Owner follows scent of Sweet Olive to fruition

Just as every piece of antique furniture that is sold at Sweet Olive Antiques and Café has a tale, owner Colette Boudreaux has a story of how she acquired her cozy, quaint café.

Sweet Olive Antiques and Café, at the corner of W. Main Street and Enterprise Drive, is a converted two-story Cajun home. Boudreaux and her husband Kurt bought the business in April 2005 from previous owner Michelle Trosclair.

“We own the rights to the business, but we lease the building from Alex Osthiemer,” she said.

The real story lies in the name of the building. Native to Asia, the sweet olive tree is an evergreen shrub that can grow up to almost 40 feet tall.

Its flowers, grown throughout the summer, are small and white and have a strong fragrance. The tree is cultivated as an ornamental plant in gardens around the world for its deliciously fragrant flowers, which carry the scent of ripe peaches or apricots.

For Boudreaux, the scent of sweet olive trees has always been her favorite. She remembers visiting her mother’s workplace, Rex’s Tailor Shop on Barrow Street, as a child, and the sweet smell that always surrounded it.

“Years later, I asked my mom what the smell was, and she told me it was sweet olive trees,” Boudreaux said.

She was so enchanted by the fragrance that she had to plant sweet olive trees around her home.

When the café came up for sale, she said it was coincidental that it was called the Sweet Olive – Osthiemer’s father owned Rex’s Tailor shop where her mother used to work.

“I felt like God had a plan,” she said.

From that moment, Boudreaux began serving up home-cooked meals five days a week and enjoying the enchanting smell from the sweet olive trees outside of the café.

On the other side, the antique furniture pieces that are for sale and for show fill the dining rooms and put patrons in a homey atmosphere while they enjoy the daily lunch specials and variety of freshly-made sandwiches.

Boudreaux describes her menu as “Cajun home-cooked meals” and says she kept many of the same items that were offered at the café previously.

“If you are from down here, this is the stuff you grew up with,” she said. “Gumbos, stews, carrots and ground meat, pot roast, hamburger steak and sticky chicken.”

To keep things interesting, Boudreaux offers a different lunch special each day, and the menu works on a five-week rotation. That means you could eat at the Sweet Olive each day for several weeks and not have to eat the same meal twice.

That doesn’t include the sandwich specials offered daily. The selection also includes soup or salad. But on Thursday, Boudreaux serves up her special Monte Cristo sandwich.

Dessert is also offered every day, but on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Boudreaux offers some of her specialties like her famous carrot cakes, Almond Joy cakes, bread pudding and Mississippi mud pies.

Since purchasing the business, Boudreaux has made some changes to the 64-year-old home. Her husband Kurt spends the weekends upgrading the building, adding modern amenities while keeping the antique charm of the historic home.

Kurt’s latest project is the wooden deck around most of the building, which allows Boudreaux to offer outside dining.

“Any kind of work you see done on the building, inside or outside, he has done,” Boudreaux brags about her husband. “He loves to build. He always says, ‘Just call me the maintenance man.'”

At Sweet Olive Antiques and Café, patrons can purchase antique furniture pieces and fill their bellies with some home-cooked food. Owner Colette Boudreaux said it felt like God had a plan for her when she bought the café four years ago. * Photo by KEYON K. JEFF