Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
Late Saturday afternoon, a friend came over to our home and said, "I have a mission for you." I didn’t know what kind of mission he meant — but I was in. He went on to explain that Ross Dellenger, formerly of this newspaper, now with Yahoo Sports, wrote a story titled "The sordid tale of LSU football, the Louisiana governor and a yearslong feud," chronicling the topsy-turvy madness of the last 10 days of LSU football, the state's governor and the remaining cast of characters that could rival any teledrama. Speaking about Scott Woodward, Dellenger wrote, "Like any good Louisiana politician, he’d prefer to keep things quiet, work in the shadows, possibly even operate in the backroom of a backroom in a certain Baton Rouge seafood house." Years ago, Dellenger wrote that he had been to the secret room, entering through a "trap door built into the wall of the eatery’s backroom, revealing beyond it a cove with a television, mini kitchen and — wouldn’t you know it — a card table." My mission was simple: find the back room. It was enough to make my heart sing. Consulting a variety of sources, within minutes, I had narrowed my options. I decided, "Why not go to the horse's mouth?" and messaged Dellenger, who confirmed my suspicions. It's Phil's Oyster Bar on Perkins Road. On Monday, I drove to Phil's, a Baton Rouge institution I had somehow never visited. I arrived 10 minutes before it opened and watched people approach, waiting for the magic hour of 11 a.m. — on a Monday morning, mind you. By the time I entered at 11:09, 23 people were seated in Phil's. I explained to the hostess why I was there. She took my business card and said, "Let me go talk to the manager." A few minutes later, she asked if I would like a table. I said, "Yes." Celeste Thomas, who has waitressed at Phil's for nine years, approached within nanoseconds. If Central Casting was searching for the ideal waitress, Thomas would be the pick. I sat with the menu, not sure what would happen next. A few minutes later, Anthony Piazza walked toward me, hand extended. I stood up and shook his hand. "Miss Jan," he said, "I'm the owner, and I don't want to talk about the back room." Well, I thought, so much for my mission. Piazza explained that his father, who passed away in 2007, had worked in Louisiana government for a while before he got into the restaurant business. Phil's closed after his father's death, but Piazza and his brother reopened it in 2016, at 4335 Perkins Road. He was tight-lipped about the secret room. "I want people to feel like they can come here and be themselves and not worry about what somebody might say or about what they hear back there," Piazza said. "So, it's just something that we try to keep in-house." I awkwardly invited Piazza to sit down at a table at his own restaurant. He did. We chatted. His grandmother's recipe of spaghetti and meatballs, he said, was his favorite menu item. He explained the 120-person capacity restaurant was open seven days a week, employing 70 people, about 30 being full-time employees. I confessed that it was my first visit to Phil's because oysters are rarely at the top of my list, but to my surprise, the menu has all sorts of things. "I think that's the biggest misconception about this restaurant because of the name," he said of the full menu. It was 11:15 a.m. on a Monday, and the place was two tables away from being at full capacity. He told me that Pam Beard, a waitress, has worked at the restaurant for 42 years. He explained that she's a big part of what makes the backroom special. "Honestly, she makes the backroom what it is. She has regulars back there every day," he said. "She knows what they want before they order it. So, they come for that treatment — that's also what makes that room really special." How does one get into the secret room, I wondered. I asked if there was a secret password to get in. "No," he said. "It's one of those things. If you know you belong, you belong. You just kind of walk back there and sit." He acknowledged the following: Technically, there are two backrooms — the original backroom and the one through the trapdoor. The room can be reserved for private events, but there’s still mystery behind it. He wants people who use it to be able to continue using it. The room operates on Vegas rules: "Whatever happens back there, stays back there." "Honestly, it's more of a boys club, I would say," Piazza said. In the evenings, the room can be reserved for private events and is used for overflow dining, especially on Friday nights or busy weekends. It's lunchtime when the real conversations happen. "It's a room where regular guys go multiple times a week," he said. "Some influential people and some regular Joes who mix and match and just talk about daily things and daily happenings and try to make decisions based on what they hear, I guess." I asked whose idea it was to add the trapdoor through a cinderblock wall. Piazza said he and his brother came up with that idea. Then, he said the magic words I had been waiting for: "Do you want to see it?" I left the meatball quesadilla I had ordered and followed Piazza through the original backroom, a secret door, down a hallway and into a dark room with a beautiful round table in the middle. Its walls were decorated with signed Kentucky Derby banners (signed by some of the room's original inhabitants).
