The bad news about Elsie’s Plate & Pie is that nobody can call it a hidden gem ever again. When Chef Paul Chauvin Dupré and his wife, Chef Lindsay Zimmerle-Dupré, opened their doors in 2017, word-of-mouth in Baton Rouge made the restaurant an instant sensation. Soon, the Food Network — and even ESPN — discovered them, and hungry diners started arriving from all over the country. This culminated in a visit from Guy Fieri, who featured the restaurant on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives in 2025. “It was a huge deal for us,” Chef Paul told me.
Then the Michelin Guide came to town for the first time, and gave Elsie’s a coveted recommendation — one of only two restaurants in the Baton Rouge area to earn such an accolade (and one of 33 in the entire state). That nod made Elsie’s an international destination.
“It never even crossed my mind that we would be looked at or considered for such a thing,” said Chef Paul. “We’re just a little single-location mom-and-pop. You know, we’re here every day. We just didn’t feel big enough to even be noticed! So that was just beyond our wildest expectations.”
Elsie’s, located at 3145 Government Street in Baton Rouge, is a family restaurant in the classic mold. When you walk in, one table might have high school students eating pie. Another will have senior citizens whose AARP cards are old enough to vote. Another will have a young family, complete with high chair. The next will have businesspeople trying to impress colleagues from out of town. The atmosphere is light and casual, the service on point — and price-wise, it’s probably the best deal in town. But it’s the food itself that’s the real draw.
“My wife and I developed a lot of the menu together, just trying to honor our grandparents and the local culture that we came from,” said Chef Paul, who grew up in Baton Rouge. The menu is Southern Louisiana cuisine at its finest, with many dishes drawn from family recipes — things like fried okra, three-cheese pimento, and red beans and rice with fried chicken. Others cater to exploratory eaters: unexpected delights such as tomato pie, boudin cakes or crustless crab pie.
“I wanted to have creative options for foodies and people who are a little more adventurous — things like savory pies, for example. But those people might bring a friend with them who’s just not into all that, and maybe wants a burger. We’ve got everyone covered,” he told me.
Elsie’s is one of those restaurants where, even if you’ve never been there before, you know exactly what to expect. You even know what it looks like. What you don’t know, however, is just how good the food is.
“We work really hard on every dish we put out,” Chef Paul told me. “My wife and I have the most fun coming up with the specials we offer. We get to be creative and kind of show people what we can do outside of the regular menu.” They offer a new round of specials midweek, then run them through the weekend. Last week, he and his wife roasted chickens and made a stock from the bones, and turned it all into a gumbo pot pie. They also made crawfish hushpuppies served with andouille butter. Meanwhile, Chef Lindsay created a fish dish with tomato, red pepper and white wine sauce. “It was so good,” Chef Paul said.
He told me that he’d just gotten his hands on some focaccia bread from St. Bruno Bread Co., a local artisan bread maker. “I’m going to make a sandwich with that and some goat cheese and some shrimp — I think it is going to be pretty special.” They also offer different pies every week that are not on the menu.
When Chef Paul was younger, he considered going to culinary school, but he couldn’t really afford it. Instead, he found work at Baton Rouge restaurants that made everything from scratch. “I learned everything that I could,” he said. “It was 20 years before I decided that I was ready.”
When the now-celebrated restaurant first opened its doors, Government Street was a once-hopping Baton Rouge thoroughfare that had diminished so much across decades, it was known more for its traffic during the day and its sleepiness at night.
“We lived two blocks away, and we wanted a neighborhood restaurant,” Chef Paul told me. “We would want to go out, and everything was closed. We just kept saying, ‘Why is nothing on this side of town open on Sunday nights?’”
So he and his wife opened Elsie’s there, not realizing that they would become an anchor restaurant that helped lead to the neighborhood’s revitalization.
Elsie’s Pie & Plate is named for Chef Paul’s maternal grandmother, Elsie Marie Campeau Rupe of Lockport in Lafourche Parish, who could always be counted on to serve big family meals that usually ended with pie for dessert. Pie was practically a major food group at her table.
In the beginning, Chef Paul was responsible for keeping that tradition going, making all the pies they served at Elsie’s: apple, chocolate, coconut cream, s’mores and turtle, among many others. He’s since hired a pastry chef who has taken on the mantle. They also serve savory pies such as crawfish hand pies and Natchitoches meat pies (made with beef and pork and fried in a handmade crust).
The success of Elsie’s has Chef Paul and Chef Lindsay thinking about the future — but don’t expect to see a dozen new locations popping up anytime soon. “I know the trend, especially in Baton Rouge, is that once you have a successful restaurant, you open several more. But we’re focused on having quality over quantity. I would rather have one amazing restaurant than five mediocre ones, so we’re expanding the business without opening more locations.” To that end, they just finished building a new kitchen right next to Elsie’s, where they can specialize in catering and eventually start shipping items to people everywhere. “It’s all on one piece of property where I can still be very involved with the day-to-day at the restaurant and help make sure that the quality is what we want it to be.”
Chef Paul told me that passion is the driving force at Elsie’s. “I wake up every morning looking forward to going to the restaurant and doing what needs to be done that day,” he said. “I mean, it’s pretty amazing in this day and age to be able to do something that you’re passionate about for a living. We know not everybody gets to do that, and we don’t take it for granted. We want every person who comes here to be satisfied, and to find something unique and fun on the menu that they can be excited about.”
