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Liesel Schmidt

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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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5/22/17   5:04 PM