A Culinary Gem in the Heart of Carencro, Louisiana
Nestled in the vibrant town of Carencro, Louisiana, Veronica’s Café stands as a beacon of Creole culinary tradition, offering an unforgettable soul food experience. This charming eatery, renowned for its delectable dishes and heartwarming ambience, has become a culinary landmark in the region. At Veronica’s Café, every meal is a celebration of flavor and community, making it a must-visit destination for food enthusiasts.
Veronica’s Café is the type of restaurant that people seek out. Its food is legendary, its atmosphere is welcoming, and its staff are famously friendly. Yes, there’s a good reason why it’s always so busy!
Look closely and you’ll see a woman at its helm. She’ll most likely be rushed off her feet, weary from a 6 a.m. start and hurrying to put a smile on people’s faces. Between the hustle and the bustle, you’ll also notice a smile on her own face.
In fact, you’ll probably notice that she is loving every minute of her job.
This woman is Veronica Alexander, the owner of Veronica’s Café in Carencro, Louisiana. The restaurant is her baby – and she’s cherished every moment of it since opening its doors in 2010.
“I really enjoy what I do,” she tells Kreol Magazine. “That’s why it doesn’t feel like I’m working because I like what I do. I’ve always loved to cook.”
Those customers who are pleased to be receiving service with a smile should be aware of this: the smile is always real.
A Staple of the Community
Veronica’s Café can be found tucked away on Hector Connoly Rd in Carencro, Louisiana. This is a suburb of Lafayette – a city famous for its Cajun and Creole influences.
This popular restaurant is a perfect example of this. In Veronica’s own words, the menu is packed with “Creole soul food that will warm your soul”.
The 58-year-old is certainly doing something right. After all, the old customers return again and again, while new customers make a beeline for it from miles away. If the queues of people and abundance of cars aren’t already evidence of this, then you only have to look online for proof of its popularity.
Veronica’s Café has amassed more than 15,000 likes on Facebook and currently boasts an incredible five out of five on TripAdvisor. This, of course, is enough to make it the number-one ranked eatery in all of Carencro. The numbers don’t lie.
So, what is the secret of Veronica’s Café? Well, it’s a humble but ambitious family-run operation that’s mastered the art of offering a good dining experience. It provides a relaxed cafeteria-style setting where customers can either eat in or take their delicious food to go. In addition, there’s also a drive-thru for hungry motorists looking for a tasty treat.
The food is certainly a big part of what makes it a staunch success. Just some of the items that can be found on the rotating menu include smothered okra, country fried steak with country gravy, catfish court bouillon with fried fish, chicken fricassee, and many more dishes. The list alone is enough to make your mouth water!
It’s about so much more than just the food though. The staff – many of which are related to Veronica – always make sure to put strong hospitality at the heart of what they do. This is something that they have learned from the woman in charge.
Veronica reveals: “We pride ourselves on our excellent customer service, delicious food and promptness so that our customers can get in and out and get back to work.”
Indeed, this is the real recipe for success at Veronica’s Café.
A True Family Affair
When Veronica first declared the restaurant as open for business more than 13 years ago, she likely didn’t realise that it would become something of a family affair behind the scenes. But with four children, 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, it was only a matter of time before more and more of her brood began working alongside her.
In particular, Veronica’s daughter is exceptionally hands-on and is a constant reminder that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Veronica quips: “She’s kind of my apprentice – my sous chef!”
Meanwhile, Veronica’s eldest son has been known to help out and has proven to be an asset in the smokehouse located at the back of the building. It’s here where he works alongside his dad and Veronica’s husband, Kenward. Kenward previously worked as a manager at Albertsons but left this role to lend his support to the restaurant.
Veronica calls him her ‘money man’ because he looks after the business side of the venture, such as the accounting and managing the books.
“It’s a little family affair,” she says. “It’s me, my husband, and my children. And we have grandkids here too and nieces and nephews!”
It might seem like Veronica’s husband and children have given her all the tools to become successful in the hospitality industry. However, the fact of the matter is that thanks to her childhood, her destiny was written in the stars long before she met her husband and welcomed their children.
The Caring Nature
Veronica grew up in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. The fourth of ten children, Veronica – along with her parents and siblings – grew up living with her grandparents on a farm. The entire extended family worked on the farm, including Veronica’s uncles, aunts and cousins.
Everyone played their part, with chores for different people at different times. It didn’t just instill the value of a hard day’s work into Veronica but also taught her the importance of farm-to-table dining.
“We grew our own vegetables,” she recalls. “We raised our own animals: cattle, pigs, chickens. We always had fresh eggs and vegetables.”
Veronica, like all other members of her family was expected to pitch in and work in the fields. Expectedly, this wasn’t how a 10-year-old child always wanted to spend her days. Therefore, she concocted a masterful plan.
“I was a puny little girl,” she reminisces. “I would pretend I was sick so I didn’t have to go out into the fields.”
‘Plan B’ was much more palatable – in more ways than one! Instead of rolling up her sleeves in the great outdoors, Veronica could spend her days cooking in the kitchen with her grandmother. Known as Mom Dell, the family matriarch provided her enthusiastic granddaughter with a crash course in cooking and baking.
Using the freshest ingredients and cooking to feed a large family, Mom Dell – who herself had 17 children – would prepare large pots of beans, stews, gumbo and soups that could stretch to many mouths. This was all while her willing granddaughter was helping and following her lead.
Needless to say, Veronica was both impressed and inspired.
“That’s how I started and how I became so interested in cooking,” recalls Veronica.
She adds: “I feed everybody and I love doing it. It’s been in me since I was a little bitty girl following my grandmother.”
At the tender of 10, the seed had been planted for what would eventually grow into Veronica’s Café.
The Journey Begins
Veronica didn’t dream of becoming a cook or a business owner when she was in school. Instead, she simply knew that she wanted to help people and make their lives better.
“My interest was in helping other people,” she remembers. “I particularly loved helping older people.”
With a caring nature running through her blood, Veronica pondered the idea of becoming a nurse or an assistant. At one point, she even considered becoming a psychologist. Therefore, after graduating high school, she decided to continue with her education and enrolled to study Business Administration at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
It was here where she met her future husband, Kenward. The pair soon fell in love, tied the knot and in the space of just five years welcomed four children together. Veronica then became a housewife as she raised their offspring.
She soon realised that she would need to channel her grandmother, Mom Dell, if she wanted to make a success out of being a stay at home mom. Thankfully, she already knew the value of cooking a good meal.
“The kids were just popping out and I couldn’t afford a babysitter. So, I stayed home,” says Veronica. “I cooked breakfast from scratch with homemade biscuits, pancakes, cinnamon roasts, you name it. I cooked everything. Then I cooked lunch.”
It’s easy to assume that this must have been tiring – and it no doubt was. But for Veronica, it quickly became something of an enjoyable pastime just as much as it was about feeding her family.
“Cooking was my go-to. It was to satisfy my interests,” she reveals. “I was always cooking, baking fresh bread, cakes, everything. Just cooking everything from scratch – I would cook all the time.”
Veronica joined the workforce once the children were older. Unsurprisingly, her chosen role involved a substantial amount of cooking…
A Chef is Born
The opportunity for Veronica to show just what she was made of in the kitchen came when she accepted a role at Gethsemane Christian Academy in Lafayette. This was a private school in which she was tasked with feeding hundreds of children at once. Her own personal record stood at over 1,000 people!
“The school asked me to run their kitchen, which I had never done before, but I had cooked at the house and catered on the side,” reveals Veronica.
It must have seemed like Veronica had landed on her feet with this role. She was cooking on a daily basis and making money for it. However, it wasn’t long until she began to have ambitions for her own place.
The opportunity arose when a spot became available in Carencro. She bit the bullet and made sure that she was the one who got hold of the keys.
“This place became available because somebody was retiring and wanted to get it off the ground,” she recalls. “I opened it up and I’ve been running it ever since.”
And just like that, Veronica’s Café was born.
A Remarkable Reputation
Veronica’s Café opened in April 2010. There must have been a long list of things to do, but the most important task was to create a menu full of ‘heavy hitters’. These were primarily dishes that Veronica and her family always loved to see available whenever they dined out.
These days, you’ll find a varied and well-established menu featuring daily lunch plates alongside regular favourites such as salads, burgers, po’boys, sandwiches, wraps and much more. In addition to this, there is also the famous Sunday barbecue.
“Sunday is my busiest day,” admits Veronica. “We serve a hundred plates every 30 minutes – and I have fast servers!”
Veronica and the staff have the service down to a T but don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s a walk in the park for them. The success of the restaurant requires a lot of hard work and precision, including 6 a.m. starts, where they must prepare the ingredients and season the meat.
It’s a task that’s not done in vain. After all, customers can’t get enough of the food – many of which are dishes that are quintessentially Creole. This is something that Veronica has taken from her upbringing, in which both her parents spoke French Creole.
“What makes me a typical Creole?” she asks. “This is just me!”
The food, however, is only one small part of the culture that she’s cherished and celebrated since her childhood. The other is language.
“I can understand most of the Creole French,” reveals Veronica. “When my parents went to register me for school, they were speaking French, so they put me in the French immersion programme and that’s how I started with the French.”
Another very important part of Creole culture is the practice of passing down traditions and rituals to the next generation. This is something that Veronica did earlier this year when she shared her recipes with her daughter. At the time, Veronica had just undergone surgery and was taking a six-week break from work while she recovered.
“The recipes are all in my head,” admits Veronica. “My daughter told me to write them down. She wrote some stuff down, but she recorded me so she could see my techniques, but she’s been with me for 13 years so she can do it anyway.”
We can only imagine that this list of recipes must have included Veronica’s favourite dish: gumbo.
“Gumbo is my favourite and I cook everything from scratch,” she says. “My rules and everything! I have my own little secret pinches of this spice that gets my own natural flavour.”
It’s good to know that those ‘secret pinches’ will live on for generations to come!
Bigger and Better
Veronica’s Café recently celebrated its 13th birthday. If business looks like it’s booming, then that’s because it is!
You can’t blame Veronica and her family for looking at ways to grow the restaurant. Just a few years away from her 60th birthday, Veronica does have plans for the future of the establishment – as does her daughter.
“I would love to see it continue to grow,” reveals Veronica. “My daughter is going to continue it. She is the only one that wants to continue cooking.”
There’s no doubt plenty of potential for the future. Veronica’s Café has loyal customers and these seem to be growing in numbers each week. In fact, the place is often so busy that there has to be an element of traffic control to avoid road incidents due to the amount of hungry patrons arriving by car.
She admits: “We always have to take measures so we don’t disturb the neighbouring businesses and block the street.”
Things have clearly been going from strength to strength for the business. However, the venture hasn’t always been without its struggles. The pandemic, for instance, is just one example of when it became stressful to run such an enterprise.
Due to the fact that the restaurant had a drive-thru, it was initially able to stay open when COVID-19 struck in 2020. It must have been a great taste of normality for the community, who were so used to having the place welcoming them with open arms.
Now, they could access the same food from the comfort of their homes despite ‘stay at home’ orders.
“I was so busy every day because people still wanted to eat,” remembers Veronica. She adds: “Ever since then, it’s still busy.”
During this period, Veronica was happy to be able to provide food for the first responders who were working so hard to keep people safe during the pandemic. In an act of generosity and to extend her appreciation, Veronica would often wave the cost of the food and beverages for these frontline workers.
“I would always feed the first responders without charge to help the police officers, firefighters and anybody in service,” she says. “I’d give them free drinks, free meals. I’d take care of them.”
This is a great insight into Veronica’s character and goes to some lengths to explain why people keep returning to Veronica’s Café.
A Long Lasting Love
Veronica loves what she does. As a matter of fact, many people love what she does in the kitchen!
But Veronica’s Café is about more than just the first bite of the okra or first scent of the barbecue. Instead, it’s about going to a place in which you’re treated as more than just a random customer.
“I do pride myself on good home cooking,” explains Veronica.
She adds: “But when you walk in here, I’m going to greet you and treat you like family. I’m going to feed you, and I’m going to talk with you if I have the time.”
Carencro is lucky to have Veronica’s Café. Indeed, so is the state of Louisiana. Thankfully, it seems that Veronica – who recently turned 58 – isn’t planning on going anywhere soon.
“I just love doing this,” she says. “I’ve been here 13 years and I’ll do this until I’m ready to go. I’ll be here as long as I want to and as long as I feel I can run it.”
Yes, Veronica has an unmatched love of cooking and hospitality. It’s also one that looks set to stand the test of time.