Catahoula’s — Restaurant in Louisiana

My wife and I were in Monroe, LA shopping and decided to dine out for lunch at Catahoula’s on the Bayou.

I had seen the other reviews and they were mostly negative ratings with a couple positive ratings. Even so, I decided to try it for myself.

When we got there around 12:30pm on a Saturday, we found the parking lot filled and a line of people out of the entrance! I immediately thought this place must be great to have this many people wanting to eat here!

My wife suggested we do our shopping first then return for a late lunch. I agreed and we did just that.

We returned around 2:30pm and had to just a mostly filled parking lot with some open spaces. After about a 10 to 15 minute wait we were seated outside on the back patio area.

I ordered the appetizer sampler (pick three items from a list of six items) with Natchitoches meat pies, fried mushrooms, and fried pickles.

For my main entree I chose the Catahoula Burger. 1/3 pound patty, bacon, habanero jack cheese, jalapeños, chipotle ranch, tomato, and grilled onions. (I had them hold the bacon). With a side of fries.

The burger was delicious, but not very spicy (at least to me, but I routinely eat very spicy foods). The fries were awesome, not too much salt and they were crisp and crunchy!

The inside dining area was rather loud, but it’s a sports bar with tvs on the walls and it was a bit crowded too. The outside patio was almost as crowded, but without the tvs and no walls for the sounds to echo off of. Plus there was a nice breeze for our enjoyment along with a view of the bayou.

The staff was polite, professional, and pleasant. Our food was delivered after just a couple minutes and the server made sure our needs were met.

I am pleased to say we had a very enjoyable lunch at Catahoula’s...

Got seated quickly and that is where all of the positives end. After being seated my wife and I sat there for over 10 minutes waiting for someone to come and take our drink orders, which never happened, before getting up and walking out. However the table behind us that came in after us had their drinks immediately and appetizers ordered. During the time that we were there we witnessed all of the waitresses stand around at the front of the restaurant talking to each other, texting and playing on their phones, and answering personal phone calls. We even witnessed one waitress walk out of the kitchen only to turn around and immediately go back in and I assume hide after she got a "deer in the headlights look" on her face at the customers inside. Normally I would possibly overlook this if the place was busy, but this was 5:45 on a Monday afternoon and only about half of the restaurant was full at this point. I will not be recommending this place to anyone and will not be coming back. UPDATE: It has been less than 24 hours and I have already been blocked by the restaurant's Facebook page, and more than likely had my review deleted there, for leaving a review with my honest opinion and experience. I don't know about any of you that may be reading this, but I find that to be childish behavior from a restaurant and owner that cannot accept criticism. This place would rather hide any negativity about it than fix the problem at hand in order to keep restaurant goers from making an informed decision about the restaurant...

I will NEVER go bk !!!!!! Let me start out saying that our waitress was Clueless on how to take orders when u have several people therefore she missed one of our people and didn’t take her order at all and our lady had to go inside and ask her if she minded taking her order , then we were sitting outside and one of our people (we were sitting away form others ) and one of our people was smoking , ok I dnt smoke and I totally get people dnt like to be around smoking but the man I am guessing was the owner/manager was VERY RUDE when he came onl to the door and almost shouted YOU CANT SMOKE OUT HERE ITS AGAINST LA ST LAWS , instead of walking over to the table and taking to her like she was a human instead of a dog. Then when we got out tickets , it was a whole different issue ! The tickets were wrong , there was things put on the tickets that wasn’t even ordered , example , one of the hamburger meals , fried pickles , 2 sweet teas . When she received her ticket she was charged for a whole sampler plate. And then there is the tip ! Let me start here by saying , I am a firm believer in tipping and I tip well , but you are charged a 20% tip plus if u use your debit or credit card you are charged another 4%. This is totally ridiculous!! Especially when you dnt even have trained waitress! That’s a 1st and last for...