New Orleans people will cheer the arrival of a new restaurant and mourn the end of an old one like a lost friend. But then there’s the case of restaurants that make a big change mid course.
Sometimes the result can be to see them anew and that’s the case with two restaurants I’ve been re-visiting lately - GW Fins and Saint John.
Let’s start with GW Fins, a French Quarter fixture for more than 20 years. This is the epitome of the upscale seafood house, where the kitchen treats fish like a steakhouse does fine beef.
It’s modern, inventive and even innovative, and a pioneer of dry-aging for fish, which just like steak concentrates and intensifies the flavor often to startlingly good result. Seafood charcuterie is also in rotation. There’s always something new and different.
What hadn’t changed in a long time was the design, and the dining room felt a bit 90s , perhaps masking true identity of GW Fins.
That changed over the summer with a thorough renovation that left the dining room feeling more modern and more in sync with the culinary approach.
Saint John is a much newer restaurant, one that opened during the pandemic, but channels very old, even bedrock ideas about Creole flavor. It’s an upscale restaurant with dishes like beef daube, rabbit fricassee and smothered turkey necks.
It was originally in the French Quarter but last spring it shut down. The chef said he was just changing locations and St. John would be back, but when a restaurant shutters, you just never know.
But lo and behold in September Saint John did indeed reopen in downtown New Orleans on St. Charles Avenue with a big bar, an open kitchen and a balcony overlooking the streetcar line.
GW Fins and Saint John are very different restaurants, but in New Orleans, a city full of avid restaurant watchers, the next act at each place is more good news to talk about. With all the difficulties restaurants have been facing and the number we’ve seen close, it’s heartening to see these upping the ante for their own future.
