re: **BREAKING** DeAngelo's closing on Jefferson

Yes .. Louis Jr. owns all of them .. The Insalata DeAngelo is a great salad .. Just pricey .. As you said ..

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Big Lou (as in Dad) had nothing to do with the place or its success .. He was just a leach ..

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He played a big part in changing the atmosphere at DeAngelo's.

Used to work for them back in the late 90's, early 00's. The atmosphere was fun and the food was good, and it was a very popular place to eat. They used to have a caricature artist, clowns for kids night and live music every week. The decor was in the same style of the "fun" they were trying to capture- the main component being all the caricature's on the walls.

Things began to change as Louis tried his new "Mia Tavola" concept and began trying to franchise. He stretched himself too thin and the result was Mia Tavola became another DeAngelos and Louis began focusing solely on the franchising. Big Lou felt that a more upscale atmosphere would be easier to market and the locations around Baton Rouge slowly started to lose the caricatures and art that he picked out was put in its place. As silly as it sounds, this changed the "feel" of the restaurants completely. Uniforms went from casual Tshirts to button downs, and they added the pastas from the new restaurant to the regular menu and started to make themselves into a generic italian restaurant instead of just a pizzeria.

They got away from their roots, and in my opinion, that hurt them.

Hi Paul,

just tryin' to get a rise out of you....

But seriously, as a Chef I find it interesting that customers will complain about the pricing at one place, but will pay top dollar at another and not have much of an issue with it - assuming similar quality of course.

Are you speaking from experience with Deangelos specifically? Just curious...cause it does seem they are in line with other places (unless of course as stated their portions have gone down!)

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I worked at the location that is closing briefly after Katrina. It was a shite show with the lines out of the door everynight. Some good folks worked at that location. 'Twas a good time.

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You and me both.


Hmm...?

I was a mix of back and front but worked back during that time.

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I was a mix of back and front but worked back during that time.

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Remember Brandon(he was there for years) in the front? That was my roomate. I dated Liz for like a year I guess.

I gotcha. Well i'm sure we worked together if you were there after Katrina

I would have, but I heard that their salads were pretty expensive...

I worked there back in 2009. I guess business died down.

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I worked there back in 2009.

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Reason you had to PutDaForkDown?