Story By Bill Coyne • Photos By Chris Brennan
From the moment we’re blessed with our first breath, our life becomes a journey. We can’t know the path we want to take or the path we’re destined to follow. Sometimes a little intervention paves the way, making it abundantly clear.
Nicholas Perioux is a friend of mine, and he’s been challenged with more than his share of trials. I was elated when I was asked to do an interview about his journey with God and the influences that’ve shaped his path.
With a firm handshake and a hug, Nick and I greet each other at the front doors at Pat’s of Henderson, just as we have many times before. He briskly leads me through the restaurant and up the stairs to his office, the clanking of dishes and pots and pans heard below. I can’t help but notice he’s a little thinner than normal, but seems just as active as ever.
We settle into a couple of comfortable chairs around a coffee table, making small talk, catching up on family, talking guy stuff, our voices echoing throughout the large cavernous space. Nick and I are food and restaurant guys. He’s the food business guy. I’m the food writer guy. But that’s not why we’re here today.
It was just a day prior that he wrote in a Facebook post, “It has been 21 years today since I was shot in the abdomen,” and there’s so much to tell before that moment in time and now. When I asked him to take me through that night, he gave me an emotionless blank stare, his mind in a virtual rewind.
The Beginning
Nick was a typical teenage boy in every sense. Going to school, growing up around the family restaurant business and making a couple of dollars busing tables on the weekends. It was a fun and challenging time for Nick, living under the scrutiny and public eye with parents who owned a popular restaurant. He balanced that with the fun of being an 18 year-old boy. “I didn’t really have a plan,” Nick says. “I knew college wasn’t it. I had common sense, but I was also ignorant to an extent. It wasn’t until a family friend, Elaine Gradney, came to me. She said, ‘God told me you need to go to school for business.’”
While some listless teens would’ve blown off such advice, he convinced his mom that he should take business classes part time at McNeese. “I had school, but I was bored. I had everything else on my mind. I had just started a new seasoning company and was getting my product into various stores around the area from Texas and across Louisiana and still working here at my parent’s restaurant.”
Back in 2004, on Nick’s 26th birthday, his brother got beat up while hanging out with friends at the Lake Charles sea wall. “I thought ‘if that could happen to him, it can happen to anybody.’ So, I went and bought a Glock 40 for my protection, and I learned how to shoot it.” Throughout
his training, he was advised, if you ever pull this out, be prepared to use it. If you pull it out and you don’t, they’ll kill you.
The Shooting
A short four months later, it’s a late Monday night, and Nick is preparing to study for finals. He and his buddy had just locked the doors of the restaurant and were visiting on the front porch when two men, guns in hand, appeared from behind the porch columns demanding money. The men hesitated, which allowed Nick enough time to put distance between them and present his weapon.
One of the gunman held his friend hostage in a headlock, shielding himself from the Glock aimed at him. “Time slows down. Your mind processes every single detail. They want money; we don’t have any. It’s locked up in the safe and I don’t have the combination. We’re in a situation now. I know we might die, but we’re going to die trying. Now, I can’t risk shooting at the guy who has my friend, so I fire at the open guy, he runs off, and that’s when I get shot in the stomach and it knocks me to the ground.”
Splayed out, Nick returns fire as the assailant releases his friend and runs, the Glock’s magazine spent. “In the middle of a gunfight, I knew Jesus was with me. My friend picks me up. I’m bleeding, the bullet had torn through my body, and a scripture comes to mind. Psalms 34:7 ‘The angel of the Lord encampeth around all those who fear Him, and delivers them.’ Through all of this, I have never felt such peace.”
A mad dash to Memorial Hospital and hours of surgery later, he will lose four inches of his liver, but he and his friend’s lives are spared. “The first guy
ran off; he was never caught. The second one, I did hit him and by the grace of God he’s still alive, and not for lack of effort; I tried to kill him before he killed us.” The second assailant was eventually identified and captured through scalp DNA in a hat he left behind.
Through the painful recovery process, he recalls the day before the shooting. Teaching a Sunday School lesson about Elijah, calling on fire from heaven to save him. “Call upon that miracle when you need it,” he says. “Don’t live life looking for a reason to call fire from heaven every day. Enjoy life, have a relationship with God, be fruitful, be blessed, but if you fall on hard times, He’s going to be there, but don’t go looking for those hard times. Don’t go thinking you’re super spiritual and start wearing it out. When you truly need a miracle, God’s going to be there for you.
“At 18, I started walking with the Lord. But there’s a part of me that thought, ‘I’m phony. I’m telling everybody I’m a Christian, it’s all show.’ I didn’t understand my place until all of this came down. I’m being prepped to go in the emergency room on the bed, my mom and dad at my side. I said to them, ‘I feel sorry for that guy’s mom. He’s going away for a long time and she’s not going to share life with him.’ It was then that I forgave him. That’s when I knew how much I grew in God.”
At graduation, Nick received an entrepreneurial award for his business model, which he credits to God and Elaine Gradney’s advice. Shortly after graduation, Nick expands into his own construction company, finding himself intrigued in real estate. Opportunity presents itself through friendships and a passion to learn the ins and outs in Donald Trump’s real estate seminars and the popular television show The Apprentice. However, funding would become the roadblock. Nick begins in prayer, asking God to help find a way to finance his first project. A couple weeks later, a regular at the restaurant engages into a deep conversation with him, and, miraculously, by the end of the day, his first two projects are funded. Two homes are built and sold with profitable success, paving his solid future in the real estate market.
The Restaurant
What he didn’t see coming was the restaurant. His father, Rick Perioux, pulls him aside. They’re looking to retire and are selling Pat’s of Henderson. Their Cajun cuisine heritage is a family legacy dating back to his grandparent’s hard work and reputation built on the banks of the Atchafalaya Basin at Pats Fisherman’s Wharf in Henderson, La. Rick brought only one option forward for selling. Nick would have to work the deal himself. Rick was not going to owner finance. He wasn’t going to cosign. He’d only sell the restaurant at full market value – whatever it appraised for. “I had income through
my construction and real estate companies, but I didn’t have that kind of money to buy the restaurant,” he says.
Creative packaging and character solidified a loan for the acquisition of Pat’s of Henderson. And, in 2018, the restaurant is now his. It’s his to bring new ideas to. It’s his to succeed with. It’s his to fail at. Failure doesn’t define a man. Matthew 7:1 reads, “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged.”
Nick begins a modest renovation — updated bathrooms, a foyer that flows along with a revamped bar and a fresh exterior facelift. In May, 2022 after nearly two years of demolition, dust and COVID-19 setbacks, Pat’s of Henderson is ready to reopen to the public, just as the state of Louisiana relaxes its occupancy mandates. The public is overwhelmingly pleased to have Pat’s back, and business is booming.
The day winds down, and Nick find himself alone in the dining room. With a moment to pray in silence, he says, “God, you told me to go to business school. I did that. I’m a third generation owner of this business, there’s so much about it that I don’t know. God, show me how would you run this business.
“And, this is exactly how God works,” he says. “When you pray for something, that guidance usually comes to you in the manner of a storm. That storm? Hurricane Laura. Between COVID-19 and Hurricane Laura, everything was stripped down to the core. I needed a reset, and I needed to start sourcing restaurant equipment, chairs, tables, everything. My wife, Amanda and I went to Houston to shop and to eat at Taste of Texas.”
It was during this dining visit that Nick asked the server if he could tour the kitchen. Considering he’d have to rebuild his entire restaurant, Nick thought it was a good opportunity to get ideas. The server then went to the back and returned with Taste of Texas owner Nina Hendee who walked out with her husband Edd and greeted the Perioux’s. Upon realizing Nick’s family connection to Pat’s Water-front Restaurant in Henderson, Nina explained to Nick they were huge fans of the original Pat’s restaurant owned by Nick’s grandparents in Henderson. Nina then introduced Nick to famed kitchen consultant Tom Cook out of Houston and advised Nick to hire him immediately, and Nick later met Johnny Carrabba. Soon thereafter, Cook’s management team got involved to advise and support Nick’s re-building of Pat’s of Henderson every step of the way.
By the time Pat’s was ready to open once again, Nick was undeniably deep in debt, and there were loans to repay. “As a businessman,” he says, “I really wanted to get the debt paid down, and was prepared to resume opening on Sundays. But, I said ‘God, I know you’re with me, but I’m not going to open on Sundays.’ I want to honor God. It’s a day of rest. That day off allows employees to go to church if they wish, it allows them time off. That debt will eventually be repaid, but I will remain closed on Sundays.”
Pat’s of Henderson closed on Sundays, even though Sunday revenue is crucial for many restaurants. Then something happened: The restaurant’s revenue throughout the rest of the week doubled, and the debt incurred was quickly paid down. “God is good,” says Nick.
Through the stresses of rebuilding a business, trying to maintain a sense of normalcy in life and raising a family, God has a way of saying you’re not ready for more, not at this thing. After the birth of their first son Owen in 2019, Amanda unfortunately suffered a miscarriage of their second child in the early weeks of pregnancy in late 2020, right after the devastation of the hurricanes. After a year of prayer, healing and time, the couple welcomed their second son Alex in 2021. Their third son, Isaac, was born in 2024.
The Diagnosis
God only puts his strongest soldiers through the toughest battles. “I want to tell you before everybody else finds out,” he says to me one day over the phone. “I have cancer.”
Typing these words now hurts just as much as the day I first heard them. When we hung up, I stopped and said a prayer for my friend and his family. My wife watched me break. Cancer sucks! It is unforgiving, uncaring and everyone knows someone affected by it. From prognosis to treatment plans, it’s a path of uncertainty. It’s confusing. Nick takes emotional pauses as he describes the discovery. It came by accident after an innocuous procedure and medicine complications that followed.
A scan was recommended, and a tumor was detected. “I’m at home in my kitchen. I walk into my living room and there’s my doctor and his wife. He’s in tears. I said ‘What’s up, Doc?’ He replies, ‘I need you to sit down.’ He said, ‘This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. You have a tumor on your pancreas.’”
Nick took the news and looked at the doctor before saying, “Doc, I’m gonna be all right. God’s got his hand on my life.”
He called his pastor, explained what was going on, and said he needed to go home to tell his parents. Nick asked if he could please meet him there as he broke the news.
In the following days came a barrage of biopsies, tests, poking and prodding and multiple trips to MD Anderson in Houston. “I knew then, and I know now, that God has significant purpose for my life.”
Multiple trips, three biopsies, several MRI scans and a printout that showed two large tumors. One on the pancreas, one on the stomach. He took that printout down to the church. No one was there. It was just Nick and God. He walked to the front, and placed the scan on the pulpit.
“There are a lot of scriptures in the Bible about God and healing, but one stands out. Psalms 55:22 says ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.’ I placed that picture of the cancer on the pulpit and I said ‘God, that’s not my problem. It’s your problem, according to your Word.’”
Nick didn’t worry. He prayed. “I went into MD Anderson, and it felt like a spiritual nuclear bomb went off. My mindset was about healing. I’m going to
et healed, and I’m going to affect everybody else around me.”
After testing at MD Anderson, he gets dressed and tells the nurse he’s going to work. She opposes. “I am an ambassador of Christ, and there’s an entire lobby of people with uncertainty and doubt going through the exact same thing I am. There are non-believers filled with negativity, and there are people who want to blame God, and I pray for them. Yet, I’ve had life experiences that are undeniable. It is so easy for me to believe. Fifty percent of
the battle is in your mind. The other half is faith, but you have to get in Christ. God has given every man a measure of faith.”
The thoroughness in all the traveling and testing, the blood draws and scans helped reveal a different cancer than originally diagnosed. With a treatment regimen for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the optimism and prayer backed by an aggressive treatment regimen, brings exciting news for Nick and his family. The cancer is in full remission through immunotherapy. He’s still going through a couple of remaining treatments, although not as frequent, and recovery time is needed for his body to fully heal.
Praise be to God.
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