Alzina Toups Has Died at 94

A visit to Alzina’s Kitchen down the bayou in Galliano, Louisiana was no ordinary dinner outing.

People would make reservations far in advance and often travel great distances for meals that played out like family suppers, served in a one-time welding shed by Bayou Lafourche.

Perhaps most memorable was the host, Alzina Toups, who for decades gave her visitors a taste of Louisiana cooking and something more.

“I wanted my guests to know how the Cajuns live,” Toups said during what proved to be her final interview, in December 2021. “They saw Cajun life on the front burner, not on the back burner.”

Toups died Monday, May 2, at age 94, confirmed her granddaughter, Jenny Stevens. She had suffered congestive heart failure and died surrounded by family at home, a small house next to Alzina’s Kitchen.

She was born in a clapboard cottage just steps away from the home in which she died nearly a century later, and she spent her entire life in this tight-knit community. Her life revolved around her family and her Catholic faith. She and her late husband David had two sons, Anthony Toups and the late Joey Toups, and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren all live nearby.

Toups never ran a traditional restaurant and always called herself a cook, not a chef. One of her proudest skills was her ability to debone a chicken in four minutes flat.

She cooked breakfasts for clergy at her church, and when priests visited from other parishes, she would put on big, home-style spreads for them. This set the stage for Alzina’s Kitchen, which started in 1977, as Toups’ approach to community meals continued to gain devotees.

More like a dinner club than a conventional restaurant, visitors arrived to find a metal building with no windows, no sign over the door and no separation between the cafeteria-like dinner tables and the kitchen. Toups would serve one meal for one group per night, with dishes like shrimp gumbo, smothered pork loin, black eyed pea jambalaya, chicken and shrimp fricassee and walnut tart.

Many of her recipes were passed down to her from prior generations, and much of her cooking drew from ingredients she could procure from local farms or pull straight from the bayou.

"God gave me this gift, to really think about what to put in food," Toups said in a 2006 interview. "Life is a mystery. We don't know the future, or what's going to happen. We know the past."

A funeral mass will be held at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Galliano on Wednesday (May 4) at 10 a.m. with burial following in Cheramie Cemetery.

Per that same article, the building was damaged during Ida, but the granddaughter is repairing it and plans to re-open in the fall.

Had a great meal there. My meal at Alzina’s didn’t blow me away or anything, but reminded me of eating at a friends or family’s camp. What it made me realized is how blessed we are down here when it comes to food.