For Deidra Harvey, the recipe for a good restaurant is simple: Bring one part good service to a simmer, add in great flavors from Louisiana and southeast Texas, and garnish with some creative drink options and desserts. According to Harvey, that is Poppy’s Southern Recipes.

“Our biggest goal in owning the restaurant was to make it feel like family,” the Poppy’s co-owner said.

The restaurant opened Oct. 1 and has since expanded from five employees to 25.

Harvey and her husband, Mark, run the restaurant full-time along with her parents and Poppy’s co-owners Dan and Alice Gonzales. In fact, the restaurant’s name is an homage to Dan, who is called Poppy by his 13 grandchildren.

The owners are originally from Beaumont, Texas, and had vacationed in Austin for years before deciding to move to the area in 2014. The family missed the taste of home, and eventually the idea of opening Poppy’s came to fruition.

“We were looking for catfish baskets, shrimp baskets, po’boys, and we would always have to drive a distance to find those things when we moved, and we started missing that kind of food,” Harvey said.