Bouchon team to open new Asheville restaurants

ASHEVILLE – A building that partially collapsed 15 months ago will soon be the site of two new businesses.

Michel Baudouin, owner of Bouchon on Lexington Avenue and the Creperie Bouchon in that restaurant’s courtyard, plans to open a third restaurant, Lafayette, as well as an 80-seat, full-service event and catering space, Rendezvous.

Lafayette, the Louisiana city and parish, is a center of Cajun culture. Accordingly, Lafayette, the restaurant, will serve classic Creole and Cajun dishes under Tres Hundertmark. Hundertmark is the new executive chef of the growing Bouchon family and former chef of The Lobster Trap, and just moved back to Asheville from New Orleans.

Together, Baudouin expects the new businesses, which could open as early as this year, to create up to 40 Living Wage-certified jobs, where before there was mostly rubble.

Baudouin was standing inside the building last year, which held storage and a small overflow dining room, when he started to hear it crumble. “It sounded like icicles, or nuts falling from a tree, and there was nothing like that at the time,” said Baudouin.

After the building collapsed, it cost Bouchon about 30 percent of its seating, as well as its storage, said Baudouin. “It was a serious interference with business because we had to move our storage into the Creperie for three months,” he said.

“Out of a bad situation, we’re going to turn it into a positive situation,” he said.

The group of restaurants and its central, shady patio, will form what Baudouin is calling the “Asheville French Quarter,” a place where diners can wander from restaurant to restaurant and gather in the courtyard.

“The space is perfect for it,” he said. The event space, Rendezvous, will have a balcony overlooking that courtyard, where Lafayette is likely to host crawfish boils when it opens, said Baudouin.

And, if all goes well with the state liquor board, Baudouin might be able to get an ABC license to cover all establishments, which means diners may be able to bring their drinks with them between businesses, just like in the original French Quarter in New Orleans.

Baudouin thinks the space has the right feeling to bear that name “with the courtyard and the old buildings, and Lexington is the oldest street in town,” he said.