“A coon ass boy trying to make a living,” he laughs. “You can’t get that kind of food over here. We did a lot of research and asked what is Orange Beach missing. A good Cajun place.”
He’s put together a regular slate of daily lunch specials and they have proved popular. Mondays are for red beans and rice with corn maque choux and homemade cornbread and Tuesdays are jambalaya with smothered cabbage and a roll. On Wednesdays Sonnier brings out the chef’s special for the week and Thursdays bring smoked fried chicken wings served with mashed potatoes and a roll. Bon Temps rounds out the week with crawfish etouffee on Fridays served again with the corn maque choux and homemade cornbread.
Some of the chef’s specials have included chicken sauce piquant with green beans, meatball stew with smothered cabbage, cornbread and a boiled egg, hamburger steak with mashed potatoes and black-eyed peas.
“We sell more lunch specials than anything,” Sonnier said.
A recent Wedensday the chef’s special was gumbo made with the ribeye roux in one of the big black pots he keeps in the kitchen.
“It makes everything better,” he said. “I cook all my stuff in the black pots back there. Gotta have a black pot. Use for anything. Fried eggs, cook a sauce. Whatever.”
His own lunch that Wednesday was a bowl of gumbo and he added a boiled egg and potato salad to the bowl.
“If you’re a real Cajun you put your potato salad in your gumbo,” he said. “Like my grandmother used to say, don’t mess up another plate.”
Sonnier has at least two regular nightly specials – 50-cent chicken wings on Mondays and a ribeye special with a stuffed potato and salad for $19.99 on Thursdays – but he is hoping to add a special for every night.
The regular menu includes a variety of traditional poboys, specialty burgers and even a variety of specialty hotdogs. Potatoes are sliced fresh daily and fried to order. And what Cajun place would be complete without a muffuletta? You can get a half one or go all out with a whole one.
One of the poboys, the Beach Bum, has crawfish boiled ham with debris style roast beef with swiss cheese, lettuce, au jus gravy on a Gambino’s New Orleans style French bread. All poboys sit atop the famous Cresent City bread.
“I cook roast beef usually once a week in that big ol’ black pot slap full to the top for our roast beef poboy,” Sonnier said. “Cook it from scratch, cut it, marinate it, make a brown gravy out of it and put that in the black pot.”
For football games or anytime a crowd gathers Bon Temps offers boudin or chicken wing platters. Bon Temps is also available for catering and when crawfish are in season expect the pots to be boiling.
From the specialty meat side, Sonnier offers a variety of Cajun goodness you can bring home to cook for yourself.
“In our freezer case you can find seasoned and stuffed chickens, chicken breasts, pork chops, bell peppers; boudin, fresh and smoked sausage, andouille and Tasso,” Sonnier said.
