Soileau’s Dinner Club’s recipe for success is fresh ingredients and experienced staff

OPELOUSAS – The popularity of Soileau’s Dinner Club has been well known amongst locals and tourists alike for generations, even when the original location itself was engulfed in flames.
In 1962 the restaurant’s original location on Main Street was destroyed by an electrical fire. Soileau’s second-generation owner Scott Soileau was only six-years-old at that time and remembers the night of the blaze vividly.
“When I woke up around 3 a.m. the house was empty,” Scott said. “I started looking for people and when I looked outside I saw the fire. I thought my dad was in there so I went back inside and called. They could hear the phone ring. The fireman joked that someone was trying to place an order.”
There have been plenty of orders that have been sent out of Soileau’s Dinner Club since it opened up in 1937 as Soileau’s Place, located on a part of Main Street that was still at the time a dirt road.
Scott’s father Clarence Soileau, who was from Grand Prairie and had brothers from the Ville Platte area, opened the restaurant that originally served mainly bar-be-que chicken dinner, using half of a chicken, with trimmings for 35 cents each. In 1942, the restaurant was closed temporarily due to World War II. The family moved to New Orleans where Clarence found work in a ship yard.
In 1946, Soileau’s Dinner Club reopened and Clarence brought on his brother-in-law, Clifton Veillon Sr., as a partner. Clifton, who had served in the Navy, brought along several recipes he used in the military and the menu expanded to included seafood, steaks and other speciality dishes.
“We still have all of those old recipes,” said Scott, who’s cousin is KVPI disc jockey Gene “Swabby” Soileau. “The pages are stained and old but those are the same recipes we use to this day.”
After the fire, the two rebuilt Soileau’s a few hundred yards away from the original location on Main Street. It was during this time that Scott was bestowed with his first job at the restaurant, riding on top of the steamroller during construction and picking up cans and paper in the parking lot.
Despite growing up around the business, Scott never imagined owning and running it one day.
“I worked there since I was a kid but there was never a plan of me taking over,” said Scott, who joined the family business along with Clifton’s son Clifton Veillon Jr. in the late 1970’s. “It was never talked about but then when I graduated from school. My plans changed. I got married and I had children. They had room for me at the restaurant and the rest is history.”
Soileau’s Dinner Club, with such signature dishes as Catfish Opelousas, Snapper “Nonc” Cliff and Pecan Brochette, has had a long history of using only fresh products.
Soileau’s orders its chicken, packed in ice not frozen, from Bellard’s Poultry and its beef from Kelly’s Country Meat Block, both from Opelousas. Soileau’s receives its fresh crawfish from Henderson, shrimp from Delcambre, and its farmed-raised catfish are also regionally grown.
“You get what you pay for,” Scott said. “A good example is you see those places that are selling 20 Ribeyes for 20 dollars. Well you know that can’t be good meat because they are going to make money and they are not going to give stuff away.”
Scott added, “Right now we don’t have crawfish available and people don’t understand. They say everybody has crawfish. Well that’s the thing, it’s not Louisiana fresh crawfish. It’s going to be from overseas or it was frozen last season and we don’t sell that. We have sent some product back because of that.”
Another key to Soileau’s long-standing success, despite the old fashion feel to the place and checks that are still hand written, has been its dedicated staff. Soileau’s has eight employees in both the back and front of the house that have been there 20 years or more.
In the kitchen alone, there are three cooks Shirley Rubin, Julia “Steppa” Thomas and Dequetta Ford who have been working there a combined 110 years working in Soileau’s kitchen.
“I always did love working in the kitchen,” Thomas said. “All of us just love working here.”
“I can do this with my eyes closed,” Ford proudly said.
Scott and his son Josh are both well aware how rare and fortunate it is to have that quality of experience under their roof.
“We are very fortunate because that is the number one problem in this industry,” Scott said. “You can’t do that kind of work for that long without truly enjoying it. Fortunate is an underestimate. The employees are the key to what makes everything run.”
“It’s hard to find good help,” said Josh, who left a career in local law enforcement to join the family business. “We are blessed to have the staff we do have.”
For years, Soileau’s always had a huge spike of business on Sundays for its Soul Fried Chicken, with an estimated 300 orders before lunch, but as that dish is no longer as popular with younger generations.
That doesn’t mean Soileau’s has missed a step.
Developed several years ago, Soileau’s take-out business now accounts for 50 percent of the restaurant’s profits. People order everything from fried chicken to steak and lobster dinners.
Once Scott and his wife Beth depart the family business, the future of Soileau’s Dinner Club will be in the hands of Josh and his wife Roxanne, who currently serves as assistant manager.
“We enjoy what we do and we plan on staying around for a long while,” Scott said.