Good luck keeping one craving for an entire Louisiana road trip.
Po-boys might win the first stop, then a plate lunch comes along and changes the plan. Keep driving, because breakfast or pressed sandwiches can make the original order feel like ancient history.
The menu keeps switching personalities before your appetite gets too comfortable.
Some kitchens have decades behind them, while newer daytime spots bring their own spin to the route. Hours change too, which means lunch can turn into a little game of beat-the-clock.
Seven cities and absolutely no loyalty to one type of meal.
Your craving picked the route? Cute. Louisiana gets the final say.
1. Bear’s Restaurant
Bear’s Restaurant keeps Covington lunch focused on the po-boy, which makes the first decision simple and the second one much harder.
Roast beef and fried shrimp lead the current lineup, and both can be ordered in more than one size.
The sandwiches come dressed with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayonnaise, keeping the format familiar while the fillings do the heavy lifting.
The menu gets more interesting once you move past the obvious choices. The Ferdie combines roast beef, grilled ham, and Swiss cheese on the same po-boy.
Barbecue beef uses roast beef with house barbecue sauce, while hamburger and cheeseburger versions push the long-bread format toward something closer to a diner order.
Grilled ham, ham and cheese, meatball, chicken, and other fillings keep the list from turning into a two-sandwich menu.
Fries are the natural side if you want to keep lunch straightforward, and the counter-service setup makes this an easy stop to fit into a day around Covington.
There is no need to turn the meal into a complicated tasting project. Pick the filling that sounds right, decide how much sandwich you want, and get back on the road when you are ready.
If this is your first stop on the list, the roast beef or shrimp gives you the clearest Louisiana starting point.
If you already know those classics, the Ferdie is where the menu starts having more fun.
Address: 128 W 21st Ave, Covington, LA 70433.
2. LeBlanc’s Drive Inn
A classic drive-in menu still works just fine in Zachary, especially when burgers, po-boys, fried seafood, hot plates, soups, and frozen treats can all come from the same stop. That range is useful when everyone in the car has arrived hungry for something different.
LeBlanc’s Drive Inn keeps homemade hamburgers beside roast beef, catfish, fried chicken, smoked sausage, barbecue beef, and other po-boy choices.
Fried shrimp and catfish dinners give seafood a larger role, while hamburger steak moves the meal toward a plate-lunch mood instead of a sandwich.
The menu also reaches into the kind of extras that make a drive-in feel like a drive-in. Onion rings, fries, tots, nachos, corn dogs, shakes, floats, sundaes, banana pudding, and other counter staples can turn a quick lunch into a much less restrained order.
Chicken and sausage gumbo and shrimp-and-corn soup add another direction when fried food is not the whole plan.
Service runs through the week, so the restaurant is easier to work into an afternoon or evening than a lunch-only shop.
That flexibility matters on a Louisiana road trip where the next stop may be an hour away and nobody wants to negotiate over another generic exit-ramp meal.
Start with the category you came for, then look at the rest before placing the order. This is exactly the kind of menu where a po-boy plan can become a burger, seafood box, and shake situation very quickly.
Address: 4123 LA-19, Zachary, LA 70791.
3. Five Mile Eatery
Breakfast and lunch get a more modern treatment in Lafayette, where specialty coffee, house-made pastries, seasonal produce, and a locally focused kitchen share the same daytime schedule.
otYou can use the stop for a full meal, a pastry-and-coffee break, or something in between.
A long list of regional suppliers keeps the kitchen closely tied to the area.
Five Mile Eatery uses Louisiana beef, eggs, honey, cane sugar, bread, coffee, tea, and other ingredients from producers around the South.
The kitchen also avoids seed oils, relying instead on olive oil, ghee, butter, avocado oil, and coconut oil. That is simply part of how the food is prepared, and it gives you a clear idea of the restaurant’s cooking approach without needing to turn breakfast into a nutrition seminar.
The current menu is built around comforting breakfast and lunch dishes rather than one signature item.
Pastries and a full coffee bar make an early stop easy, while the savory side gives you more reason to stay if you arrive hungry.
Catering is available too, but the regular cafe is open Monday through Saturday from morning until mid-afternoon and closes on Sunday.
If your Louisiana food route has already been heavy on fried seafood and po-boys, this is a smart change of pace. Order something savory, add a pastry if the case wins the argument, and save room for the next town.
Address: 317 Heymann Blvd, Lafayette, LA 70503.
4. Word of Mouth Café
Alexandria has a lunch stop where the clock matters almost as much as the menu. The current schedule is concentrated into a short Tuesday-through-Friday midday window, so this is one to build into the route instead of saving for late afternoon.
Soups, sandwiches, salads, wraps, and rotating hot plates form the core of the meal. Pressed sandwiches can move through turkey, ham, Cuban, BLT, and pot-roast territory.
Soup give you a way to turn half a sandwich into a full lunch without ordering a mountain of food.
The daily board is where Word of Mouth Café changes personality. Blackened chicken pasta, pork loin, pot roast, and spicy shrimp pasta rotate through the week, so Tuesday does not have to look anything like Friday.
That makes the stop especially useful if you enjoy seeing what the kitchen is doing that day before committing to a regular sandwich.
Desserts add another reason not to rush the decision. Bread pudding and seasonal sweets have been part of the cafe’s lineup, while the everyday menu keeps lunch grounded in familiar comfort food rather than elaborate presentation.
The hours are short, currently 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, which is worth remembering before you point the car toward downtown Alexandria.
Arrive during the window, check the special first, then decide whether the sandwich board can talk you out of it.
Address: 918 Foisy St, Alexandria, LA 71301.
5. Elsie’s Plate & Pie
Pie gets equal billing with the savory side at this Baton Rouge restaurant, but dessert is only one part of a much larger menu.
Appetizers, soups, salads, seafood, burgers, melts, po-boys, entrees, and weekend brunch all compete for attention before you even reach the sweet case.
The name Elsie’s Plate & Pie honors Elsie Marie Campeau Rupe, the maternal grandmother of chef and proprietor Paul Chauvin Dupré.
That family connection fits naturally with a restaurant built around Southern Louisiana comfort food and a pastry program that treats savory pie as seriously as dessert.
Current savory choices include crawfish hand pies, Louisiana poulet pot pie, Carl’s tomato pie, crustless crab pie, Natchitoches meat hand pies, and seafood pot pie.
The seafood version brings crawfish, shrimp, and crab into roasted red pepper cream beneath a flaky crust, while the crawfish hand pies fold crawfish, corn, and sausage into handmade pastry.
Then the sweet list takes over. Lemon icebox, chocolate cream, coconut cream, apple, turtle, S’mores, pecan, cherry, and the Eye of the Tiger give you plenty of ways to end the meal.
The last one pairs lemon icebox filling with blueberry whipped cream, which makes choosing only one slice particularly inconvenient.
Weekend brunch adds biscuits, grits, eggs, boudin, crawfish, shrimp, and other morning dishes. The restaurant is also part of the MICHELIN Guide’s American South selection, but you do not need an award to make the practical decision here.
Save room for pie before the entrees start negotiating against you.
Address: 3145 Government St, Baton Rouge, LA 70806.
6. Café 615 Home of Da Wabbit
The Gretna story here reaches back to 1948, when the original Da Wabbit opened as a drive-in.
Café 615 Home of Da Wabbit carries that name into a much broader modern menu without losing the fried chicken, hamburger steak, roast beef po-boys, and Creole comfort-food backbone tied to its history.
The menu moves through entrees, seafood platters, pasta, soups, salads, sandwiches, sides, desserts, and daily lunch specials.
Shrimp étouffée, chicken and andouille gumbo, pasta, and bread pudding can all pull the meal in different directions depending on how hungry you are.
Sandwiches can be ordered on a bun or French bread, so even the quicker side of lunch has choices.
Roast beef and shrimp po-boys keep the New Orleans-area sandwich tradition close, while hamburger steak and fried chicken give you the kind of plate that makes a fork more useful than two hands.
The restaurant sits in historic downtown Gretna and serves both lunch and dinner. Private-event options are available as well, but for a regular visit the broad menu is the real advantage.
You can bring a group without everyone having to agree that seafood, po-boys, or comfort food should win.
If the list has already given you several sandwiches, use this stop to change gears. Gumbo, étouffée, a platter, or one of the daily specials can turn the same Louisiana road trip into a completely different meal.
Address: 615 Kepler St, Gretna, LA 70053.
7. Olde Tyme Grocery
Poor boys have driven this Lafayette grocery-and-sandwich shop since 1982, when Glenn Murphree bought an old neighborhood store near the university.
The place still had canned goods, produce, shopping carts, and a deli case when he took over, and he began as the only employee, making only a small number of poor boys each day.
Olde Tyme Grocery now gives you meat and seafood versions in half or whole sizes. Ham, turkey, roast beef, meatball, sausage, barbecue meats, and pastrami cover much of the meat side, while Gulf shrimp and oysters anchor the regular seafood lineup.
The shrimp poor boy is dressed with mayonnaise, lettuce, ketchup, and tomatoes. The Olde Tyme Special stacks ham, turkey, roast beef, and Swiss cheese, while other sandwiches keep the same no-frills structure.
Catfish appears on Fridays, and crawfish poor boys have a seasonal Lent schedule rather than sitting on the menu all year.
There is covered patio seating and a back patio, so you can turn the stop into a sit-down break instead of eating over the steering wheel. Catering extends the sandwich format into trays and bag lunches for groups, while the main shop remains focused on individual orders.
Current hours run from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, with Sunday closed.
That long weekday window makes Olde Tyme one of the easier places on this list to fit around sightseeing, campus plans, or a late return through Lafayette.
Address: 218 W St Mary Blvd, Lafayette, LA 70506.
8. C’est Bon Restaurant
Mermentau gives you the widest time-of-day swing on this list. Breakfast starts the morning with biscuits, egg sandwiches, pancakes, grits, hash browns, breakfast plates, and burritos, while plate lunches and seafood carry the menu later into the day.
The restaurant began as an 8-by-16-foot building on wheels after the town lost its remaining restaurant.
The early setup was small, with family involved from the beginning and a menu centered on homemade hamburgers and other straightforward drive-in food. As business grew, the operation moved across the street and expanded.
C’est Bon Restaurant now covers far more ground. Fried shrimp, oysters, catfish, crawfish, seafood combinations, po-boys, gumbo, crawfish étouffée, burgers, sandwiches, salads, sides, and boiled seafood can all appear in the same visit.
That range makes breakfast and dinner look like they belong to completely different restaurants.
Boiled crawfish and blue crabs are seasonal, so availability depends on the time of year. Shrimp and other seafood options give you alternatives when crawfish season is not cooperating.
If you arrive during the breakfast hours, you can keep things simple with biscuits and eggs instead of forcing seafood into every Louisiana meal.
The current schedule runs 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Saturday. Sunday is closed. Check the day before you aim for a late meal because those shorter early-week hours matter.
Address: 1400 Railroad Ave, Mermentau, LA 70556.