38 | VIPPensacola.com
story by
Liesel Schmidt
| photos by
Dawn Richardson
Dat’s Fa Lunch
I
t takes a lot of heart and a lot of faith
to open up a restaurant when you’ve
never had any real experience in the food
industry; but—lucky for Sheri and Barry
Hester—they had both in spades when they
opened Louisiana Lunchbox in November
of 2016. And heart really was at the heart
of the matter—no pun intended—as it was
Barry’s diagnosis with a heart condition that
led to their decision to change the direction
of their lives, a heart condition that made it
impossible for him to continue to work in the
oil industry in Brazil. But rather than letting
such a huge blow to what they might have
foreseen for the future take them down, they
turned to prayer and found their answer on
the table. Literally.
Using a group of friends and the friends
of friends as their focus group, the Hesters
turned their knowledge of Cajun cuisine into
the very thing that would give them a new
direction: a restaurant. “We wanted people
to try our food and let us know what they
thought, and everyone said that we really
needed to open our own place here,” Sheri
recalls. It was a wise observation, a move
that would fi ll a decided lack in the market.
“We’ve had a vacation home in Pensacola
since 2013, and in the time we’ve been coming
to the area, we noticed that there were no
Cajun restaurants here.”
As natives of Lafayette, Louisiana, such a
glaring oversight could hardly be ignored; and
so they took a leap of faith, opening Louisiana
Lunchbox and rolling out a full menu of
Bayou classics and ragin’ Cajun favorites—
not the least of which are their many
variations on the Po’boy. Piled high with
spiced, tender roast beef debris smothered
in creamy gravy on a lightly toasted Po’boy
bread brought in straight from Louisiana, the
Cajun Roast Beef Po’Boy is among their top
sellers. For something on the simpler side, the
Shrimp Po’Boy is sure to please, loaded up
with plump Gulf shrimp battered and fried to
a crisp golden crunch. And while they could
easily rely on these saucy sandwiches to carry
their menu, they keep right on going with
handhelds like the Cajun Cardiac Burger—a
Cajun-spiced all-beef patty topped off with
a laundry list of decadence that make it live
up to its name, piling on melted pepper jack
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