From the second life of Marilynn’s Place to the debut of La Cubanita Café, here are five reasons I’m excited to dine-out in Shreveport-Bossier in 2026
by Chris Jay
stuffedandbusted at gmail dot com
The creation of this post was sponsored by Slow Food North Louisiana.
I probably visited fewer restaurants in 2025 than in any other year of my adult life. There are lots of reasons why—economic conditions, a desire to cook at home more often, and the chaos of life with a two-year-old being foremost among them. But, if I were going to name a Shreveport-Bossier restaurant that has impressed me the most in the past year, it would either be Shreveport Biscuit Co. or Chiangmai Thai Kitchen. They are both so incredibly consistent. My most memorable customer service experiences this year have happened at Dripp Donuts & Chicken and Saint Laurent Pizza.
The single best thing I ate in 2025, which I am still thinking about months later, was a weekend special “Pie Irlandés,” a “Mexican-style shepherd’s pie” that Ki Mexico served on the weekend of Halloween. While I still daydream about that shepherd’s pie, the restaurant memories that will stick with me from the past year all have to do with service.
Maybe it’s just me, but the world has definitely felt a little leaner and meaner this year. So it means an awful lot more when someone is exceedingly kind to my family and me, especially when no one is watching.
Sometimes when you go out to eat with a two-year-old, it works out. Other times it doesn’t. During one of our failed attempts, at Saint Laurent, my son’s pacifier disappeared. We searched high and low with no luck. Panic ensued. The moment that I will hold most dear from my family’s nights out in 2025 is the memory of a busboy at Saint Laurent who, while clearing our table, caught wind of the missing pacifier and took on the search as a personal cause—he wound up crawling underneath a booth, retrieving it from some cranny in the furniture that we’d all overlooked.
I’m hoping to get out and about more often in 2026. As the year comes to a close, here are some of the things I’m most excited to see play out in Shreveport-Bossier’s ever-evolving restaurant community.
1. Whatever happens next with La Cubanita Café
“What I make is a Cuban made by a Cuban,” Mari from La Cubanita Café told me when I asked her about the outrageously satisfying Cuban sandwiches that she and her family have been vending at the Bossier City Farmers Market. “There’s nothing else to say.”
I love sandwiches, and I happen to believe that the Cuban is the greatest sandwich on earth. I’d never had a great one in North Louisiana until Chang Liu, of the Pepper Pals Facebook group, invited me to meet the folks from La Cubanita at a pop-up event. Everything I ate (and I ate pretty much all of it) was outrageously delicious.
Follow La Cubanita Café on Facebook here.
Here’s a video I put together, featuring audio that I recorded that night:
2. Papalotl, the Balderases next moves, and the growth of Nourishing Farms
I have this feeling that Gabriel and Brooke Balderas are going to have a life-changing year in 2026. In order to supply their popular restaurants, El Cabo Verde and Zuzul Coastal Cuisine, with clean and sustainable meats and produce, they have spent the last few years developing Nourishing Farms, an all-organic, chemical-free farm in southwestern Shreveport.
Recently, they made public (by launching this Instagram page) their biggest and most ambitious move to date: They are opening a restaurant, Papalotl, in Chef Gabriel Balderas’s home state of Oaxaca. Gabriel’s journey—immigrating to the U.S. from Oaxaca, becoming enormously successful as a restaurateur, and then bringing that success back to Oaxaca—is one of the best food stories in the South right now.
Follow Nourishing Farms on Facebook here.
3. The new Marilynn’s Place
Bob Thames, the new owner of Marilynn’s Place, has so much energy that I get exhausted just looking at his Instagram. Marilynn’s Place needed a new owner with that much energy. While I believe Bob is exactly the right man for the job, I’m also curious to see how he rises to the enormous task that he has handed himself. A neighborhood eatery is not like a chain restaurant; it lives or dies, I think, by the presence of the proprietor. I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
4. Carnival season with Dripp Donuts and Chicken
I’m old enough to remember when, if you wanted a king cake in Shreveport, you had to drive to Bossier City and buy a thawed-from-frozen monstrosity from a lawnmower shop. A lot’s changed since those dark times, and, these days, there are plenty of excellent king cakes in Shreveport. Having seen the folks at Dripp Donuts and Chicken go all-in on several holidays since opening earlier this year, I’m excited to see the energy they’ll bring to Carnival season.
5. Garlic knots, cannoli and more from Sal’s Pizzeria
Sal Marciano, the beloved former proprietor of the Sal’s Emergency Pizza Services food truck, recently opened a physical location of Sal’s Emergency Pizza in Bossier City. If you follow Sal on social media (and most of Shreveport-Bossier seems to), you know that he’s spent a loooong time perfecting his pizzeria concept. I’m really excited to see what he settled on, in terms of knots and cannoli, because I know he’s put his heart and soul into it. Watch this blog for more on the next chapter of Sal’s Emergency Pizza Services.
Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, and happy dining in the New Year.
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