S Line News
The Lane Kiffin era begins
- The next RS6, still a wagon
- Cocha, then Farm Fête
- Omega Speedmaster 38
- Q3, Q5, Q7 — purchase and lease
- The lounge, the charger, the work
September in Baton Rouge is summer that refuses to read the calendar. The heat holds; the light gives back a few minutes a night. Here’s what’s news.
On the Road
Yellow labels, Austrian Alps
Next RS6 Avant · Austrian Alps · August 2026 · Carscoops / SH Proshots
On the Road
Yellow labels, Austrian Alps
The next RS6 went quiet after a prototype clipped a barrier at the Nürburgring in May. In August it turned up again — SH Proshots caught it running public roads in the Austrian Alps, wearing full camouflage and, more usefully, a set of yellow warning labels on the hood, the doors, the trunk.
Those labels are the whole scoop. In Europe they are a legal notice to first responders that a car is electrified. You cannot opt out of them. So this RS6 is a hybrid — that much is now fact.
What they do not tell you is what sits under the electrification. The current car runs a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8. The next one splits the rumor mill between a V6 hybrid and a V8 hybrid, with a figure near 740 horsepower circulating and nobody able to prove it. We are not picking a side until Audi does.
The body underneath reads clearly enough: fenders visibly wider, big flat 20-spoke wheels, vents cut in ahead of the rear doors. It looks longer and more planted than a car that was never subtle.
The reveal is Spring 2027. And after fifteen years of the RS6 arriving here as the Avant only, this generation brings a fastback sedan alongside the wagon — same platform, same stage.
Photos: SH Proshots. Carscoops, 12 August 2026
On Saturday
The Lane Kiffin era begins
Tiger Stadium · Baton Rouge
On Saturday
The Lane Kiffin era begins
Clemson comes to Tiger Stadium on Saturday, September 5, and the whole apparatus arrives with it — ESPN’s College GameDay set up on campus, ABC’s cameras, a top-fifteen ranking in both polls. Kickoff is 6:30 p.m. Central. It is also the first time Lane Kiffin will coach a snap for LSU. New man on the sideline, full house, a night game in early September: the building has held all of these before, just never quite in this arrangement.
The other opponent this week wore a robe. A Baton Rouge judge, William Jorden, granted a preliminary injunction barring the NCAA and the SEC from punishing a school for playing certain former NFL players named in a lawsuit — two of whom, Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, followed Kiffin over from Ole Miss. The conference answered by suing LSU itself in federal court: the school, its board, president Wade Rousse, athletic director Verge Ausberry, and the coach, over the intent to put those players on the field. The eligibility question is unsettled. The kickoff is not.
So the city gets a debut and a docket in the same weekend, which is a very Louisiana way to open a season. Come for the football; the rest will sort itself out in a courtroom that keeps its own hours. After Clemson, Louisiana Tech comes home the 12th, then Ole Miss in Oxford the 19th, and Texas A&M back in Tiger Stadium the 26th.
Photo: WClarke / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Reporting: ESPN, Dan Murphy, Mark Schlabach, 3 September 2026.
On the Table
The name is a term of endearment
Cocha · 445 N. 6th · Photos: Cocha
On the Table
The name is a term of endearment
Cocha has been open since 2016 and the name still gets asked about. It is what Enrique Pinerua calls Saskia Spanhoff. When you open a restaurant together and need to call it something, the private word becomes the sign out front.
Spanhoff is from Baton Rouge — LSU, second-generation Dutch, about twenty years spent on the coast before she came home. She is a certified sommelier with roughly twelve years in wine before the doors opened, and the list reads like it. It has a point of view, not a distributor’s spreadsheet.
Pinerua is Venezuelan; his mother’s family is Basque. That could be the entire pitch. Cocha has never taken the bait. Country Roads landed on “cuisine without borders,” which is more precise than it sounds. The kitchen cooks what interests it and treats those backgrounds as pantry, not costume.
Spanish octopus with chorizo Bilbao and a white-bean puree. Lamb loin with a blackberry Shiraz preparation. And cachapa, the Venezuelan corn cake, on the menu with no explanation and no apology. Chef de cuisine is Nathan McHand.
The room is at 445 N. Sixth Street downtown. Closed Tuesdays. In September the team cooks Farm Fête — the same hands at outdoor scale.
On the Town
Farm Fête, September 24
Farm Fête · Main Street Market · Photos: Cathy Smart / BREADA, 2025
On the Town
Farm Fête, September 24
For one night in September, BREADA — pronounced “bred-uh,” the Big River Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance — stops running a farmers market and throws a party. Farm Fête is the annual fundraiser: chefs, farm food, cocktails, two stages, dancing. Thursday, September 24, at Main Street Market, six to nine. Dressy casual. Early tickets are $95 and climb to $125 as the night nears.
The market it funds opened in November 1996 in the parking lot of the Government building on St. Louis Street, out of a master’s thesis by Chris Campany under LSU landscape architecture professor Suzanne Turner. BREADA incorporated as a nonprofit the same year. Today it links farmers across fourteen South Louisiana parishes to the people who eat what they grow.
This year Cocha is in the kitchen — Pinerua and Spanhoff’s team working farm ingredients from the region their restaurant already draws from, at a scale dinner service never asks of them. Jason Carter is at Manship the same night. The city has options.
September
LASM · Reflections: The Art of George Rodrigue
- Sun 6 · First Free Sunday Reflections: The Art of George Rodrigue at LASM. Opened August 15, through January 24, 2027. No admission that Sunday. Exhibition
- Tue 8 · Band of Heathens Manship, 7:30. From $72.24. Texas roots-rock that has been running at this for twenty years. Show
- Sun 13 · Concert Kitchen Live Chef Kevin Belton and John Papa Gros, Manship, 2 p.m. From $35. Show
- Wed 16 · BoDeans Manship, 7:30. The catalog, midweek. Show
- Sun 20 · The Wild Pour BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo, 2:30–5:30. 21+. Wine and cocktails on zoo grounds. Tickets
On the Wrist
Speedmaster 38, reconsidered
Omega Speedmaster 38 mm · ref. 324.30.38.50.01.002 · Hodinkee / Omega
On the Wrist
Speedmaster 38, reconsidered
Omega has a new generation of the Speedmaster 38 mm, and the change that matters is easy to miss in a first glance: the subdials are round now. For years the 38 wore ovals — the thing that set it apart from the 42 mm Moonwatch, and, for some buyers, the thing that kept them away. Round subdials close that gap. From across a table this now reads as a smaller Moonwatch rather than a different idea.
The one to know is reference 324.30.38.50.01.002: black dial, no date, $6,500. Applied Omega logo at twelve, dot-over-ninety tachymeter bezel, the clean version.
The case is 38 mm across and 44.96 mm lug to lug, so it sits close and low on a smaller wrist. But it is 14.75 mm thick — not thin, and worth saying out loud before you fall for the diameter.
Inside is Caliber 3332, the no-date Master Chronometer automatic: 52-hour reserve, 100 meters of water resistance. The five-link bracelet has a comfort-release micro-adjust at the clasp that lets you gain a few millimeters without pulling a link.
On the Lot
The Q3, Redrawn
Q3 · Country Club of Louisiana · Audi Baton Rouge
On the Lot
The Q3, Redrawn
Third generation now, and the first real redesign since 2019 shows up everywhere but the badge. It is longer and wider, so the back seat and the cargo hold finally earn their keep, and the cabin has been rebuilt around the person driving instead of around an old idea of what a screen should be. A bigger car that still parks like a small one.
Audi Baton Rouge has the all-new one on the ground, $2,500 off. Worth saying plainly: this store used to sell the Q3 at price and hold there. Not this month.
Purchase
$2,500 off
Lease
$598/mo
$3,000 due · 36 mo / 10k
Q5 · all-new generation · Audi Baton Rouge
The Q5 Starts Over
Clean sheet. New platform, new face, a cabin drawn from the floor up — the kind of full generational reset a nameplate this central to Audi only gets every several years. Audi Baton Rouge has them now, up to $5,100 off the purchase.
Purchase
Up to $5,100 off
Lease
$699/mo
$3,500 due · 36 mo / 10k
Q7 · three-row · Audi Baton Rouge
The Q7
The Q7 is the three-row. Twenty-one in stock. The money is here if you have been waiting on a full-size Audi.
Purchase
Over $11,000 off
Lease
$795/mo
$3,000 due · 36 mo / 10k
On the Workbench
The lounge, then the work
Service lounge · cafe · covered drive · Audi Baton Rouge
On the Workbench
The lounge, then the work
You don’t wait in a plastic chair under fluorescent tubes. The service lounge at Audi Baton Rouge is a real room — seats, screens, coffee — while factory-trained technicians do the actual job in the bays. Covered drive, so you aren’t standing in the rain handing over keys.
3-in-1 charger · complimentary with every service visit
Every service visit, while supplies last: a 3-in-1 magnetic wireless charger with the store on it. No extra form. You come in. It goes home.
Oil and filter, $199. Ten percent off recommended service. $100 off a regular alignment. ACC alignment and recalibration at $699 if the cruise system needs to be set true after glass or front-end work.
S Line News · Issue 01 · September 2026
Audi Baton Rouge · 11955 Airline Highway, Baton Rouge, LA 70817