Mandeville Seafood's New Building on Highway 59 Still Runs on the Lake's Calendar

Mandeville Seafood spent this summer moving across LA 59 into a building at 2020 LA 59. The new place has twice the square footage of the old one and three times the parking. Very little else changed. The menu, the staff and the habits at the tables all came across the highway intact, and so did the thing that has always driven this business: what's coming off the water that week. The fall shrimp season has been open since August. The crawfish lines come back with Lent, and that's a long way off.

The Parking Lot Was the Problem

Jim Derry put it plainly in his NOLA.com report on the move. The only thing harder than finding someone on the west side of St. Tammany who hasn't had a shrimp po-boy from Mandeville Seafood, he wrote, was finding a parking spot in its gravel lot around lunchtime on a Friday.

That lot is gone now. According to the same report, the new market and restaurant grew from 6,000 to 12,000 square feet and from 40 parking spots to 120. The move took nearly three years of planning. The old building closed for a week at the end of July so the crew could carry everything across the street.

This is the third time the business has outgrown its home, and the earlier moves show that space has never been what drew people in. NOLA.com laid out the sequence:

1. 1996: The business opens as a take-out seafood market.
2. 2008: Becky and Jerry Caillouet buy it and add a small restaurant at the corner of LA 59 and LA 1088. It has 12 seats.
3. 2012: Demand pushes them a few blocks north into the former Petunia's Place, where the market expands and the restaurant triples in size.
4. Summer 2026: They cross LA 59 to 2020 LA 59 and double the square footage again.

Every step on that list followed crowds that had already shown up. "We only had 12 seats (in 2008), and we would just sell crawfish and fish and be a seafood market," Becky Caillouet told NOLA.com. That's the core of the place, and the bigger walls were built around it.

What Crossed the Street With It

The people came along too. NOLA.com reported that manager Will Hornberger has been with the Caillouets for their whole 18-year run. Seven employees have at least 10 years with the business, and four more are within a year of reaching that mark. AJ Cyprus, who has worked up front for five years, gave the move its most practical summary: "We outgrew the building, and for any business, that's a great problem to have."

The house rules carried over as well. As NOLA.com described them, the restaurant tells diners there's no Wifi and that they have to "talk to each other." Tables carry seasonal names, each one after a snowball flavor or a Mardi Gras parade.

The menu is still long. Po-boys run from soft-shell crab to hot sausage, along with shrimp and homemade roast beef with gravy. There are fried seafood platters, burgers and daily plate specials. Sides include fried okra, hush puppies, corn nuggets, coleslaw and meat pies. Jerry Caillouet told NOLA.com that the goal behind the new building is the same as it was behind the old one:

"We try to give value for your dollar. We want the little old lady on a fixed income to be able to come in and eat and not break the bank."

The Calendar the Building Can't Change

The kitchen got bigger, but the market's own menu still lists its boiled items as "Available when in season at market price." That list covers boiled shrimp, crawfish, Dungeness and snow crabs, and Louisiana blue crabs. The business says it buys from local fishermen and purveyors, and its menu lists wild-caught Gulf shrimp and catfish. Whatever a given week brings in, then, depends on the water.

Here's the seasonal background for this fall:

The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission set the 2026 fall shrimp openings on August 6. Its notice also allows the department's secretary to delay, advance, close or reopen areas based on biological data. That's why "in season" is a moving target and not a fixed date on the wall.

So the new building's first fall comes during shrimp season, and what goes on the boiled board on any given day is up to the market. The Visit The Northshore guide says crawfish is most reliable from January through June. NOLA.com reported that during Lent, the market's line for live and boiled crawfish often runs out the door. Those lines are the crowd the 120 spaces were built for.

Making the Fall Visit Count

A few practical details will help if you haven't been back since the move.

• Go to the new address. It's 2020 LA 59, directly across the highway from the old building. The business's own website still shows the former address, 1979 LA 59.
• Check the hours before you leave. The business website lists 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. The number is 985-624-8552.
• Ask what's boiling. Boiled seafood is priced at market rate and depends on the season, so a quick call before dinner will tell you what's on that day.
• Family dinners are take-out only. The menu marks them that way, which makes them a good fit for a weeknight.
• Ask about shrimp for the gumbo. NOLA.com described regulars buying shrimp at the market for their gumbo, and fall shrimp season is a natural time to ask.

The market's Events page lists two dates coming up after this post goes live. Halloween falls on Saturday, October 31, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. National Sandwich Day is Tuesday, November 3, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Call ahead to confirm either one. For a po-boy counter with a menu this long, Sandwich Day might be the better excuse to see the new dining room.

The extra parking won't really be tested until crawfish season. Until then, the new building is easier to visit than the old one ever was.

Knowing a place by its Friday lunch rush, or by the corner of LA 59 and LA 1088 where a 12-seat restaurant started, is the kind of local knowledge we bring to every conversation about the Northshore. If you're wondering what your own home near the Highway 59 corridor is worth this fall, Felicity Kahn & Associates is glad to help. Get your free home valuation.