Acadiana Owner Dave Saylor called it “a natural fit” to operate out of the hotel in his hometown of La Coste. His neighbors have been asking for it.
SAN ANTONIO — Six months after the closure of Acadiana Café left a catfish plate-sized hole in the hearts of west-side diners, Owner Dave Saylor has cooked up a comeback just a short drive away.
Patrons who spent decades enjoying the Cajun and Southern-style cooking at the former Acadiana location off Southwest Loop 410 – including award-winning catfish, chicken and dumplings, and Cajun cabbage – can satisfy their taste buds once more at the La Coste City Hotel, which started serving up Saylor’s recipes this week to hungry stomachs ahead of its grand opening on April 1.
“This was a natural fit,” said Saylor, who lives in La Coste where neighbors have been “bugging” him about when they can get a bite of his food again. “(Acadiana has been) resurrected by popular demand.”
In mounting that return, Saylor agreed to surrender ownership of the Acadiana brand and recipes to La Coste City Hotel Owner Rodney Hitzfelder. Now Acadiana’s biggest food truck has a permanent spot on the property, where food will be served from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.
Hitzfelder knows something about resurrection himself: A retired San Antonio Fire Department veteran, he took over the property at 11280 Castro Ave. in 2020, giving new life to a hotel first built in 1912 before it went through several iterations and eventually closed its doors.
Demolition and reconstruction has been ongoing since October 2022 to bring the building into shape, a process Hitzfelder’s team shared updates on via Facebook. But it wasn’t always his intention to operate the hotel that would eventually reopen.
“I was afraid it was gonna be demolished and we were just gonna get another gas station or something,” he says. “I thought that I could buy the property, bring it into reasonable condition and somebody would lease it, buy it, rent it, something. But as time went on… I realized nobody’s gonna step forward and I’ve gotta start running some type of business out here.”
Cocktail bar service started April 2024, and food service launched in the fall to great success as Hitzfelder’s team started preparing the two-story hotel’s handful of rooms for its grand reintroduction in April.
The return of a staple
Acadiana Café served its last customers on August 29, having operated out of San Antonio since 1986. The building and property was sold to a restaurant group that planned to turn it into a Mexican buffet.
That group said it would retain some of Acadiana’s most popular recipes, but patrons who reflected on flavorful memories still lamented the closure at the time, saying “there is no catfish compatible to this.”
Now those patrons can get a bite of their favorite catfish once again.
Hitzfelder and Saylor had had a working relationship previously, with Saylor curating private events at the hotel before Acadiana closed in San Antonio. When discussions started to bring its beloved meals back to the menu – and give Acadiana’s former customers a new place to gather – Hitzfelder said Saylor gave him “an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“We’re just so happy to see their smiling faces, and have them tell us, ‘It’s just like when Dave had it,'” Hitzfelder said, adding his head cook worked at Acadiana and knows its recipes well. “We’re not gonna be as big, but we are trying to mimic and recreate a lot of the dishes they had there.”
The brand-new Acadiana Café space served its first La Coste City Hotel customers on Tuesday, and the response has been strong in its first week. It’s in a smaller space than Saylor previously operated out of – his current staff numbers fewer than a dozen compared to the workforce of 60 to 65 he employed at his former restaurant – but both he and Hitzfelder understand the legacy the Acadiana name carries.
If there was any doubt that legacy could translate to the hotel, it was extinguished at a soft opening one recent night where Saylor said they sold 90 steaks and about as many plates of catfish.
“It was madness,” he said. “It was excellent.”
If social media is any indication, that fervor should only continue. A sample of comments on the hotel’s Facebook posts touting Acadiana meal service:
“Best news I’ve heard today.”
“It was everything I hoped it would be.”
“I smell the onion rings from my house and they smell so good.”
“Acadiana is BACK guys!!!”
Loyal Acadiana patrons, Saylor notes, should make sure to follow the hotel on Facebook to know what specials will be served on which days.
“Acadiana’s Cajun food will always be part of the San Antonio landscape.”
