For the last several days, chef Beth Rogers has been preparing a Thanksgiving meal — for more than 100 people.
Rogers works at J. Broussard’s with her mother, owner Mary Broussard, and for the last several years, Rogers said, the restaurant has opened on Thanksgiving for a handful of hours — long enough to give customers a holiday meal “New Orleans style.”
“Everything’s made from scratch,” Rogers said. “It’s really elaborate. We’re sourcing these great free range turkeys. It’s hard to even get those at the store here to cook yourself, much less get that (at a restaurant). I cook 25 turkeys on Thanksgiving.”
Additionally, there will be Cajun cornbread dressing, sweet potatoes with homemade marshmallows, potato rolls and cranberry sauce made from a 150-year-old recipe.
Rogers said J. Broussard’s has opened for at least the last seven years. It was never a particularly personal holiday for her family, she said, because her parents often worked.
“One day we turned around and realized, we had a lot of employees who … weren’t going to be celebrating the holiday (either), and we decided, ‘Hey, let’s stay here together. We’re going to open up and make our customers really happy,'” Rogers said.
“What’s really great now is we have a lot of older guests that maybe have small families and don’t want to cook a big fancy Thanksgiving for just three people,” she added. “A lot of the guests that come are small guests like that — groups of three or four that maybe don’t want to do an elaborate meal at home but they still want to have all of the bells and whistles, and this is a great way for them to do that.”
J. Broussard’s will open from only 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. and requires a reservation, but it’s far from the only restaurant in Columbus which will open for a few hours. Cracker Barrel on 18th Avenue North will serve customers at its usual hours from 6 a.m.-10 p.m. and Applebee’s Bar and Grill locations in both Starkville, on Highway 12 West, and Columbus, on Highway 45 North, will open for a handful of hours in the afternoon.
“Most of the time we get a lot of the military families that come in,” Columbus Applebee’s manager Jasmine Free said.
Free said the restaurant’s Thanksgiving crowd is a mixture of people who didn’t cook at home and early Black Friday shoppers.
She added Applebee’s will serve its regular menu.
That’s not the case with Cracker Barrel, which is already preparing a special Thanksgiving meal for customers to order.
General manager Undre Elmore said that meal includes turkey, ham, dressing, sweet potato casserole and pumpkin pie, as well as side items.
“We are preparing for a big, big day. Usually at Cracker Barrel, it’s one of the biggest days of the year,” Elmore said. “Last year, they were extremely busy here and this year we’re expecting to be even busier. This is company-wide because most people are going out for dinner or having it catered on Thanksgiving Day.”
Elmore has worked at various Cracker Barrel locations for the last 18 years, though this will be his first in Columbus. He said the atmosphere and the work makes him feel as though he’s giving back to customers.
“I think it’s a way of giving back,” he said. “…It’s a way for people that don’t have time to get out there and cook a full-course meal to just come in and just let somebody else do all the cooking and take care of the rest. For the last 18 years for me, it’s been that way and it gets busier and busier every year, but Cracker Barrel has always been the place of choice for the people that (were) not cooking the big meals at home.”
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