Jane’s French Cuisine: Lafayette Food | Entertainment / Living

Jane’s French Cuisine in Lafayette serves great food and provides a great dining experience, but somehow the place feels like visiting someone’s home – perhaps in Europe.

There’s a reason for that – it’s someone’s home. Appropriately, this is actually the home of Jane’s family for 20 years.

Although Jane Fleniken passed away in 2018 at the age of 93, she lives on through the creations of her daughter Cynthia Baxter and grandson Will Baxter. The mother and son duo have transformed their family’s matriarch’s home and French antiques store into an upscale, elegant, and cozy restaurant.

Fleniken, one of the first French antiques dealers in the area, was an avid Francophile. For more than 40 years, she has made numerous trips to France, handpicking antiques from the countryside and bringing them back to Lafayette. Her presence still permeates the spaces she creates for her home and store. Most of the furniture came from her antique and upholstery shop. The restaurant even uses her crystal and silverware.

Cynthia Baxter said her mother’s last family trip to France may have planted the seed for the restaurant. Will Baxter fell in love with travel and food, eventually attending the French Culinary Institute in New York before working in Michelin-starred restaurants in California, Florida and New Orleans.

call of home

But the call of home was strong, and Will Baxter eventually returned to Lafayette to follow his heart.

“It’s his dream,” Cynthia Baxter said. “I want him to have his passion.”

The Baxters created Jane’s, an ode to their mother and grandmother, using the Fleniken home and store, as well as antiques left over from the sale of the three properties that sold most of their incredible furniture and gorgeous collection.

“You should have seen this place when she died. It was almost to the ceiling,” Cynthia Baxter said.

Drawing on Will Baxter’s culinary skills and Cynthia Baxter’s experience in restaurant marketing and artistic vision, the pair set out to create the skeleton of the restaurant in her mother’s former home and store. (Cynthia Baxter spent 12 years at Randol’s, the iconic Lafayette Cajun restaurant that closes in 2021.)

“I told him, ‘You stick to the food. Let me do the decoration,'” Cynthia Baxter said.

The restaurant and courtyard are beautifully appointed and comfortable.

“As we continued to cool down, people started booking and asking to sit by the fireplace,” Cynthia Baxter said. Has a pair of eyes.”

In a bold move, the Baxters opened the restaurant in the fall of 2020, months after the COVID pandemic.

Will Baxter, 40, said returning to Lafayette and building his dream restaurant wasn’t without its hurdles.

Follow the rules

“But I’ve found my way. I’ve learned things. I’m using multiple suppliers to get what I need,” says Will Baxter in between preparing Wellington salmon and showing off truffles from Italy. “We buy the best ingredients we can get and prepare them as prescribed.”

Will Baxter’s penchant for using only the freshest ingredients is a never-ending and sometimes exhausting quest, and the rotating menu features oeuf au caviar made with fresh eggs from local farms, vodka-infused crème fraiche and Osetra caviar. According to his mother.

Other recent items on the menu include Miyazaki Wagyu filet mignon with porcini chateaubriand sauce, Lyonnaise potatoes with asparagus and seared scallop salad with local winter vegetables, Spanish black truffle and Parmesan.

Still, Cynthia Baxter respects her son’s efforts to realize their shared vision of creating a restaurant serving Lafayette cuisine.

Manager Brittany Stahle says each day is like Will Baxter’s cooking class—she appreciates his focus on fresh ingredients.

“I was here alone this morning and heard something rustling in a box near the kitchen. The noise scared me,” Starr said.

Upon further investigation, she discovered that the rustling was from live lobsters in the box.

Cynthia Baxter says Stahle is the perfect addition to managing restaurants.

“She’s calming,” Cynthia Baxter said.

“The chef is the heart of the restaurant. The manager is the brain,” says Stahle.

Cynthia Baxter added, “And mothers are money.”

One of Cynthia Baxter’s goals for Jane’s is to make customers understand that it’s not just a restaurant for special occasions.

“We’re planning a fixed-price menu that will be a more affordable option,” she said. “Of course we want people to feel comfortable coming here for special occasions, but we also want them to think about it when they just want to go out for a nice meal.” Us, coming here is not necessarily a big deal.”

Mother and child dynamics

Cynthia Baxter said that even though they were like-minded, the road to running a business with her son wasn’t always smooth. For example, she’ll wait until he’s gone before moving furniture to her liking. She plans to add a nice rug the next time he’s out of town.

Regarding the disagreement with her son, Cynthia Baxter said a friend finally explained the situation in a way she understood.

“My friend said, ‘You’ll never win. You’re his mom,'” says Cynthia Baxter, a truth any mother can recognize.