Located at 600 Lamar St., Acadian Superette is a barbecue restaurant in the Freetown area that serves a variety of sandwiches, smoked meats, burgers, salads, fries and other sides. Lafayette locals have always been loyal to this lunch establishment due to its fresh, good food and fantastic service.
Their menu consists of an assortment of smoked meats in the smokehouse section, which includes pay by the pound, brisket, cochon, St. Louis style ribs, chicken legs and thighs, smoked sausage and smoked boudin. This section of the menu also consists of the choice of one meat, two meats or three meat plates with two sides, house BBQ sauce, toast and pickled onions.
The other sections of the menu are th salad, burger, specialties and fries and sides. Their salads include the Smoked Chicken Cobb and the Garden Salad with chicken, while their burgers include The Don and BBQ. Naming all of their specialty sandwiches will prove to be difficult, so I will feature only a few.
Some of their popular sandwiches include the Pork Belly Bahn Mi sandwich, which contains spiced pork belly, cucumber, cilantro, pickled carrot, jalapeno mayo and hoisin vinaigrette on grilled French bread. The Superette Melt contains chopped brisket, grilled onions, bacon and American cheese on grilled Texas toast. The Ragin’ Cajun consists of smoked sausage, boudin, grilled onions, jalapenos, pepper jack, mayo and mustard on grilled French bread.
This restaurant building was first opened in the 1950s as a grocery store. Then, in the early 1990s, Lynn Derenthal took ownership of the building and transformed it into the restaurant it is known as today. In 2017, the business was taken over by Dr. Robert Autin, a Lafayette native and surgeon. He made some changes to the menu, focusing on in-house cooked meats and barbecue, and made some renovations to the restaurant.
With so many types of meat, this establishment must source its food from a supplier that keeps all its supplies fresh and delivers them quickly.
They source all of their food from the Performance Food Group, which includes their meats, potatoes and vegetables.
The atmosphere of this restaurant felt similar to a smokehouse, which was the whole point. The concrete floors and old-fashioned wallpaper gave the place an older, yet relaxing, feel. There was a full view of the kitchen area, where they cut their meats, potatoes or prepared their special seasonings/sauces.
My colleague and I had the pleasure of visiting this famous Lafayette lunch establishment on Tuesday, Nov. 4. As we walked in, we were greeted by several employees behind the counter. We then walked up and began browsing the menu to place our order at the register.
The menu, as I mentioned above, features several different renditions of sandwiches, meats, burgers and salads. After reviewing all the sections, I finally decided to order the Smoked Chicken Club with a side of Garlic Parm Fries, while my colleague also opted for the chicken sandwich.
After we ordered, we chose to sit at the bar area next to the window, as it was a beautiful day. It wasn’t long before our food arrived, about 10 minutes, and we began to dig in.
Our Smoked Chicken clubs tasted absolutely delicious. It was perfectly seasoned, with smoky notes complementing the chicken. The addition of the bacon, fresh tomato and lettuce and honey mustard made each bite so worth it.
The Garlic Parm Fries were equally as impressive and well-seasoned. The garlic complemented the parmesan very well and the fries tasted as if they were fresh out of the fryer.
After we finished our meals, I decided to sit down and interview the chef, Don Green. “I’ve been working here five years in March. It’s been awesome. We basically kind of reinvented the store the way we came to market. This was a corner store at one point that did plate lunches and breakfast… and now we’ve kind of turned into what we are now, which is like a barbecue smokehouse and specialty type sandwiches… so it’s been really fun changing the menus.”
Green also stated, “The environment here is really laid back, and it is kind of a representation of Downtown/Freetown. So we get the best of both vibes. With us being an older building, we bring in an older generation of people… I think the older clientele likes it for what it is, and then the younger clientele appreciates the modern twist on food. We make a lot of things in-house, you know, pretty much 95% of the food is made from scratch.”
“So Lafayette, I think, hangs their hats on being a foodie town, and I would like to put myself up there with the more innovative and creative types of places… I think we stick out because we do a lot of these things in-house… and as a foodie, if you appreciate good food and the extra time it takes for a certain dish to be prepared, then you’re really going to like us, because we do spend that extra time. We are doing some things that maybe other places aren’t doing,” Green explained.
If you would like to visit this restaurant, it is open from Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and closed on Sundays and Mondays.