Text: Beth D’addano
Photos: Kyle Carpenter
Some Francophiles prefer white-tablecloth, fancy palaces of Gallic flavor—think Julia Child’s favorite, Chez Georges, a Parisian institution since 1926. Then there are the more casual family-style bistros that dish French fare in a relaxed setting.
Chez Jacqueline is in that last number. To a first-timer, the restaurant is a surprising find in downtown Breaux Bridge, despite being open since 2003. This kitchen is Chef Jacqueline Salser’s domain, the setting a result of a globetrotting life of hospitality. Classically trained for two years at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Jacqueline was born into a restaurant family in Saint Germain-en-laye, France, about 15 miles outside of the capital city.
Her parents had a restaurant called L’Auberge du Cèdre in the country town of Fourqueux. “I was standing on a crate, stirring pots when I was 3,” Jacqueline recalls. “The restaurant was French, French, French, so beautiful. There was a huge garden where people sat under big trees. That’s because there’s no bugs, there’s no mosquitoes, no flies, no anything. Not like here.”
A HOSPITALITY MAVEN
Now a spry 80, Jacqueline has been feeding guests for more than half a century. She came to the US in 1970, first with a husband in tow. Then she was on her own, a single parent, traveling with her kids and cooking in restaurants. She worked as a food and beverage director for Hilton for years. Her move to Louisiana came in 1989, not because of her love of Cajun food—“it’s too much spice,” she says—but because she fell in love with the people. “The people, their kindness, that matters to me,” says the chef. “But I don’t like big city; Lafayette was too big for me. I’m born in and love the country.”
Jacqueline doesn’t look like an octogenarian. She is strong and solidly built, bespectacled, with a no-nonsense short hairstyle. The chef speaks her mind plainly, often with an impish grin. Within a few minutes of being in her company, it’s clear that she’s an outlier, a woman who loves a good adventure.
“I lived in Alaska, Key West, Georgia, Colorado, Wyoming,” she recalls. “I lived for two years in Naples, Italy. I was a little bit everywhere. I like to go places and look on and see what’s going on.” She’s always been a table-hopper, chatting with her guests about everything from what’s on the plate to the weather.
FRENCH MEETS CAJUN IN BREAUX BRIDGE
Chez Jacqueline wasn’t her first restaurant in south Louisiana. Jacqueline opened a Chinese restaurant, the Dragon Café, in 1997. She saw a hole in the regional market and filled it. “Nobody in Lafayette was cooking Chinese back then. Now, there are so many places.” Working closely with a Chinese cook, she had lines out the door. “We were a big hit for almost five years.” That explains why some of the plates at Chez Jaqueline are served on white dishes with a red outer ring surrounding a central Chinese graphic. “I still have a lot of my old dishes.” There are a few entrées with an Asian sheen, like her lemongrass-and-garlic shrimp and honey-soy sauce grilled salmon, a throwback to those Dragon Café days.
But with the opening of Chez Jacqueline about 22 years ago, she can attend to her passion for classic French food. The setting is cluttered, decorated with faded press clippings, party menus, and family photos. It’s an eclectic space—think Grandma’s attic with a hodgepodge of two- and four-tops, jumbled with mementos of France and other places she’s traveled. There are a few tables outside under signs that say, “The Real French Cooking” and “Chez Jacqueline Got Food.”
“I don’t want to retire. I don’t want to die. Work keeps me going. I love to cook, even at my age. And I cook with love.”
—CHEF JACQUELINE SALSER
“The French menu is exactly like my mom and dad. But I also serve Cajun food, too.” Open Wednesday through Monday, from 8 to 4, her vast menu encompasses breakfast and a hearty array of lunch and dinner entrées. There are eggs served with biscuits, Benedict with hollandaise, Cajun style, spicy or mild, with veggies and crawfish tails. Or cooked à la Parisienne, stuffed with crabmeat and topped with mayonnaise, a dish that feels, like much of the menu, quaintly retro. Unapologetically large blocks of pale-yellow butter accompany slices of French bread. Couche couche is a homestyle fried cornmeal cake served with milk. And then there are homemade beignets.
The menu is shot through with local ingredients. You can get a half and half—fried crawfish tails served with a cup of crawfish étouffée and rice. Turtle soup and alligator sauce piquant keep company with frog legs Provençal, always sautéed with butter, garlic, and parsley—never fried. A Cajun sampler includes fried alligator bites, shrimp, oysters, catfish bites, and crawfish.
The chef makes seafood gumbo with a light brown French-style roux, a house favorite swimming with shrimp, scallops, and crab. She feeds guests the likes of Coquilles St. Jacques, scallops, shrimp, and crabmeat baked with fresh mushrooms in a creamy sauce du Maison. The snails are popular, with six or 12 escargot sizzling in a garlicky parsley butter. The onion soup gratinée is a two-day process, a hearty beef broth spiked with caramelized onion and topped with a French bread chapeau and a thatch of melted Gruyère. Sometimes veal cordon bleu, thinly pounded veal rolled with sliced ham and Swiss cheese and pan-sautéed in butter, is a special. Order at least one specialty from the Jacqueline’s Kitchen section of the menu, perhaps lapin chasseur, stewed rabbit served in a velouté cream sauce with fresh mushrooms, over rice. Or her tournedos au poivre, flambéed with a cognac cream sauce.
She used to have monthly eight-course feasts, wine flowing. Now, she does one for Valentine’s Day, another for Bastille Day. “The price stays the same, $80,” she says. “Even though things keep going up.”
Jacqueline admits that she gets tired of doing so much, standing for so many hours. “It’s tough to be a woman in this business,” she says. “Don’t let nobody push you. Push them back. It’s hard, but it’s the only thing I know how to do.”
