Courtesy of BRG Hospitality.
Dishes at Feliciana, Covington's newest French bistrôt. Escargot with Mauthe's persillade butter and grilled sourdough.
Sitting alone at a table for two right when Feliciana Bistrôt & Bar opens for the evening, hI looked through the wall of windows out at the golden-houred corner of East Gibson and North New Hampshire Streets. Periodically, groups of women would step out of their cars and trail into the nearby Hampshire restaurant, all of them wearing elaborate feathered headdresses. A family passed by in a golf cart. And in the entryway of the restaurant, just in front of the repurposed church pew provided for waiting guests, a small crowd was accumulating with no agenda, no rush to their table or the bar. They all appeared to know each other, but their meeting looked unplanned, as though they were charmed to find so many acquaintances at the same place at the same time. Lean into the fanciful and you might imagine yourself in Paris. But the truth is, the scene is utterly and quintessentially of the Louisiana Northshore.
This is the same Northshore, after all, of the French master chef Chris Kerageorgiou’s culinary institution, La Provence—which brought the delicacies of classic farm-to-table French cuisine to Lacombe and became a landmark for the region. Tributes to the now-closed dining destination wink throughout Feliciana: a portrait of Kerageorgiou extends a glass of red wine to the viewer, and his iconic chicken liver pâté is listed on the menu as a delectable add-on to the sourdough bread service (sourced from Tournesol Café and Bakery down the street).
The homage to La Provence is a single thread in the tapestry of Chef John Besh’s narrative vision for Feliciana Bistrôt and its upstairs sister, the Paradise Cocktail Lounge, both of which opened in February as part of Besh’s BRG Hospitality Group on the former site of Downtown Covington’s circa-1942 Star Theater.
"Walker Percy believed that who we are is tied to where we come from, and this restaurant is my way of honoring both the community that shaped me and the formative years I spent training in countless bistrôts, weinstubs, and bouchons across France." —John Besh
The restaurant, even more so than any of Besh’s award-winning New Orleans projects, is a tribute to the chef’s own history, and in particular his history on the Northshore—where he grew up and got his start in cuisine at La Provence—and his previous training in France. Thematically homing in on how place, and the South especially, has a tendency to shape identity and the pursuit of meaning, Besh turned to Covington’s own National Book Award winner, Walker Percy.
"Walker Percy believed that who we are is tied to where we come from, and this restaurant is my way of honoring both the community that shaped me and the formative years I spent training in countless bistrôts, weinstubs, and bouchons across France,” said Besh.
The result is a thoughtful blend of aesthetics: a modern French bistrôt glimmering beneath wafts of Percy’s brand of French existentialism. The effect is not heavy, but instead playful. The dining room’s centerpiece is the bar, gesturing invitingly in all its warm woods, colored glass, and leather seating. Black and white penny tile stretches time between the modern and the nostalgic. A Provençal-style cabinet hangs on one wall, adorned with copper pots, glass jars, and wicker baskets—bordered on each side by arrangements of antique plates. Framed artworks act as portals into Louisiana nature scenes, and if you look for them, you’ll find motifs of Besh and Percy’s shared Catholicism in the corners: a holy water font, a displayed prayer—even a nook that might double as a confessional. A typewriter sits on wooden furniture beside a signed copy of Percy’s The Moviegoer, and a shadow box on the wall imagines the kinds of items he may have carried in his pocket or kept on his desk: glasses, two pens, a set of keys, and a rosary.
Courtesy of BRG Hospitality.
The Grand Plateau de Fruits de Mer—with oysters, shrimp, crab, and scallops served on ice.
The private event room, called “the Binx Room,” is a more pointed homage to Percy’s first and most famous book, and features framed black and white photos of historic movie theatres interspersed with displays of vintage video cameras.
Upstairs, visitors will encounter the Paradise Cocktail Lounge, named for the fictional Louisiana setting of Percy’s 1971 novel, Love in the Ruins. The space is richly adorned in velvets, leathers, and gold embellishments, and includes an airy outdoor patio—Covington’s only second-level (not quite rooftop) open-air bar. The lounge’s showstopper, though, is a mural stretching across the far wall, created by Ellis Fox. An abstract storybook dreamscape depicting a wetland, complete with a snake, roseate spoonbills, a pelican, and something vaguely feline—the work sets the gorgeously off-kilter tone for this place (Louisiana? This bar? Paradise?) of indulgent storytelling, elevated drinking, and the pleasure of brilliant company.
Back downstairs, back to the table. Besh’s vision for a classic French bistrôt in Covington is exactly that: this is not a French bistrôt in France, nor is it a “Louisiana French” restaurant. “Our goal was to create a shared sense of place that transports guests to the French countryside while celebrating our beloved Northshore and our foodways,” said Besh.
“We wanted to create a French bistrôt for Covington,” echoed Chef de Cuisine Patrick Teagle. “We want to give homage to French classics and French sensibilities, without making it too high brow for this community. But we aren’t serving étouffée or gumbo here.”
Instead, you’ll find the expected French fare: escargots and duck ragout, blue mussels and steak frites—along with French dishes of Chef Besh’s past, such as Kerageorgiou’s pâté and Provençal Chef and mentor Alain Assaud’s “soupe de crabe.” Besh once told Teagle about watching men in Parisian bistrôts eating blanched white asparagus wrapped in ham, then dipped in bearnaise. “Hearing and learning about those experiences, that’s what I love,” he said. “It’s about finding those stories and traditions and recipes and discovering some random grandmother in the Provençal countryside who does it like this and hers is the best.”
Courtesy of BRG Hospitality.
Chef Besh said that when selecting the chef to lead Feliciana’s kitchen, what stood out to him about Teagle is this sense of expression through food. “He puts his heart into it, and his team responds to that,” said Besh. “He also grew up in the countryside, so we share an understanding that thoughtful, grounded cooking is built on community and high-quality ingredients . . . I knew he would be the perfect person to tell our story at Feliciana."
Teagle’s experiments in French home cooking star most prominently in the daily specials. On the evening I visited, after briefly considering his recommendation of the Bavette Bistrôt Steak and frites (“just so simple and delicious”), I opted for the Wednesday night duck cassoulet—a leg confited to butter beneath a crispy skin, bedded on a pile of white beans flavored smokey with sausage sourced from Acadiana supermarket staple, Best Stop. The dish was complex and warm and rich in a way that felt more ancestral than familiar. Other evening specials include much-recommended dishes of rabbit fricassee, short rib bourguignon, bouillabaisse, and coq au vin.
Even in the effort to present traditional French cuisine, Louisiana ingredients can’t be excluded on a menu at a restaurant that so intimately explores place. And Besh has always been an advocate for local sourcing. There is blue crab in the beignets, and crawfish served with the swordfish. The menu gives credit where it is due, naming purveyors like McComb, Mississippi’s Mauthé Farms, which provides the tangy persillade butter that gives the escargot its sweet-then-spicy-aftertaste. “I put their names on the menu because people here recognize them,” said Teagle, who comes to Covington after stretches at BRG Restaurants Domenica and August in New Orleans. “This is such a community place, and people recognize those touches. Like, ‘Oh, they’re buying from Danny. They’re buying from Cayman.’ It fosters a sense of belonging, and I think that’s really important.”
Courtesy of BRG Hospitality
Chef Patrick Teagle, Chef de Cuisine at Feliciana Bistrôt & Bar.
And in the thick of Ponchatoula’s strawberry season, of course the Northshore jewel makes an appearance on the menu, beautifully presented in a pavlova with lemon curd. Sweet and airy, it’s a perfect dessert choice for someone who has just filled their belly with snails and beans and duck.
But Teagle couldn’t let me leave this place without directing me to the confessional: the double chocolate mousse is a thing of sinful indulgence. I think of Percy’s musings on bourbon as an “aesthetic” pleasure and temporary antidote to the emptiness of life. Eight months pregnant and unable to indulge in Feliciana’s craft cocktail list (with amusingly allusory names such as “Last Gentleman” and “Cud’n Walker”), I wagered that the mousse was my only hope for enlightenment. And boy, did it deliver.
