St. Rose Native Opens Café, Celebrates Community

By [Staff Writer]

ST. ROSE — Tyree Taylor still remembers the taste of post-game jambalaya and the crunch of a cold snowball on the porch of Fabacher’s, the family-run restaurant that once anchored River Road. For generations of Destrehan High athletes, the spot was more than a meal; it was a rite of passage. When Fabacher’s closed its doors roughly twelve years ago, the building sat silent, a daily reminder of what had been lost.

“I’m driving past one day and I mentioned to a friend that I wished someone would reopen that,” Taylor recalled. “My son and the friend turned and asked, ‘What about you?’”

This Friday, March 27, Taylor answers that challenge with the soft opening of the Saint Rose Cafe at 11698 River Road. The Dallas-based real estate developer, who left Louisiana to play football at SMU after the program’s NCAA “death penalty” era, has invested his own capital and countless weekends commuting between Texas and his hometown to resurrect the landmark.

The reopening date is deliberate. On March 27, 1880, freedmen in the Elkinsville settlement—now known as Old St. Rose—broke ground on the first street of what would become a thriving post-Civil War community of color. Naming menu items after local streets and subdivisions—Turtle Pond, Crescent Hollow, Riverbend, Dianne Place, Bar None Ranch—Taylor intends the cafe to double as a living museum of parish history.

“Home is still home,” said Taylor, who returns monthly and hopes his four sons absorb the same pride his grandfather, grocery-owner Herbert Smith, instilled in him. “He was proud of the entire St. Rose community. I want this place to be a connector the way he was.”

Eleven of the cafe’s twelve hires are St. Rose residents; day-to-day operations will be led by fellow Destrehan alum Monique McGee. With Louis Armstrong International Airport only seven miles away, Taylor envisions travelers sampling gumbo while learning about local luminaries—Pro Football Hall of Famer Ed Reed among them—who emerged from the west bank parish.

If the new Saint Rose Cafe can recreate even a fraction of the Friday-night-family feeling Taylor experienced after Wildcat games, he’ll consider the venture a championship-level success.