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Where Y’Eat: The Upside When Beloved New Orleans Restaurants Change Hands

Red beans and rice at High Hat Cafe in New Orleans.
Ian McNulty
Red beans and rice at High Hat Cafe in New Orleans.

When a popular restaurant closes in New Orleans it can be big news. The same goes when word gets around that a well-known restaurant will continue, though with new owners.

We’re seeing that play out at widely different restaurants again and again lately. Each one may have landed as a surprise, but the overall arc of the stories is not surprising at all.

Take your pick of terms: Tumultuous. Vexing. Unprecedented. These are a few of the words you could use to describe the last few years for all of us, and that has registered with an especially sharp edge in the hospitality business.

It’s no wonder that people who may have been on the verge of retiring found their way to that decision earlier, or that others saw opportunities to sell perhaps that much more appealing.

Examples have proliferated of familiar names where new owners have stepped up. To wit: Station 6, a modern rendition of the New Orleans seafood house in Bucktown, which still packs the house. Gautreau’s, which doesn’t even have a sign outside and is so low-key it feels a bit like an Uptown private dining club, but which really functions as a repository of the finer points of fine dining. High Hat Café, on Freret Street, which brings a fresh edge to the idea of a New Orleans neighborhood joint. Fury’s Restaurant, a truly old school joint in Metairie. Congregation Coffee in Algiers Point, Meme’s Bar & Grille in Chalmette and even St. Roch Market, the food hall, are all in that number.

So is one of the city’s oldest restaurant’s, Pascal’s Manale, the Uptown Creole Italian institution, home to BBQ shrimp and a beloved stand-up oyster bar, now part of the Dickie Brennan restaurant group.

Restaurants, the best of them anyway, carry some of the character and personality of the people who created them and run them. Handing that over is a lot harder than handing over the keys. But these examples show it can be done. For us, the avid lovers of New Orleans restaurants, the upshot is valued places that continue to carry on, and maybe even a better appreciation for them. Cheers to that.

Ian covers food culture and dining in New Orleans through his weekly commentary series Where Y’Eat.