Eats

Binge for breakfast

by Christiaan Mader

It’s been a general rule of mine over the years that if a restaurant has a specific dish in the name, you don’t order anything other than that dish and expect a positive result. Obvious exceptions abound, but if you go to Catfish Shack (Chevy Tahoe Time Machine back to Lafayette circa 1995) don’t order anything other than fried catfish. If you happen upon a Souper Salad, don’t get a steak. Building your brand around an eponymous food type spells it out and proud that all other items on your menu are just taking up space.

With that prejudice in mind, I say don’t go to Cajun Donut Market Café for the donuts. Before you spit out your coffee in fury, the donuts are objectively delicious. Cajun Market uses the Meche family recipe after all, one so good it proved molten sugar is thicker than blood, so you can’t really go wrong getting a dozen glazed. But settling for the classic treat risks missing out on some really special breakfast confections.

Since striking out on his own with three locations in Breaux Bridge, Broussard and the Lafayette shop on Pinhook Road, owner/chief donuteer Nathan Liebert has expanded the local fried breakfast lexicon to include decorous toppings like cream cheese and espresso cream frostings, and charted a subterranean roadmap for smuggling boudin and other savories into the donut kingdom. Pick up an apple fritter and see your life flash before your eyes. Forget your manners and witness to your fellow diners the smoky glory of the brisket through mouthfuls of stuffed bread. Everything in the display case is ready in a heart-stopping heart beat and available at a cost low enough to feed a coup, so it makes ideal pick-up food for business meetings or treasonous plotting.

PRO TIP: Cajun Market’s landmark boudin-stuffed king cake is available year round. Sure it’s just a donut, and not an “authentic” king cake. But authenticity is not one of the five flavors, you pretentious nerd. Sweet and salty are. Oh, Boudin-Donut-King Cake! If loving you is inauthentic. I don’t wanna be Cajun.