TEST Brothers and Boudin: Two teenage siblings open Cajun-inspired burger joint (copy)

Published 12:59 pm Friday, September 4, 2020

The kitchen in the white building is bustling. The restaurant itself is small — no indoor seating, just a counter you walk up to and ask for your food — with picnic tables and a drive-thru.

But the burgers that come out of the kitchen are stacked with the taste of the bayou: Boudin patties on cheeseburgers, sausages with barbecue sauce, thick-cut potato fries tossed in Cajun spices.

Step behind the counter and into the kitchen, and you’d meet the surprising chefs behind the Cajun-inspired food: 18-year-old Kameron Mitchell and his 15-year-old brother Brenden.

The Mitchells bought the restaurant, Morvant’s, on Aug. 11 after Kameron asked them to take it over from the previous owner, under whom he had worked.

Within three weeks, Kameron became business partners with his brother in their new food venture: Kamo’s Kajun Grill.

“Sometimes I feel like I have to help him cause he’s my brother, but then sometimes I just want to,” Brenden said. “Most of the time it’s cause I feel like I have to.”

“I gave you a pay raise, fool,” Kameron laughed back.

Brenden and Kameron have been cooking together their entire lives. Kameron got involved with it first, he said, with a single dream: to make his own Reese’s peanut butter cup.

He melted chocolate and peanut butter together and froze it to share with his mom.

“Then I just started making desserts with molds,” Kameron said. “I got good at baking and desserts like that. Then I started going into cooking.”

He started making anything and everything — fresh, homemade bread, salsa, pizza, eggplant parmesan. His grandmother’s husband was a chef in Florida and gave Kameron his recipe book — one of only two in the world.

Kameron said it wasn’t long before he was making those recipes into his own, and getting Brenden to help him in the kitchen as the “chef’s assistant.”

So it was natural that when Kameron started to work at Morvant’s, Brenden decided to work with him.

Kameron began working with the previous owner in April, getting his manager’s and food handling license so he could run the kitchen. When he and Brenden opened the restaurant on June 1, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to experiment with tastes and spices and techniques.

Cooking is a safe haven for Kameron — there is something about the process, he says, that makes it fun.

“You create whatever you want,” Kameron said. “You start from nothing, and you can create whatever you want.”

But cooking at home, Kameron and Brenden both soon found out, is different from running a restaurant.

“Rules and regulations are fun,” Kameron joked.

Kameron works 40 or more hours a week and calls the restaurant “farm-to-plate.” All produce, beef, and ranch dips are locally or hand-made by them. Still, there was still a lot of things he didn’t know how to do until he started working here, he said.

“We came in here not knowing what food industry was,” Kamo said. “I never knew how to make grilled onions. I just grill onions with oil and salt, and I put them on a burger and people come back.”

The brothers plan to stick with easy, fried foods. But, there are “secret items” on the menu, Kameron says: gator bites and a “fire” grilled chicken sandwich.

“When we’re here, it’s fun,” Kameron said. “We make it fun … we’re just screaming at each other, having fun. Sometimes we’re (actually) screaming at each other.”

Sometimes, they’ll even fight over who gets to take orders.

But, Brenden said, by the time they both get home, they’ve usually worked it out.

While Kameron mans the grill, making the patties from local Cut Beef meat and Morvant’s spice blend, Brenden became “Fryer Tuck,” mastering potato and sweet potato fries. He even came up with his own special way of making them — tossed, with a seasoning he made himself.

“Me and Robert can’t master his fries, there’s just a way that he does it,” Kameron said.

But, at 15, Brenden has more to think about than fries; his online school is starting soon, and he doesn’t know if he’ll try to work during the school year.

“That’s a big question, right now, ‘cause I need that answer,” Kameron laughed.

“I’m going to try to during the night, but I’m not sure about during lunchtime,” Brenden said.

Even Kameron is still trying to figure out the restaurant’s schedule. He graduated high school in April and doesn’t “want to go to college, period, right now.”

Kameron wants to take full advantage of it being a family restaurant and is thinking about modeling the schedule after a bank or school calendar, with holidays off.

“I want to just travel and vlog or whatever,” Kameron said. “Just have fun and experience things.”

Plus, Kameron admits, he doesn’t trust anyone but him and Brenden to make Kamo’s Kajun Grill taste as good as it does.

“I want to keep (the restaurant) in my life the whole time,” Kameron said.

The small restaurant sits next to an open grassy area, and he plans to expand in the future.

“I want to eventually have this area (to the side of the store) and have a giant patio with a pergola and I want to put lights on it,” Kameron said.

His mother, Misti, has been setting up small picnic tables and games like cornhole for people to play while waiting for their food. They’ll even invite bands like Second Childhood out to play piano duets every other week.

“I’m just really proud of them,” Misti said. “I think it’s really neat and really exciting and gives him a great opportunity to learn.”

The family wants to make Kamo’s into more of a “community-center” than a fast-food restaurant. Already, Kameron and Brenden have made new friends and relationships by just talking with their customers.

“We’ve had more random people that come up that we acquainted with,” Kameron said. “Some guys that just invite me to go to the shooting range and we get close with them. I know them by name, I know their order, I know their people. It’s just cool, close relationships that you’d rather have than going to McDonald’s and being like, ‘Give me that.’”

Misti also envisions a small prayer-request box where people can drop off requests.

Kameron also has a vision: a family-owned business for generations to come.

“I want that to be us one day, at least,” Kameron said. “To where my kids or whatever, the whole family’s working here.”

Even now, Kameron is working toward making a family legacy in the restaurant, asking his father, Robert Shockley to help out in the kitchen.

“We made it more of a family-cultured event, that’s why I don’t want to say it’s just ‘Kamo’s,’” Kameron said. “It’s the Mitchell establishment. We do it together.”

Kamo’s Kajun Grill is located at 6700 Old Jacksonville Highway, Suite 1700 in Tyler. Current hours are Tuesday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and on Saturdays 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. More information can be found by visiting kamoskajungrill.com or by calling (903) 258-4205.