In the weeks before the restaurant’s recent opening, the operators of Mojeaux’s presented some tantalizing social media images of entrees to come, and an equally tantalizing concept: Cajun plus soul food plus fine dining.

Clearly, this was a place worthy of investigation. And as it turned out, Mojeaux’s was not hard to find: Its location at 396 Azalea Road puts it at a prime spot less than half a mile south of Airport Boulevard. It’s a building that has housed several restaurants since being built for a fast-food chain, but it has undergone a painstaking redecoration that eliminates any sense of hand-me-down décor. It’s now a quiet and cool space with the feel of a jazzy, old-school New Orleans café. The atmosphere was further bolstered by the most attentive customer service this reporter has experienced in quite a while.

To the extent there was a problem, it was that the menu was so extensive there was no way a party of two could fully sample it. But a companion and I were game to give it a try, starting with the crawfish bread appetizer ($13).

It only took a single bite to convince me I’d come to the right place. Crawfish bread is a deceptively simple concept that can easily fall flat: If your chef thinks it’s as easy as throwing some cheese and crawfish on a piece of French bread, what you get will be exactly that underwhelming. This looked simple, to be sure: It wasn’t overly large and it did in fact look like nothing more than a piece of bread topped with crawfish, cheese, sauce and green onions. But it was mind-blowingly rich, practically a meal in itself.

It also impressed my fellow diner, a Louisiana native who described it as “a stunning bit of culinary architecture.” In between praising its “sinfully rich” cream sauce and its nice little piquant kick, he hinted broadly that all it needed was a glass of good red wine to round it out.

Despite some attempts to streamline things (more on that in a minute), the Mojeaux’s menu covers a lot of territory: from burgers and wraps to po’boys and other specialty sandwiches to pasta to chef’s specialties such as etouffee, shish kabob, lamb chops, ribeye and salmon. There’s fish and grits, shrimp & grits, red beans & rice, a seafood platter, and a slate of options “from the smoker” including ribs, pulled pork, rib tips and turkey legs jazzed up in ways you will not find at your local county fair.

Looking for something in the way of a signature dish, I went with the Mojeaux’s Mardi Gras Pasta ($24, including house salad and bread). If you think “shrimp, Conecuh sausage, crawfish, and mushroom sauteed in Cajun cream sauce, tossed with penne pasta” sounds a little rich, you need to brace yourself, because it’s a lot rich. And you can divide the price by two, since you’ll get at least that many meals out of it.

But it’s not just over-the-top rich. It’s genuinely hard to include Conecuh sausage in a dish and not have it overpower everything. Thanks to careful preparation, this joins the short list of dishes that manage the feat. You taste the sausage, but you also taste the shrimp, the crawfish, the mushrooms.

My companion ignored all the haute cuisine possibilities and went for the half-pound Mojeaux burger ($13, including fries). “Regardless of how many vowels are in your name,” he reasoned, “if you can make a good burger, you can make it in the restaurant business.”

Turns out they make a pretty mean burger at Mojeaux’s: The patty is cooked to give it a light, fantastic surface char for a jolt of flavor and it’s served on toasted French bread, which you don’t see every day. It worked so well that we’re inclined to try it at home.

As it turns out, my friend was lucky the burger was on the menu at all – but let’s start at the beginning. The very beginning.

Chef Chris Banks wasn’t born in Louisiana, but he had familial roots there and his mother moved back when he was very young, so he spent much of his childhood there. “My grandmother … I learned to cook a lot of stuff from her,” he said. “The first things I learned to cook was grits and making roux. Roux was a punishment.”

He learned that you stirred as long as it took. And if his mentor would reach for something to swat him with, whenever she caught him slacking off, that just drove the lesson home. “The grandmamas of the world are the real chefs,” he said. “Those are the ones who can teach you how to cook. There’s not a book or a school that can give you the knowledge they can.”

He came to Mobile in 2013 as a corporate chef for Hilton, overseeing the kitchen at the Admiral Semmes (now The Admiral) and a nearby Holiday Inn. He later served as executive chef at the Country Club of Mobile, did some more hotel work and helped make over Ollie’s Mediterranean restaurant in west Mobile after an ownership change.

But he was itching to do something of his own, and it all came together just as 396 Azalea Road, a building he’d had his eye on for several years, became available. He said he was egged on to go big by Travis Kidd, who became his partner in the venture. “I was going to do something a little different and smaller, but Travis was in my ear,” he said.

Part of the reason he likes the location is because of the vast swaths of residential territory around it: apartment complexes to the east, neighborhoods to the north, south and west covering a range of income brackets. Banks definitely wanted to do something upscale, but he also a menu with something for everyone: Accessible entry points such as burgers, wraps and pulled pork, higher-end items such as the New Zealand lamb chops ($30) and flame-grilled salmon ($26). He said the first draft of the menu was even bigger, before he whittled it down a little.

The partners took their time developing the concept and building it out. Banks credits Kidd with the stylish look and feel of the place, but he also has a hand in the menu. Most mornings it’s Kidd who comes in early and loads up the smoker. Perhaps more importantly, he’s the one who lobbied hard for turkey legs, overcoming Banks’ initial resistance.

The thing to understand is that these are not carnival-fare turkey legs plunked down on a plate. The leg dishes have names such as the Dirty Bird, the Mississippi, the Louisiana Monday and the Mac Daddy. They come smothered in and/or topped by sides such as Cajun cream sauce with seafood and sausage, red beans and rice, mac and cheese with barbecue sauce and bacon, and collard greens with pickled peppers and corn bread.

“The turkey legs are great but his sides are great,” said Kidd. “That’s what sets the turkey legs off and takes it to a whole new level.”

Banks is happy to admit that the turkey legs weren’t his idea, but they’ve been a hit anyway. “People went crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy over the turkey legs,” he said. “And I just added a few. I probably had 20, 25 different combinations I wanted to do.”

Speaking of sides: Banks is not on board with barbecue joints that put all their energy into the meats and settle for food-service sides.

“We do everything from scratch. The etouffee, alfredos, our Cajun cream sauces, our mac sauce, barbecue sauce,” said Banks. “It’s expensive. But we’d rather it be quality than just buying out of a bag like most people do.”

Another item made fresh daily: The excellent New Orleans praline bread pudding ($10). Demand for that is so high that keeping up has been a headache, Banks said. In the food business, that’s a good headache to have.

Banks said the menu is still undergoing some fine tuning. Some additions are coming. “People who know me, who’ve eaten with me before, they’re asking for my gumbo and this dish I do with fried green tomatoes and blackened crawfish,” he said. They’ve also been lobbying hard for oxtails, something he hasn’t regularly done since his Admiral Semmes days.

The menu is already big, so meeting those requests means making a stretch. But again, demand is a good problem to have. And it’s a sign that putting everything into this venture has been the right move.

“It’s a hope, it’s a prayer,” said Banks. “This place is really built on faith.”

Mojeaux’s is at 396 Azalea Road and is open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Saturday. For the menu and other information, visit dwww.eatmojeauxs.com.