Serving up that Southern Good Good since 2014
Southern Food in the UK gets a raw deal. It’s all big-mommas Mac ’n’ Cheese and Po’Boys on brioche buns. When returning back from living in the USA in 2013, founder Tom Zahir Browne set out to do something about it, and cook food for homesick Southerners, missing a taste of the real American South that he’d come to know and love. With a mission not to cook the same old tired staples - and to bring some of the hospitality that the South is famous for to hungry Londoners, Decatur was born - and boy has it been a ride since.
It's been a journey
In the 10 years since we started - there have been sell-out pop ups, award winning dishes, stolen vans, pandemic struck restaurants, countless sell-out parties, meal-kits that have fed 10's of thousands of you and so much more in between.
In late 2024, the era of our Meal Kits (started in the midst of a global pandemic) came to an end, after 4 glorious years of providing the only real Louisiana style seafood boils in the UK to dinner-tables across the UK.
We're still figuring out what's next, but rest assured - Decatur will ride again soon!
Who Dat?
If you're wondering who's behind Decatur - thats me (Tom Zahir Browne), looking daft in our Old Kitchen in Leyton, East London.
I first visited New Orleans after touring with Punk bands in the late 2000's. After moving to New York for an old job, my passion for Southern Cooking and hospitality was ignited by regular trips to visit friends in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge. At the same time, I began cooking in some of New York's best restaurants and began my career in the kitchen.
Upon moving back to the UK, I went searching for a taste of the American South that I loved, and failed to find anything that really captured the essence of Louisiana that I'd come to know, or restaurant that really shone the light that this incredible cuisine really deserved to have on it.
From starting out with a reverse engineered recipe for Cafe Du Monde style Beignets and the Chargrilled Oysters in clapped out East End warehouses, I started to pull the thread on a cuisine I've now been cooking for over 10 years here in London. From making our own Boudin, Seafood Boil Spices, Boiling Crawfish, releasing King Cakes annually or perfecting the a great bowl of Gumbo - Decatur has always been an attempt to show just how complex and delicious good Louisiana cooking can be, given the time, respect and care it deserves, even 5000 miles away, with a totally different pantry.
We've cooked everywhere from the American Embassy to Seafronts in Newcastle Upon Tyne and even been invited to judge Boudin competitions in Lafayette's Parc International. We're also proud to be a supplier to New Orleans and Co, Visit Louisiana, Travel South and Visit USA, here in the UK.
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