There’s a Fat Tuesday special at The Bayou Kitchen & Lounge and man, is it ever aptly named.

We didn’t know it when we happened in for lunch that day, but it’s a pretty sweet deal at a pretty new restaurant (it opened back in May) that those of you with big appetites are gonna wanna note.

The card on the table noted as much — 2-4-1, it said — and my companion chose a stellar combo from the plates offered, pretty much all the superstars you’d expect in a joint run by native New Orleanians. But you could have knocked me over when the server showed up with exactly that: two completely full-sized servings of gumbo and Cajun fried rice. Two plates. As in two lunches. For her.

Later, owner/general manager Eddie Forbes walks me through the team’s process as customers continue to get acquainted with their straight-from-the-parish brand of eats, most of which come courtesy of executive chef Keland McWilliams.

“We wanted to have one day where people could come and really feel what we’re about and get it for a great price. Just enjoy yourself,” says Forbes. “So we have some of our best staples as two-for-one and we don’t cut back on the amount. You can mix and match and it’s a really great deal.”

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People, take note: It is. And the food is straight fire. It’s plated up pretty for your ‘gram, but the sauce of that gumbo, which has a little heat, I should warn you, is straight-up love in a shallow bowl.

It’s food from your Gram.

Well, McWilliams’ and partner/chief financial office Akil Yisrael’s Gram, anyway.

The love you’ll find here is arguably best in the bowl and on the plate, but it’s not just the stuff of Grandma Marion’s recipes, though that’s certainly part of what’s been bringing back the locals. It’s not even the stuff of Louisiana’s hallowed culinary “trinity.” It’s the trinity of partners and cousins McWilliams, and Yisrael, and their adopted family Eddie Forbes, the latter of whom gets a tad sentimental when talking about their journey.

“I don’t want to be corny, but it is a love story,” Forbes says.

It was a circuitous route that brought the three to Longwood. Forbes and McWilliams have been cooking on and off together for a decade, but if we go all the way back to the beginning, the journey started in a kitchen in New Orleans where a young Chef K (what most folks call McWilliams) was cooking with his grandma “when he should have been outside, playing,” Yisrael jokes.

The two spent virtually every weekend together as kids, except while Yisrael was playing ball, McWilliams was learning the rich and magical Creole secrets of grandma’s gumbo, red beans and rice, étouffée and more.

“Keland always wanted to be a chef,” says Yisrael, who has never cooked anything in his life, he jokes. “This was always his passion.”

Yisrael’s, however, was entrepreneurship, which brought him to accounting, a profession in which he’s since logged 20+ years of experience reviewing the financials of all manner of small businesses, many of them restaurants. It’s acumen that both his cousin and Forbes credit with The Bayou’s success out of the gate. While they were ready to jump at several opportunities, Yisrael kept a firm hand on the reins until the ideal situation presented itself.

“He was able to cool us down when we wanted to push the wrong buttons for the sake of moving forward,” Forbes notes, adding that the week they found the Longwood location, he and McWilliams had to sit on their hands. “But then we were here and developing a restaurant and since then it’s been all about the community.”

One that has far more Louisiana natives than any of them expected, folks who bring in beads and other collectibles from home for them to display, who pop in for a drink to see how they’ve been faring. It’s been like that since April, when the team opened for takeout only and folks were begging to stay even though the dining room wasn’t ready.

“There would be ladders all over and they’d be like, ‘We don’t mind…!'” Forbes recalls, laughing.

Come May, dinner was popping almost immediately. Lunch and happy-hour specials (on Fat Tuesdays, they have $3 beers and $10 hurricanes and swampwater cocktails with free floaters) are running above Yisrael’s projections, and the team is eager to grow even more.

And seriously, you cannot beat that Fat Tuesday deal. That’s lunch, and dinner to take home, and possibly breakfast if you get something that’ll scramble into your eggs the next day, just sayin’.

Seafood fans will find a home here. Take the Holy Trinity crab cakes app ($15): three fat cakes where the crisp gives way to tenderness that’s loaded with sweet, crabby flavor and meat that maintains its integrity due to Chef K’s gentle folding process. Charbroiled oysters, a New Orleans must-do for me, scratch the garlicky itch ($18, half dozen).

“Simple” entrees like salmon aren’t so simple atop Forbes’ Cajun fried rice and loaded up with NoLa street corn ($21), and classics like the Lake Pontchartrain Étouffée ($25) showcase blackened catfish smothered in sweet crawfish-laden gravy, but I’d go for the redfish option if you don’t mind the $11 upsell.

The jambalaya ($19) is a great heap studded with chicken, shrimp, crawfish, andouille sausage and tasso and speared with a towering rosemary sprig. Portions are colossal.

And another way of showing the community love, grandma-style.

“You know,” Yisrael jokes, “for years now, Chef K always talks about his grandma Marion’s recipes. He never acknowledges that they’re our grandma Marion’s recipe. She was my grandmother, too!”

It’s family in here. You feel it and you feel like it when you come in. Your server will probably recognize you the second time. Ours did. And excluding Labor Day, when Forbes failed to schedule enough people and he and Chef K ran the show from the weeds all day long, his job is kind of easy.

“Chef K is a master in the kitchen,” he says. “I’m in the front so confident that I’m not going to get any questions about the food … and it just makes it so easy to take care of guests. Akil has a plan he doesn’t let us deviate from. It all works, and puts us in a place where we can stay focused on making this something great for the community for a long time.”

They’re a Dream Team, he says. And definitely not a fad.

“We’re not going to burn out after the foodies come and go and don’t come in anymore,” he notes. “We are community first.”

It shows.

If you go

The Bayou Kitchen & Lounge: 165 Wekiva Springs Road in Longwood, 407-960-6020; facebook.com/thebayouorlando

Find me on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: [email protected], For more foodie fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.