Grand Bayou Noir

Eight years ago, Judge Timothy Ellender and his wife Deborah decided to open their bed and breakfast, Grand Bayou Noir, after they returned from their Costa Rican honeymoon.

A Web site was created, and 10 reservations had been booked for the opening month.

Finally the big day arrived – Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001.

“Needless to say, the business was not doing good for a while,” Ellender said. “All the reservations were cancelled, and we said, ‘Oh Lord, it’s going to be bad.'”

But, slowly, people came to the majestic 6,500-square-foot Georgian style home on the banks of Big Bayou Black, from which the B&B derives its name.

Nestled on four acres and highlighted by 1,400-year-old live oak trees, Grand Bayou Noir has become a favorite not only as a resting spot for travelers, but as a place for weddings, corporate parties and family reunions.

“We make a herculean effort to please our guests,” Ellender said. “We own the tents, tables, chairs, linens. There’s an air-conditioned tented reception area. And we do all the decorations.”

The Ellenders have one other employee, Herbert Lee Matthews, who is responsible for landscaping, security and entertaining the guests. He has lived at the bed and breakfast for the past two years.

“Herbert and I do the yard, and my wife is the housekeeper and boss of everything,” Ellender said.

The home was built in 1936 by Ellender’s father, Dr. Willard Ellender, brother of the late U.S. Sen. Allen J. Ellender.

Tim Ellender, a state judge, and Deborah, a Realtor, had considered starting a bed and breakfast for years. They both enjoy meeting new people and thought it would be a good business opportunity since there were not many hotel rooms available in the area at the time.

After buying his father’s home from his siblings, Ellender converted the residence into a bed and breakfast.

“People say, ‘How can you have strangers inside your house?’ The fact of the business is bed and breakfast guests are a cut above your normal traveler,” Ellender explained. “Our demographics are mostly 45- to 65-year-old couples. We’ve been open all this time and never had one bad experience with the guests.”

Ellender estimates that 60 percent of his guests are people looking for a weekend getaway, and 40 percent are business travelers.

Since hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the number of business travelers at Grand Bayou Noir has doubled, Ellender said. So he has had to make some adjustments.

“At first, we didn’t have any televisions in the rooms,” he said. “But business travelers wanted TV, so we made that concession to the 21st century. We also have high-speed wireless Internet. It doesn’t work all the time because of the thickness of the walls.”

The occupancy rate is about 50 percent, and Ellender likes it that way since weddings have become an ever-growing part of Grand Bayou Noir’s business.

“We do 40 to 50 weddings a year; that’s one almost every weekend,” he said. “Sometimes we have one Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon. We like to book them at least six months in advance.”

Ellender prefers guests to make reservations a week or two in advance. Sometimes he has walk-ins, mostly foreigners. Grand Bayou Noir has hosted guests from all over the world.

“We’ve had people from England, Scotland, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Russia, Japan, Angola and Dulac,” the judge joked.

Ellender said the lure of the bed and breakfast is the prices, and the mood it wants to portray is that of “casual elegance.” The priciest B&B in the area, Grand Bayou Noir’s cost ranges from $120 to $160 a night, which includes a full breakfast.

If he’s not busy in court, Ellender loves cooking local cuisines for his guests.

“I’ll boil crabs and crawfish if I have time. It’s not part of the fee,” Ellender explained. “One morning, I’ll cook banana pancakes with macadamia nuts. The next morning, I’ll do beignets and fruit platters. I try to bring the local flavor into it – boudin, crawfish omelets. When guests check in, I have complimentary beer and wine and boil some shrimp for them served on banana leaf, or oysters if they’re in season.”

There are three guest accommodations – the Yellow Room, the Cream Room and the Honeymoon Suite – each with a private bathroom.

The honeymoon suite has handicap accessibility. It has a sitting room, mini-refrigerator and coffee maker. A private hot tub sits on the balcony.

The backyard features 35 varieties of bananas, 15 of citrus trees and 12 of ginger. It also has a sun porch where guests can gather or relax, a wet bar Ellender built out of bamboo, a 100-year-old barbecue pit guests can use and the dome under which he performs wedding ceremonies.

After getting off to a slow start, two events put Grand Bayou Noir on the map: being featured on the “Today” show and the 2005 hurricanes.

In July 2003, producers from the NBC morning program visited Houma. The bed and breakfast was one of three businesses the show spotlighted.

“They were doing a segment on weekend getaways from major cities. That’s how they came to us,” Ellender explained. “They interviewed me and Deborah, and they filmed the entire house.”

He added, “I remember Peter Greenberg (“Today” show travel editor) tried to lie down in the hammock to take a picture, and he fell over.”

During the days and months after Katrina flooded New Orleans, Grand Bayou Noir housed people involved in the rescue and recovery effort.

“The first five days after Katrina, we had helicopter rescue pilots staying here. They would fly to New Orleans and return. They told us some real wild stories,” Ellender said. “Then for the next four months, the Allstate Catastrophe Team was here. There’s an old saying that, ‘It’s an ill wind that blows no good.’ The hurricanes actually helped us – unfortunate for many other people. They kept us full.”

For Ellender, the most important thing about being a bed and breakfast owner is to figure out if the guests want to be left alone or wish to socialize because he doesn’t like to impose on them.

“We had one couple that was celebrating their 10th anniversary. They came here on a Thursday, didn’t come down for breakfast and didn’t leave the room,” he recalled. “They had Domino’s come deliver their food. They stayed up here Thursday until Sunday. I was getting worried. I thought he had killed her or something.”