People in Acadiana love restaurants. They love talking about them, reviewing them, arguing about them. They always seem to think they could run one. Hey, if you can cook, why not? 

Here’s the thing: Restaurants are famously unforgiving businesses. Margins are thin. Labor is hard to find and harder to keep. One bad weekend, one broken piece of equipment, one stretch of slow traffic — and suddenly you’re wondering why you ever thought this was a good idea.

And yet, people keep opening them.

Maybe that’s because a successful restaurant can be an institution, a fixture of community from generation to generation. Take Ton’s, the diner and plate-lunch place founded in 1963 by the grandparents of Christiaan's lunch guest, Hollie Girouard. 

Hollie grew up in the restaurant. Ton’s was her second home long before it was her responsibility. A volleyball scholarship brought her to UL, where she studied graphic design and imagined a future in the visual arts. But restaurant life always sucked her back in.  

In 2023, Hollie opened Ton’s Downtown in Downtown Lafayette. It’s got all the Ton’s staples people expect — gumbo, burgers, plate lunches — with a little bit of a Downtown twist. Belly up to the bar and you can grab fresh juice, vegan options, frozen coffee, cocktails, and late-night service on weekends.

Between the Broussard and downtown locations, Ton’s employs about thirty people. Hollie runs both, takes a long-term view of growth, and describes her downtown strategy as a “slow burn.”

Dillon Van Way is the founder of Uncle Bob’s Food Truck Roundup, a boutique food truck park in downtown Lafayette. 

A food truck park makes a lot of sense in Downtown Lafayette — a dense area with relatively high foot traffic and a reputation as a food destination. But Dillon will be the first tell you it’s not easy getting a no-brainer. 

Dillon is an architect by trade. And as you can by now guess, his name is not Uncle Bob. 

The food truck park grew out of a real estate project. Dillon redeveloped a building into apartments and found himself with a vacant adjacent lot. Rising construction costs and inflation made traditional development unattractive, so he tried something else: a carefully designed food truck park. Uncle Bob’s opened during Mardi Gras of 2025. 

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.