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Photos courtesy of Ed Stacey.
Menu items at Rougaroux include the swordfish sandwich. Rougaroux opened a new location, at the former Sneaky Pete’s storefront, in Mountain Brook Village on Jan. 10.
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Photos courtesy of Ed Stacey.
Rougaroux's shrimp po’boy and gumbo
A popular Louisiana-inspired restaurant in Forest Park, Rougaroux, just opened a brand-new location Mountain Brook this year.
“I’ve been a part-time resident of New Orleans for several years [because of my job] and my partner, Ryan Champion, worked for [New Orleans restaurant] Commander’s Palace,” co-owner Ed Stacey said. “We had been talking about the idea of opening a po’boy shop, so that's what we did in 2017, after we found our location in Forest Park.”
The new Rougaroux location offers Cajun and Creole cuisine in the former Sneaky Pete’s building on 2716 Culver Road.
“One of our regular customers, Jay Friedman, bought the property that we’re going into with the idea of opening some kind of restaurant,” Stacey said. “Jay also lived in New Orleans for a while, and he reached out to us, and we started bouncing the idea around and finally decided to pull the trigger on it.”
Rougaroux has gained a strong following since its establishment in Birmingham. With its new location, the restaurant aims to continue delivering its signature dishes that celebrate the rich culinary traditions of Louisiana.
The menu includes traditional po’boys, featuring shrimp, roast beef, oysters, catfish and eggplant. The specialty po’boys include oysters Rockefeller, roast beef, blackened catfish, smoked chicken and bacon, barbecue shrimp, surf and turf and seafood. Side offerings are creole fries, red beans and rice, muffuletta pasta salad, collard greens and potato salad.
The menu also features New Orleans favorites of gumbo, housemade Boudin links, muffuletta and brisket burger.
“Ryan is going to be the corporate chef over both locations. Ryan’s got about 25 years of kitchen experience, and I’ve got about the same amount of experience in the industry, so between us we have about 50 years of experience,” Stacey said. “With the roadmap of what we’re doing already in place from our Forest Park location, that’ll help us quite a bit.”
With the decision to expand to a new customer base in Mountain Brook, Stacey said much about Rougaroux’s two locations will be the same, but the restaurants won’t be identical.
“We’re going to lean into what the building was,” Stacey said. “We couldn’t totally recreate that same atmosphere [from the Forest Park] with this location, but we’re still going for a coastal, seafood, dive, diner type of vibe.”
Stacey said that the menu for the new location will be pretty much the same as the Forest Park location, but they are planning on adding a few new dishes like salads and seafood baskets. They opened in early January, just in time for Mardi Gras season.
“We generally do a lot of specials throughout Mardi Gras and the weeks approaching it. Some items that aren’t normally on the menu that are New Orleans staples, like jambalaya and crawfish étouffée — I’m sure we’ll incorporate some of that,” Stacey said.
Rougaroux’s Mountain Brook location is open Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. They are only open on Sundays when the New Orleans Saints are playing. For more information, visit rougarouxbhm.com.
