Popular Lake Charles bakery and cafe The Bekery has begun to expand its services with a series of exclusive dinner events.
The Bekery, at 2040 E Walnut St. in Lake Charles, launched its “Bekery at Night: A Dinner Series” this summer to add to the typical cafe and bakery hours and menu.
“Generally, when a restaurant goes outside of its comfort zone and does something, it’s difficult to get people on board,” Executive Chef Octavio Yoaza said.
The strategy got off to a strong start. On June 28, the cafe hosted its first event in “Bekery at Night: A Dinner Series.” The intimate Italian dinner featured a variety of Italian dishes on a preset menu by Yoaza and a performance by the Lake Charles Symphony first-chair violinist.
“It was as close as our little French restaurant can make it into like an Italian restaurant dinner,” Yoaza said. “We did it like family style, we tried to invoke Italian things.”
The eatery sold all 72 tickets in about 24 hours. “It’s crazy,” Yoaza said.
Owner Rebekah Hoffpauir said people who weren’t able to get a ticket were upset.
“People were calling last minute wanting a ticket,” Hoffpauir said. “They were excited for something new, something different. The people that came, they’re excited to be able to come to the next one.”
The Italian dinner was the first of nine international dinners for the series that The Bekery plans to host in the coming months.
Yoaza said each dinner will have a menu for patrons to take home, and the back of each one will feature one-ninth of a large painting he and an employee created.
“The idea is that if you come to all nine dinners, you can make the painting (with the menus),” Yoaza said. “And being really hopeful, there will be more than one person that collects them all. If that’s the case, then those people will enter into a drawing for the actual original piece.”
The restaurant plans to host a Spain and tapas themed event before the end of August.
While the first two events will end up being around two months apart, Yoaza said the plan is to start hosting the dinners together.
“My goal is to have there be a month or less between the second and third,” Yoaza said. “At the very least every month. If we can get to just being better at doing them, it’d be cool if we could do it every couple of weeks.”
Yoaza if the season of dinner series continues to go well, The Bekery will continue to offer dinner events.
“If we keep improving and doing our job, and the response continues, then this will just be the way that The Bekery operates,” Yoaza said.
Dining and Cooking