by John Andrew Prime

Lilah’s Deli & Bakery, which in the space of just a few years gained iconic status on Olive Street as a font of Mardi Gras King Cakes, has returned to its Highland neighborhood roots. Its new address is 1718 Centenary Boulevard, just north of Olive Street.

Just two weeks ago, owners Sopan “TK” Tike and Lisa Pliler Tike put the finishing touches on a former bank branch, insurance company and doctor’s office, completing a seven-month move from their intermediate location in the Louisiana Boardwalk.

Lilah’s – named after the Tike’s oldest child Lila, now 10, opened in 2006 but had to close in late 2011 after an electrical fire forced repairs that wound up taking five months, right through their key and profit-making King Cake season.

“We lost a lot of our business and couldn’t recover after that,” said Lisa Tike, a native Shreveporter who married TK in 2002. “At the same time we had opened our Boardwalk location about six months before the fire, so we decided to concentrate on that location.”

About a year later the couple added a catering truck to their operation, something they still operate, but they noticed they weren’t getting their Shreveport customers to come across Red River to patronize their Bossier City site.

“We found out most of our customers are local and they don’t go to the Boardwalk,” Lisa Tike said. “At the Boardwalk, it’s mostly tourist traffic and they are looking for the major franchises. So when our lease there was up, we started looking for a location to purchase. We didn’t own our Olive Street location and of course didn’t own our Boardwalk spot.”

They remembered putting $70,000-$80,000 into work on the Olive Street site – about three blocks west and just south of their new location at Wichita Street and Centenary Boulevard – that now is home to a vegan eatery.

“We wanted to find somnething where when we do all the work and put the kitchen in and make investment in, the investment is ours,” Lisa Tike said.

Head chef Sopan Tike, a graduate of the prestigious Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition in Mumbai, India, has almost 24 years in the food industry. He worked three years and gained his initial pastry skills working at the five-star Taj Mahal Palace and Towers in Mumbai, and worked almost four years as a chef for Carnival Cruise Lines, working on the Carnival Destiny, Carnival Celebraion and Carnival Fantasy.

“I had a good time,” TK said.

He left Carnival in Miami, Florida, and worked in several places before coming to Shreveport in 1997 to work at a jewelry store owned by a friend. That store closed in 2000 and two years later TK and Lisa married. Not too much later, his bride asked a question he said was fateful and provocative.

“My wife said ‘Say, didn’t you say you wanted to open a bakery?’” he recalled. “So we opened the bakery.”

At first it was called Lila’s, but a bakery with the name sued the Tikes and they added the final H. Lisa Tike said that’s just fine, since the great-grandmother they named their daughter after actually did spell her name that way, they learned late.

The Tikes, who just returned from a three-week visit to India, are gearing up for the coming King Cake season and Mardi Gras. They’re are starting to gather the yeast, flour, sugars, creams and plastic babies needed.

“I’m expecting to bake and sell at least 12,000 King Cakes this year,” TK said, pointing to several large pouches that soon will gain company. “There are almost 5,000 babies in there.”

They even have an employee, baker Bruce Bletz.

“I absolutely love what I do,” Bletz said. “I just enjoy seeing the thing I make come out that other people enjoy. They tell you it was good, and that’s great.”

Read more: https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/entertainment/2014/12/24/lilahs-returns-highland-roots/20733923/