David Franklin stands at the bar of C’est Bon Kitchen & Libations mixing drinks and interacting with customers. His restaurant, located on Tulsa’s North Peoria Avenue, is one of only a handful of sit-down eateries in the northern part of the city.
“Enjoy the rest of your birthday,” the chef and owner yells to a group of diners headed out the door. Another customer approaches, asking if he could get the rest of his daiquiri to go. Franklin kindly declines.
The menu lists items like Back O’ Town gator, deep-fried boudin balls, Who Dat egg rolls, smothered chicken and shrimp stew.
Creole-style cooking is prevalent in his native New Orleans, while Cajun-inspired cooking is common across other parts of Louisiana. The French influence shows up in the name of Franklin’s restaurant— C’est Bon translates to “it’s good.”
Haitian, Gullah and Vietnamese influences can be found in both styles of cooking, he told The Eagle. In his kitchen, he blends them with the same ease he blends spices.
Take C’est Bon’s Highway 23. The dish features fried or blackened catfish sitting atop a bed of dirty rice, both of which are Cajun-inspired. But the rich crawfish sauce poured over top is “straight up Creole,” he explained.
In the months since opening — the restaurant will mark a year in late July — Franklin has worked to bring forth the culinary traditions passed down to him decades ago.
Early childhood roots
Franklin’s introduction to cooking came as he was growing up with family in New Orleans and Belle Chasse, Louisiana. He remembers being 8 or 9 years old, watching relatives prepare dishes like traditional red beans or red gravy with smoked sausage over noodles.
“Lil’ Dave,” as his family affectionately called him, started off like a new line cook: prepping the vegetables and herbs that would become the base for many dishes his family made. His job was dicing fresh onions, celery and bell peppers. This blend is sometimes referred to as the “holy trinity” of Louisiana cooking.
“I remember growing up chopping seasonings. There was never onion powder or garlic powder used for a meal. Whatever the fresh essence was from that particular seasoning came out in the food,” he said.
“As I started perfecting little recipes, I (would) just cook and all of us were over there by Auntie Marva’s having Sunday dinner that ‘Lil Dave’ prepared,” the chef recalled. “I started feeling it and I grew from there. I didn’t go to culinary school. This was solely learning and gleaning from my family on how to put a meal together.”
Beyond teaching him how to cook, Franklin credits three women in particular for shaping him into the man he is today: his mother Katricia, grandmother Helen and aunt Marva Trufant.
He describes his mother as “a God-fearing woman” who modeled for him the “hustle and grind” that was necessary to make it in life.
“My mom put in all the hard work to produce this young man. I was the only child that came after her three miscarriages. So you can imagine the kind of mother she was,” Franklin said.
He describes Trufant as a “firecracker” who protested injustice in Plaquemines Parish and taught him never to settle.
And his grandmother, Helen Franklin, was the quiet family matriarch who never met a stranger and “expressed love through her cooking.” A photo of her, accompanied by her now-framed wooden chopping board, is mounted on the wall in the dining area of C’est Bon. The board is worn with deep grooves from years of use.
‘Stepped out on faith’
While still in high school, Franklin got a job at a seafood restaurant where he apprenticed under two cooks, learning techniques like sautéing, making pastas and navigating the professional side of a kitchen.
Still, he didn’t think life in the kitchen could be a viable career path.
“A long time ago if it wasn’t a doctor, lawyer or something driving money, you were not really getting pushed to do it,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Cooking, that’s not a career. I don’t want anybody to know me as a freaking cook.’”
He pivoted into accounting instead and found success. He was managing a payday loan company in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.
“Everybody was uprooted,” Franklin remembered. He was one of the thousands of people who left Louisiana for Texas in the days before and after the storm.
As he climbed the corporate ladder in finance and accounting, he moonlighted as a caterer.
He closed the door on his corporate career in 2021 and finally “stepped out on faith,” opening his first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Denison, a small Texas city bordering Oklahoma.
Though the restaurant was successful, Franklin said issues with a previous business partner led him to part ways.
Bringing ‘Louisiana flair’ to Tulsa
That’s when he set sights on Oklahoma. Eventually, he visited both Tulsa and Oklahoma City, checking out restaurants advertised as “Creole, Cajun food, soul food – anything related to Black culture.”
He decided Tulsa was a growing city and saw an opportunity to bring his style to the north side, where options for sit-down eateries remain scarce.
At C’est Bon’s grand opening last summer, he celebrated in a way true to his Louisiana roots: a brass band and second line. “I wanted to be that trendsetter and come in as the new kid on the block to pop my collar,” he said.
For Tarell Earl, a New Orleans native who has lived in Tulsa for the past three decades, C’est Bon is one of the few places in the city that represents an authentic taste of home.
“He brought that Louisiana flavor, flair — everything — with him,” Earl told The Eagle. “I’ve seen other Louisiana restaurants here but it’s more commercialized. My man (Franklin) is more authentic. He’s like, ‘We coming out of grandma’s house with this here.’”
Franklin’s desire to provide a taste of home could extend beyond the four walls of his restaurant. He has plans to launch cooking classes in Tulsa, a new iteration of courses he used to host in Texas.
“I’ll have some little wine, some little cocktails or whatever, and then we’ll be talking about what we’re making, and as I’m cooking and talking, they’re taking notes to build their own recipe,” he said.
Ultimately, Franklin believes centering his cultural heritage is the secret to his success.
“It makes you into the person that you are,” he said. “It’s all a part of your legacy. And if you don’t share that or sustain it where you can pass it down to other individuals, then it’s just lost.”
