Saved by casserole clientele

Renowned for lunch, Cafe Lapin’s takeout menu keeps restaurant afloat.

For 17 years, Mattie Hines has comforted Atlanta with his luscious chicken salad and famous mandarin orange souffle. Some of his Cafe Lapin customers marvel that his classic French quiches have the flakiest, butteriest crust in town. Others find it impossible to leave without submitting to at least one temptation from the showstopping pastry table: Grand Marnier-soaked pound cake with high-gloss chocolate ganache; strawberry cake with cream-cheese frosting; caramel and coconut layer cake; blueberry pie; ultrathin chocolate-chip cookies.

When the coronavirus pandemic set in, the phones started ringing at Cafe Lapin, tucked in the corner of Peachtree Battle Shopping Center. Regulars wanted to know if they could get a pan of chicken tetrazzini, a French toast breakfast casserole, or Hines’ latest concoction: French Onion and Beef With Egg Noodles Casserole.

“People would call and say, ‘What do you have for dinner tonight?’” Hines said in a phone interview. “And we would tell them, and they would come in and pick it up.” To earn extra cash, his servers would sometimes deliver the food.

While many Atlanta restaurants created family-style takeout menus after the COVID-19 outbreak caused them to suspend service, Cafe Lapin has been sending out weekly casserole menus for years. (As I searched my inbox for Cafe Lapin, I found one from 2010.) Hines credits his casserole clientele with helping the restaurant weather recent financial challenges.

“Our customers have been extremely generous and kind,” he said. “People didn’t want to see us close down.”

Hines did not plan a career in food. “I’ve never been to culinary school and previously had never worked in a restaurant, so I am selftaught,” he said. An arthistory major with a flair for baking, he signed on to run the lunch counter at the Interiors Market on Bennett Street in 2003 and later was recruited by the Portman family to operate the Cafe at ADAC. In 2009, Hines and his husband, retired stockbroker James Mosher, inked the lease on Cafe Lapin.

The restaurant’s topdrawer chicken salad has made it a popular lunchtime destination. There’s walnut, tarragon, curry with almonds, apricot (made with apricot preserves and grapes) and jalapeno. You may enjoy it on sampler plates, tucked into sandwiches, or paired with soup or sides (beets and oranges; carrot salad; fresh corn salad with cucumber; tomato and mozzarella, Caesar, etc.). Walnut is the bestseller. I’m crazy about the tarragon.

The restaurant, which serves breakfast and lunch daily and dinner TuesdaysSaturdays, reinstated table service April 28. So far, business has been slow. Some patrons gravitate to the sidewalk patio. Others “come in to pick up a to-go order for dinner and have a glass of wine real quick while they are waiting,” Hines chuckles.

As owners of a classic mom-and-pop, Hines and Mosher treat their staff like family. Thanks to a Payroll Protection Program loan, they’ve been able to bring all 15 employees back. “However, it was not a tremendous amount of money,” Hines said, and now that it’s been used up, the restaurant will have to sustain itself.

“That’s very difficult to juggle,” he said, almost sighing at the thought of all the chicken salad yet to make.

CONTRIBUTED BY WENDELL BROCK This salad sampler from Cafe Lapin in Buckhead has walnut chicken salad, capered egg and tuna.