Johnny Cace's Seafood and Steak House

A Lufkin Daily News feature marking the restaurant's 60th year says it opened on March 10, 1949, in a downtown location at Green and Tyler streets, and that professional baseball teams on an exhibition circuit that included Longview were early customers. Early hours ran from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m., with breakfast served after midnight. The feature calls the food Creole rather than Cajun and credits Gerard Cace with the bread pudding recipe and, with his father, the etouffee recipe of the 1970s. It says many kitchen recipes came from the family's grandmother.

What the plaque says

Johnny Cace's Seafood and Steak House This east Texas landmark established by John "Johnny" Cace, Jr. has served the area since 1949. Johnny was the son of a Yugoslav immigrant who grew up on the island village of Prvic Luka and spent his childhood fishing and boating in the Adriatic Sea. John Cace, Sr. arrived in Buras, Louisiana in 1915 where there was a community of Yugoslav fishermen and oystermen. In 1916, Cace married into a family who owned oyster beds and fishing boats. John, Jr., or Johnny, was born in 1917 and learned the way of the sea and bayous at an early age. Johnny graduated second in his high school class and attended Louisiana State University for two years before moving with his parents to Shreveport in 1936. The family sold fresh seafood and oysters from their home and soon opened a restaurant. In 1939, Johnny married Valerie Savony and then joined the U.S. Air Force. Johnny and his family moved to Longview in 1949 and opened Johnny Cace's Seafood and Steak House. They lived above the restaurant which became noted for quality seafood, fresh shucked oysters and creole recipes. The original location was expanded three times before a New Orleans style building was erected in 1964 at this location. In 1966, Johnny was elected president of both the Texas Restaurant Association and the Longview Chamber of Commerce. Cace was named "Man of the Year" by the Longview Federated Clubs in 1992. He died in November 2000. Johnny Cace established a landmark family business that spans three generations and is known throughout the state, region and nation. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 12 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 21 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 21 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.

More markers nearby

• Site of Earpville — 0.4 mi
• John Tyson Smith — 0.9 mi
• Longview Junction — 1.0 mi
• The Grove — 1.1 mi