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Troy’s little “taste of the bayou,” Bayou la Roux will hold its Grand Opening Jan. 12-13.

The full service restaurant, which started out as a food truck owned by chef/owner Ben Kay, has been in the process of remodeling the old Francesca’s building into Bayou la Roux, bringing authentic Cajun food to Troy.

“We’ve had tons of positive feedback from the community,” Kay said. “I have been asked so many times over the last six months, ‘When are you opening?’ We’re just excited to finally have an answer for that question.”

The Grand Opening will see the restaurant open from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. on both Jan. 12-13. The following week, Bayou la Roux will open for its standard operating hours beginning on Thursday, Jan. 18. From that point forward, the Cajun restaurant will be open Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. and on Friday and Saturdays from 11 a.m. until 10 p.m.

The Grand Opening will see Bayou la Roux’s full menu available to the public, as well.

“We will have our full menu, we’re not doing a small menu to start,” Kay emphasized. “I need to train my people on our full menu and get them moving as quick as possible. We have some really exciting options for our entrees.

“We’re doing a blackened red snapper with Crawfish Etouffee and we have a thick house-cut bone-in pork chop that we’re going to blacken and serve over Chicken and Andouille Sausage Jambalaya. We’re also going to have some classic American standards like cheeseburgers. There will be something for however adventurous or not adventurous someone wants to be. There is something on the menu for everybody.”

While Kay has already published the restaurant’s menu on Facebook, the cocktail menu hasn’t been released yet, though he’s as excited about it as anything else on the menu.

“We have put together a pretty exciting cocktail menu,” he excitedly said. “We have not released that to the public yet but we will be open with a full service bar with beer, wine and cocktails. I will tell you that we are using traditional 1920s Depression-era recipes (for cocktails).

“I’ve had plenty of people’s takes on an Old Fashioned but no one really is serving the real thing. Here, we’re going to do the real thing and, for a lot of people, I think it’s going to be the first time they’ve had a traditional Sazerac or Old Fashioned made with muddled sugar cubes in the bottom. We’re really excited for the cocktail menu.”

Kay, who has served as a chef for numerous restaurants said that he is thrilled to finally be opening his own restaurant.

“I’ve been in the culinary world for around 20 years, started when I was 15 just as a dishwasher and worked my way up to head chef by the time I was 23,” he recalled. “I’ve been a part of several restaurant openings and several head chef positions but this is my first sole proprietorship. It’s really exciting that for the first time it’s totally mine and that I can control the cost of the menu and the environment and to some extent, control people’s experiences throughout their dining process. We are thrilled about that.”

Bayou la Roux is located at 72 N. Court Square in Downtown Troy.