Some restaurants are built on business plans. Elsie’s Plate & Pie was built on love — the kind passed down through generations in a Lafourche Parish kitchen, spun into flaky pie dough by a grandmother named Elsie, and carried forward by the chef-and-wife team that turned her memory into Baton Rouge’s most beloved Southern comfort food destination. 🥧💛
Opened in 2017 on Government Street in the heart of Mid City Baton Rouge, this mom-and-pop restaurant has since become something extraordinary: the only restaurant in Baton Rouge to earn a coveted Michelin Guide recommendation — and yet somehow, it still feels exactly like eating in someone’s grandmother’s kitchen. 🌿🏆
How Elsie’s Won Baton Rouge’s Hearts
The restaurant is named in loving memory of Elsie Marie Campeau Rupe of Lockport in Lafourche Parish — the maternal grandmother of Proprietor and Chef Paul Chauvin Dupré, whose cooking, warmth, and legendary pies shaped his entire life and career.
Elsie began baking pies because they were the favorite dessert of her beloved husband Carl, whom she married in 1944.
Pies became their family’s most sacred food tradition — and when Paul went off to college and missed them terribly, he made “many, many phone calls” to his grandmother to learn her tricks of the trade, mastering the art of pie-making one long-distance lesson at a time.
According to 225 Baton Rouge Magazine, when the beloved Government Street fixture Honeymoon Bungalow shuttered, Paul — who lived just around the corner — decided to take the leap.
Together with his wife and co-chef Lindsay Zimmerle-Dupré, whose own grandmother’s recipes also found their way onto the menu, Paul opened Elsie’s in September 2017 — a first-of-its-kind pie restaurant in the capital city, rooted in both families’ histories of Southern Louisiana cooking. 🌿
Word spread fast that this wasn’t just another Southern restaurant — it was a place with genuine soul, where grandmother’s pastry recipe met chef-level technique, where the smoked chicken in the pot pie fell apart in a tasso cream sauce, and where the chocolate cream pie was being called one of the best in Louisiana.
A hand-painted mural of Elsie herself watches over the dining room from one of the brick walls — a quiet presence in a space full of warmth, hand-built tables made from original building doors, and an antique pie display case left behind by the previous owner as a gift of goodwill. 🖼️
In November 2025, the culinary world confirmed what Baton Rouge had known for years: according to Visit Baton Rouge, Elsie’s Plate & Pie received a Michelin Guide recommendation in the MICHELIN Guide’s inaugural American South selection — making it the only restaurant in Baton Rouge to earn such an honor.
For a self-taught pieman and his wife who simply wanted to honor their grandmothers and feed their neighborhood well, it was the ultimate validation of a dream built from scratch — in every sense of the word. 🥧✨
Food Highlights
-
Louisiana Poulet Pot Pie: Smoked chicken and roasted peppers sealed beneath a flaky, buttery crust in a deeply savory tasso cream sauce.🍗
-
Seafood Pot Pie: A Gulf seafood-loaded pot pie baked in a cast-iron skillet, sealed with a drum-tight pastry crust that shatters on the first spoonful. 🦞
-
Crawfish Hand Pies: Louisiana crawfish tails, corn, and sausage tucked into a thick, fried crescent crust. 🥐🌶️
- Arlington Special Po’boy: Crispy fried Gulf shrimp tossed in a bold Asian sweet and spicy sauce, loaded into a French bread roll with house Arlington sauce, mayo, lettuce, and tomato.
-
Seafood Lafourche Bisque: Louisiana shrimp and crawfish in a roasted red pepper and tomato cream base, elevated with a surprising finish of smoked Gouda. 🍲
-
Boudin Cakes: Heavily seasoned Cajun boudin formed into golden, pan-fried cakes with a light, airy interior loaded with hunks of pork, served alongside a house-made Bedford sauce. 🧅
-
Red Beans & Rice with Fried Chicken: Slow-cooked red beans over white rice alongside crispy, well-seasoned Southern fried chicken.🍗🫘
Atmosphere
Elsie’s Plate & Pie is a place that wears its story on its walls — literally. 🎨
A hand-painted mural of Grandma Elsie herself overlooks the dining room, surrounded by mixed-media flooring, tables crafted from original building doors, and an antique pie display case that anchors the space in both history and warmth.
The industrial-meets-neighborhood vibe of the Mid City Baton Rouge setting feels effortlessly lived-in — casual and cozy enough for a solo weeknight lunch, yet full of enough character and charm to make a special dinner feel genuinely memorable.
It is exactly what Paul and Lindsay set out to build — a friendly neighborhood restaurant where the food tastes like family, the setting feels like home, and every guest who walks through the door feels the love poured into every plate and pie. 💛
Bottom Line
Elsie’s Plate & Pie is essential Baton Rouge dining: Louisiana’s only Michelin-recognized mom-and-pop restaurant, built on two grandmothers’ recipes and two chefs’ lifelong dedication, serving Southern Louisiana comfort food that is as deeply authentic as it is creatively inspired, in a Mid City neighborhood space that feels like the warmest room in the city. 🥧🌿
Address:
3145 Government St, Baton Rouge, LA 70806
📞 (225) 636-5157
🕔 Mon: 11 AM–9 PM | Tue–Fri: 11 AM–10 PM | Sat–Sun: 10 AM–10 PM