“We’ve been open now three months. I purchased this building in ‘07, and didn’t have a plan what I was going to do with it then. Found out my youngest daughter (Javonda) can cook, ‘Let’s try and open a little restaurant and see what it’ll do.’ In the ‘80s, I had a po-boy shop. Captain Charles’ Po-Boys, it was on Washington and Robertson, right by the Magnolia Projects, and then I had a sno-ball stand between all that, in the ‘80s, ‘90s.

Somehow I wound back up with another restaurant. Somebody kept saying, ‘You know, Javonda is cooking’ and I said, ‘Javonda is cooking? Na-huh.’ During the Super Bowl week, when the Saints was in the playoffs, I said, ‘Let’s try some jambalaya’ so she cooked a jambalaya and I enjoyed it. Everybody enjoyed the jambalaya. After that, I was convinced. We have folks who come here and want to order her gumbo. She does a hell of a gumbo, and sometimes folks come in and ask just for the juice.

What do I cook? I can do a po-boy. I can grill steaks. Thursdays we do steaks, so I’m grilling steaks on the deck out there; I grill steaks for lunch every Thursday for 12 o’clock. I’m pretty good. Rare, medium, get a little red in it. I’m pretty good at getting oatmeal together too. That’s my favorite dish. By me being in the clubs all night and eating a bunch of junk, either I’m eating chicken or grits or pancakes, and it’s not good for you, it’s too fatty, so when I get home I put some fiber in me. Every night when I go home, I put some water on the stove, put my oatmeal, let the oatmeal cook. No salt. Real creamy. It’s a big bowl and I eat it all. I put butter, cream and sugar on it. Sometimes, I cut up some bananas, but I’m not a raisin person. The only way I can eat raisins is the Raisinets with the chocolate. Only way.

Also, I get my toast. I dip my [buttered] toast in the oatmeal. I eat my toast and then I eat the oatmeal. Cream, like canned cream, PET milk, the evaporated milk, I put that in my bowl, stir that in with the sugar until it’s sweet and juicy. It has to be juicy so I can dip my toast. I allow the butter to melt on top. I tear my toast up and dip it, eat it. Never no leftovers. I make just enough. Ask me how, I couldn’t tell you. Luck! But I’ve been eating oatmeal my whole life; my grandmother introduced me to it and I love it. I might have been three. Coming back in those days and being poor, not having food stamps, if you didn’t have nothing else to eat, you’d either eat the oatmeal or the rice and eggs, and that was your meal. Oatmeal, I was raised up on that and I have never gotten away from it. It’s something I love doing.

Here, in the morning, folks come in and ask for rice and eggs. Call it a poor man’s special. Have you ever tried rice and eggs? Good meal. If you want them scrambled, scramble your eggs. If you want fried, fry. Cook your rice, add a little salt and pepper, and mix it up. Like all the Chinese people do it, we’ve been doing that for years. That was like our meal. We fed five people off of that. Some people put hot sauce, but I don’t eat a lot of hot. Folks come in here and ask for eggs and rice because not a lot of people sell it.

My vision was, when I decided to do a cafe, make it simple. But people kind of dictate what they want. So we have to give people what they want. ‘I want to be able to come in and order some red beans and rice.’ Or they’ll come in and order some white beans, smothered chicken, or some macaroni and cheese. I did not have that vision of doing a lunch special every day, but we wound up doing that. Steaks on Thursday, seafood on Friday. I wanted to focus more on a cafe; nachos and wi-fi. But when folks started coming, we had to cater to the crowd. I wanted to do more health foods—salads, grilled stuff, baked chicken, but folks rather fried chicken than baked chicken. Tomorrow they’ll complain about their weight but today, ‘Hey, give me some of that fried chicken!’

We do more better with specials. People like what they like. They love it and they don’t try to change it.

My grandma was the cook in the family. She did all the cooking. You got home from school and she used to cook chitlins. I could never eat it. Back in those days, you bought them and you had to clean them yourself. When I got home, the whole house was stinking, it was terrible. Everybody in my house would eat them, I was the only one who didn’t. I still don’t eat them. I’m a basic person. I like red beans, smothered chops, smothered chicken, candied yams, green peas, creamed corn or whole corn.

I grew up in the Magnolia. I moved out of the Magnolia and my mother moved us to Zion City, right on the other side of this canal, behind the storage place. We used to play football right here by Coca Cola, right here was a toy center, swimming pools. And here on the neutral ground, back in the ‘70s there used to be a police talent show, and the inmates used to be the band, and people in the community would come out and perform. There’s a lot of history in this area. I have a lot of real estate here. This place used to be a gas station.

It gets on my nerves if I don’t have any PET milk when I come home. There was only one Walgreens that’s open 24 hours, on St. Charles—the one on Carrollton just opened—and I get home late at night and then run and get my can of PET milk. If I come home at four in the morning and have no milk or no sugar, we have a problem; I have to go get some. So I walk right out the house and get right back in the car at three in the morning. Go get that milk, or get that sugar. Sometime the butter too. For whatever reason, I guess it’s a mind thing, oatmeal just don’t taste right without that butter.”

DJ Captain Charles’ Oatmeal

His favorite meal.

1/2 cup instant oatmeal
1 cup water
4 tablespoons evaporated milk
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 tablespoon butter
buttered toast

Cook oatmeal in a pot, according to directions on box. Do not add salt. Pour oatmeal into a bowl. Stir in milk and sugar until creamy. Let butter melt on top. Dip toast and eat.