Craft Hot Dog Restaurant to Open in Historic Downtown Shreveport Building

Cade Horn and Brady Crenshaw, friends since middle school, became business partners in 2013 when they established food truck. Last year they decided to embark on a new journey by opening up a brickand-mortar restaurant in downtown Shreveport. Horn says the restaurant at 504 Texas St. will open to the public within the next month.

“The goal when we first did the food truck was to take our concept and start out as cheap as we could doing the mobile unit with the goal that, if it was successful, then we would open up the brick-and-mortar,” Horn said.

The Missing Link has made a name for itself in those five years serving up craft hot dogs with a variety of different toppings. Their menu includes a “Cajun Dog” made with pork and alligator sausage topped with sautéed onions, bell peppers and a remoulade sauce. Horn says the restaurant’s menu will feature their same signature hot dogs along with salads, Philly cheesesteaks, and vegetarian and vegan options as well. He believes their downtown location will help them build a larger customer base.

“We have our loyal people that have followed where our food truck is on Facebook, and with this new location we are anticipating to add more loyal customers like downtown workers. We’ve built a crowd with the residents here as well. We imagine our lunch crowd will be a lot of the people that are working downtown.”

For the interior design of the building, it was important for Horn and Crenshaw to incorporate the history of the building with their own personal design tastes.

“We didn’t want to go with the fullblown steampunk theme, so we took elements of steampunk, mainly the industrial look, and mixed those with the history of the building. All the photos we got from LSUS Library. We pulled photos of our building and Texas Street all the way from 1910. We are able to tell a story of the original downtown through the photos on the wall.”

Horn is excited to show customers what all their hard work has led up to. He loves getting to work with his longtime friend and business partner.

“We just love working together. We enjoy creating a community and interacting with our customers. When they leave here, I want them to experience wonderful food in a wonderful environment.”

– Jessica Carr