On The Menu: Cochon

Chef Donald Link’s 2-year-old Cochon restaurant remains whole-hog Southern-Cajun, and it’s set to grow.

The popular New Orleans restaurant, whose name is the French word for “pig,” will be expanded in January with plans for its own attached retail butcher shop and banquet rooms upstairs.

“We’ve purchased the building that the Cochon is in,” says Link, who also operates Herbsaint restaurant in New Orleans. “We have 1,000 square feet behind the restaurant on the first floor, where we’re going to open a retail butcher shop.We’re going to make salami, which we already do at Herbsaint, bacon, summer sausages, bologna and air-cured hams. We’ll also do boudin and andouille. Upstairs we’re going to have banquet rooms.”

Link, who owns Cochon with chef Stephen Stryjewski, foresees little change in the Southern-Cajun menu that has drawn so many fans and so much attention.

AT A GLANCE

Cuisine: Cajun and SouthernLocation: 930 Tchoupitoulas St.Website:www.cochonrestaurant.comOpened: April 18, 2006Seats: 100Average check: $20-$25 for lunch, $30-$38 for dinnerBest-selling item: cochonExecutive chef and co-owner: Donald LinkChef and co-owner: Stephen Stryjewski

“It’s a combination of the foods I grew up with as a kid,” Link says. “My mom’s side of the family is from Alabama, and my dad’s side is from Cajun country [of Louisiana], so we kind of blended those foods together at the restaurant.”

Growing up near Lake Charles, La., Link says he was fortunate to have both sets of grandparents living within a quarter mile.

“We’d go to my granny’s house—my dad’s mom—and have smothered pork, gumbo, dirty rice, that kind of food,” he recalls. “The next night, we’d go my granddad’s house and [eat] squirrel, dumplings, cornbread, greens, lima beans, black-eyed peas, more of the Southern angle.”

At Cochon, he says he wanted to give guests a wide sample, the menu features a number of “smaller plates to encourage some sharing, as well as with the sides.”

The very local menu has earned the respect of both locals and visitors. “People from out of town have never had anything like it. It’s unique to them,” Link says. “One of the things we wanted to do is have a local restaurant so that when people came from out of town they could find it.”

And the Southern-Cajun menu has a legion of local fans. “The best compliments I get are from people who live here and those who come from Cajun country, where I’m from,” Link says.“It’s a cuisine that had started to slip away a little bit. Everybody thinks this is some new, cutting-edge food, but it’s really old food in a newer setting.”

Stryjewski, who was Link’s sous chef at Herbsaint for five years, runs day-to-day operations at Cochon.

“Steve and I talk every day, and every Friday we have a manager meeting,” Link adds. “It’s a great partnership.”

Link says the two restaurants have similar service styles.

“Cochon is down-home Southern with some metropolitan feel. Herbsaint still has the tablecloths, and it’s rooted more in classic French. But both have very direct service and the food is never fussy.”

Nearly all the menu is sourced locally, he says, especially the oysters, pigs, rabbits and almost all the produce

“Restaurants and chefs are getting more localized to their region,” he says. “You come here, you know exactly where you are. You are sitting in New Orleans, eating rabbit and dumplings.”

His own favorites on the menu are the cochon and the rabbit and dumplings, he says.

“The rabbit and dumplings—my granddad did it,” Link says.“The first time I had it, it was with squirrel. It was a whole fried squirrel with the head on, which was kind of weird.

“You don’t see that much anymore. I’ve thought about it [for the restaurants],” Link says with a laugh, “but I don’t know.”

Dinner