you are out there chasing your dreams, too. We are looking forward to getting these doors open so we can all hangout.
Expect to see more of these blogs. Hopefully from all of our owners throughout this journey. Our goal is to let ya'll be in this ride with us. It's just more fun together.
-Beau #EBM