The main dining room at 1304 W. Pinhook Road looks the way people remember it: stained wood, tall decorative windows and the double-sided fireplace. The old kitchen is now a showroom with dressing rooms, and racks of evening wear fill the rest of the building. Park Lane, a formalwear boutique owned by Kerci McRae-Champagne, opened inside the former Café Vermilionville on October 1, according to Developing Lafayette.
Four Lafayette addresses that most longtime diners know well are changing hands this fall. How quickly each one comes back follows the building. The mid-size neighborhood rooms are going straight to new restaurant owners within weeks. The two biggest names in the group sat dark for years. One came back as a dress shop, and the other is waiting on a renovation that will take most of a year.
| Address | Last restaurant | Went dark | What's next | Status as of late October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 505 W. Pont des Mouton Rd. | The Original Patti | August 2026 | Thibodeaux's | Tentatively opening Tuesday, Oct. 27 |
| 5451 Johnston St. | Blu Basil | By September 2026 | Sen Viet Kitchen & Bar | Targeted for October 2026 |
| 1304 W. Pinhook Rd. | Café Vermilionville | June 2023 | Park Lane formalwear | Opened Oct. 1, 2026 |
| 3151 Johnston St. | Drago's | February 2024 | Umiya Sushi | Renovation expected to take 8 to 10 months |
Pont des Mouton got a new tenant within weeks
The Original Patti closed abruptly in August. One Saturday it posted that a broken hood vent system had shut down the kitchen. The next day it said the closure was permanent. KPEL reported the Sunday post, which told customers who had "become family" that the restaurant was "shutting our doors effective immediately."
The building sits in Couret Farms and has a long restaurant history. Romacelli held it for years. In 2021 the new owners of the Johnston Street Ground Pat'i renamed their restaurant The Original Patti and opened a second location here. The Ground Pat'i name goes back to 1971 and a spot on Johnston Street near the UL Lafayette campus. 337 Magazine notes that the Johnston Street Original Patti closed in June 2024, and that the Ground Pat'i name came back to that original 1971 building in 2025 under new ownership.
On October 2, about two months after the closure, Developing Lafayette reported who was moving in. Thibodeaux's is a locally owned Cajun restaurant from Barry Burrows, who is from Carencro, and Brandy Thibodeaux Burrows, who is from Church Point. The name has a long local food history. Brandy's father, Troy Thibodeaux, managed the meat market at the Winn-Dixie on Moss Street, then opened Thibodeaux's Specialty Meats in the early 1990s. That shop became known for its plate lunches. Her grandfather, Rodney Thibodeaux, ran the Winn-Dixie in Breaux Bridge.
The planned menu includes seafood, steaks, oysters, étouffée, gumbo, burgers, po'boys and boiled crawfish and shrimp. A large bar will anchor the room, with live music and bingo planned. Developing Lafayette first reported a tentative October 19 opening. The latest tentative date in 337 Magazine's story is Tuesday, Oct. 27. The restaurant plans to close on Mondays and post its menus, hours and music schedule on its social pages once it opens.
Equipment failure is what closed The Original Patti. Even so, the room found a new restaurant tenant faster than anything else on this list. A neighborhood room of this size with a dining crowd already in place looks like a better deal to the next restaurant owner than a kitchen repair looked to the last one.
On Johnston Street, Blu Basil's room stays a restaurant
The same pattern holds at 5451 Johnston Street. Blu Basil held its grand opening in February 2015, as the Daily Advertiser reported at the time, and ran for about a decade. By September 21, Developing Lafayette was calling the 4,500-square-foot space "now-former." The next restaurant was already lined up.
That restaurant is Sen Viet Kitchen & Bar, a locally owned Vietnamese restaurant from operators who have lived in Acadiana since 2008 and already run other businesses in the area. The plans call for a refresh with lotus-inspired artwork and a kitchen renovation, not a teardown. The proposed menu leans into Cajun-Asian cooking:
- Phở in several styles, including shaking beef, seafood, vegetarian tofu and Cajun crawfish
- Bánh xèo tacos and bánh mì bites with crawfish, grilled pork or grilled chicken
- Korean gochujang wings, bulgogi beef fries and BBQ beef short ribs
- Cajun crawfish fried rice
The owners told Developing Lafayette that a few Blu Basil staples may also show up on the new menu. The tentative opening is October 2026, so it's worth checking whether the doors are open before you plan a dinner there.
The landmarks run on a much slower clock
Café Vermilionville had been a fixture on Pinhook since 1981. In June 2023, owners Ken and Andrea Veron announced its final service. KLFY carried their farewell post:
"It's been a good run, Lafayette – we love you."
That was more than three years before anyone opened the doors to customers again. The building dates to at least 1835 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the years it has served as an inn, as a headquarters and infirmary for Union soldiers, as a family home, a nursery, an antique store, a hair salon and a bar called Judge Roy Bean's. The Advocate reported that the 6,500-square-foot building on 1.57 acres was listed at $1.5 million and later sold for $1.1 million to C-Side Destin Properties. The same article noted that the property could still operate as a sit-down restaurant, with its large seating area and back courtyard.
It came back as retail instead. Park Lane was founded in 2013. McRae-Champagne bought the business in January 2023 and grew it from appointment-only styling into a full retail store, and that growth is why it needed more room. All renovations followed the historic preservation process. So far the only change to the exterior is an ADA-accessible ramp. McRae-Champagne told Developing Lafayette that she plans to preserve the dining room too. A room that hosted more than four decades of dinners now sits inside a store built around special-occasion styling.
The former Drago's at 3151 Johnston Street, on the corner of Doucet Road, has been empty since the seafood restaurant closed in February 2024. A permit filed with Lafayette Consolidated Government under the name UMIYALA LLC points to the next tenant, Umiya Sushi. Umiya is a family-run Japanese chain founded in Texas, with locations in Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee and a few other states. It's all-you-can-eat, but guests order from a menu at their table rather than walking a buffet line. Menus at its other locations include sushi and sashimi, specialty rolls, poke bowls, hibachi-style proteins, tempura and noodles.
So the two best-known buildings in this group took the longest, with Café Vermilionville leaving the restaurant business and the Drago's building heading to an out-of-state chain. That building had already been empty for more than two and a half years when Developing Lafayette reported on October 20 that renovations alone were expected to take 8 to 10 months, with no opening date announced.
Sylvia started in building and development years before she started selling homes. When we look at a property, its size, its layout and what it could become next count as much as its history. If you're weighing a building with a past or a home with a strong personality, Sylvia McLain and Cody Musgrove would be glad to walk through it with you. Let's Connect.
