Courtesy of Gautreau's
Gautreau's has been a mainstay of its Uptown neighborhood for more than forty years now.
New Orleans is a city filled with portals, restaurants untouched by time, where the walls have watched children grow into old men and women, but the tablecloths have stayed the same; where the chicken is still pan roasted just as the very first chef’s mother made it and the mussels are still, hands down, the freshest in town. The city changes all around these places; it shifts and ages, grows in grace and grandeur, the tree roots breaking through the sidewalks a little more every year. But inside these oases of constancy, a diner can be transported, via the senses, back to a meal they had twenty years ago, thirty, or more—to a meal their parents had, or their grandparents.
Many of these restaurants, especially the ones that have seen a century, have achieved a certain level of fame—their names gracing the tops of the “must-visit” lists, their chefs acclaimed globally. They’ve become so ingrained in the fabric as to be inextricable, in a sense, from the city’s material identity itself.
But then there are the others—classics whose names are not secrets but are, in fact, spoken quieter than the outsized Commanders, Brennan’s, Galatoire’s, Antoine’s. This second category of restaurants is young enough that people still remember when they were new, but have lived whole lifetimes since then, watching the novelty settle into cornerstones—perhaps not wholly inseparable from the city, but certainly from their neighborhoods.
Each of these restaurants started only as a dream, as all restaurants do. The painter Jacques Soulas and his partners, back in 1986, wanted to bring the casual spirit of the guinguette to the Frenchest city in America, and opened Cafe Degas.
In 1982, Josie Gristina and Mariano “Nanou” Deraczyinski were just serving crepes at a local festival, the inception of La Crêpe Nanou.
Anne Avegno Russell, a forty-one-year-old pregnant housewife, decided to transform her family’s vacant pharmacy into a “polite lunch” spot. “I just did it,” she told a reporter in 1982. “I wanted a bistro feel, a neighborhood restaurant feel.” The result? Gautreau’s.
“We have been referred to as a neighborhood institution. The same families have been dining with us, and now we are seeing third and fourth generations come through.” — Rich Seigel, Gristina’s son, of La Crêpe Nanou
The response at each of these ventures—Cafe Degas, La Crêpe Nanou, and Gautreau’s, respectively—was instant. It’s no small challenge to make an impact in a city like New Orleans, where new culinary concepts rise and fall by the week. Here’s a city where diners can eat almost anything they want, whenever they want; a city that clings to tradition, and prefers what it knows. To stand out too much is to alienate; to be too familiar is to be boring. And if the quality of food isn’t up to par, you’re out the door before you’ve even begun.
But these restaurants of the 1980s—simple in concept, earnest in vision, and of the highest culinary standard—tapped into the desires of their era. The people of Faubourg St. John found themselves right at home in Soulas’s verdant garden café on Esplanade, a street that, at the time, had very few restaurants. “People immediately came to be in love with us because we offered something simpler than the continental French restaurants in town,” said Soulas. “You didn’t have to be afraid of being underdressed, or of the prices either. And it was somewhere you could bring your kids.”
Gristina’s and Deraczyinski’s crepes were such a hit that they opened a stand Uptown, and soon had to expand to occupy other locations across the city to keep up with the demand.
And before anyone knew it, Gautreau’s had become the place for ladies to join up for lunch in the Uptown neighborhood.
Each restaurant got their flowers as the new “hot” spot in the neighborhood, with word-of-mouth recommendations, collectives of regulars, and Times Picayune features to boot.
Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
La Crêpe Nanou has been Uptown's "Frenchest" restaurant since the early 1980s.
But what’s more remarkable than instant success in New Orleans is longevity. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, only about half of restaurants opened in the country survive five years, and those statistics are even more complicated in New Orleans—where the industry is challenged by a desperately fragile infrastructure, fluctuating food costs, labor shortages, and dependence on a seasonal tourism market. Anticipating the doldrums of the upcoming slow months, fifteen restaurants in the city have announced closures this summer alone, including local favorites that surpassed the five-year-mark like Maypop, BABs, and Justine.
But Cafe Degas, La Crêpe Nanou, and Gautreau’s carry on as they have for forty-some years—filling their intimate spaces with mostly locals, serving up many of the same dishes they have since the beginning. Over the years, these restaurants have acquired the status of landmarks, their identities and brands surviving and surpassing the turbulence of time, ownership changes, and an ever-advancing legacy of chefs.
[Read this—"The Taste of Creole-Italian: A cultural history told in terms of cuisine"]
In fact, when Russell shocked her regulars by announcing Gautreau’s closure in 1990, she asserted that she wanted to “go out when we’re on top.” The place was quickly bought up by a group of young lawyers who had been eating there for years and kept everything almost exactly the same, albeit with the addition of a professional chef in the kitchen. The restaurant would undergo two more changes of ownership before landing, today, with Bill Kearney and Jay Adams. And still, much today at Gautreau’s remains unchanged, the very same regulars still calling it home. “At this point, I think it’s become part of the fabric of Uptown New Orleans,” said Kearney.
“We have been referred to as a neighborhood institution,” echoed Rich Seigel, Gristina’s son, who now runs La Crêpe Nanou. “The same families have been dining with us, and now we are seeing third and fourth generations come through.”
“You’ve got to respect the traditions and refine them. It’s about finding that balance and creating those interpersonal connections with your customers, so that when they come to your restaurant, they know what they’re going to get, time and time again—and occasionally a little flair for change now and again. That has proven to be, I think, the real secret.” —Bill Kearney, owner of Gautreau's
“I’d say we’ve been the anchor of the neighborhood,” said Soulas. “Most of our diners are from nearby. At least one couple has been coming since 1986. I saw them last Friday.”
So, what is the secret? How does a restaurant, operating on a relatively low, neighborhood-centric profile, achieve landmark status in New Orleans?
First, the food has to be phenomenal—it goes without saying. “In the food business, having good food is critical, right?” said Kearney of Gautreau’s, which has been helmed by James Beard nominated chefs Larkin Selman and Sue Zemanick, as well as Lilette’s John Harris. “Looking back on the kitchen and who has run it is certainly part of the lore of Gautreau’s history and its success, with the quality of the food coming out on a consistent basis.”
When Kearney, who has been eating at Gautreau’s since the 1990s, purchased the restaurant with Adams in late 2023, finding the right chef was of the utmost importance. They tapped Chef Rob Mistry, who had nearly a decade of restaurant experience and training from Johnson & Wales Culinary School in Providence, Rhode Island. He had also spent the last four years as sous chef at Commander’s Palace.
Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
Cafe Degas has remained a "cornerstone" of Esplanade Avenue's dining scene since 1986.
“Operating a restaurant like this, you have to rely on the traditions of the menu, but also have your own sense of creativity,” said Kearney. “The things Rob comes up with are remarkable, and like I said when we hired him, ‘anyone who can be a sous chef to Ti Martin [at Commander’s Palace] can be a chef for me.’”
Seigel said that La Crêpe Nanou’s legacy has been shaped by a line of traditional French and Vietnamese chefs, who brought dependability to a menu of beloved French classics. “The menu has been consistent for decades, while each chef showcases specials every evening,” he said. “We were one of the first restaurants in New Orleans to bring mussels to the menu”—a dish that remains one of the restaurant’s most popular. For the last decade, the kitchen has been helmed by Chef Jeb Wartelle.
Cafe Degas enjoyed tenures from chefs like Ryan Hughes and Joe Turley, and is currently led in the kitchen by Chef Gaetan Croisier, who heralds from Brittany, France—bringing in his regional cuisine in the form of dishes like cotriade, a traditional Breton fish stew, alongside the restaurant’s cozy classics of escargots, paté, onion soup, and rack of lamb.
[Read this feature on another New Orleans classic, Broussard's.]
“We were serving our classic dishes,” said Soulas. “And over time we morphed into adding more daily specials, especially featuring local sources. We didn’t want to discount the local seafood—the oysters, shrimp, crawfish. We can’t ignore it. We live here. So, we gave the menu a little Creole bend.”
More powerful even than the impact of a truly delicious, New Orleans-worthy dining experience, the chefs at these restaurants have historically achieved something visceral: they’ve created meals worth remembering. Part of this quality is in the tastes—the indulgent delight of La Crêpe Nanou’s fondue plate, the play of cinnamon spice and sweet cream in Chef Ryan Hughes’s crab and mirliton bisque, and the flavorful tenderness of the duck confit at Gautreau’s. But the other part is strictly environment—in the sounds, the colors, the sense of place.
“In here, it’s essentially a miniature forest,” said Soulas at Cafe Degas, which has a literal tree growing at the heart of the building. “It’s green everywhere. Sometimes it’s even hard to find us, even though we’re right on Esplanade. We’re not a very obvious presence, and that is charming, and part of the allure. It’s romantic, a place where you can be at ease.”
La Crêpe Nanou has its own signature “bohemian” atmosphere (as Seigel describes it)—almost theatrical, with art glass panels, dimmed warm lighting, and windowed walls. It’s intimate, the tables close together and mosaics everywhere, and altogether more Parisian than any other place in this French city.
And as for Gautreau’s, the original interior tin roof was once a matter of complaint for diners, its acoustics amplifying the chatter. Today, it is part of the ambience—along with the apothecary glass cases now holding the wine. “There are a lot of exchanges between tables, people telling one another hello,” said Kearney. “That camaraderie builds upon itself, especially over time. You kind of feel like you’re really at home. Lots of people refer to Gautreau’s as the best private club they don’t have to pay a penny to belong to.”
Such spaces create memories, striking every one of the senses. And when places stick around, and hold true to the traditions that make them memorable, people can return to their own pasts, step back into a moment they loved. Upon a visit to La Crêpe Nanou in 2023, Nola.com’s restaurant reporter Ian McNulty aptly described the sensation as a “memory meal”—made possible by a “constancy of approach” signature to restaurants like Seigel’s.
“It’s about maintaining traditions while growing at the same time,” said Kearney who, when he bought Gautreau’s, said he “didn’t want to be the person who changed Gautreau’s.” “You’ve got to respect the traditions and refine them. It’s about finding that balance and creating those interpersonal connections with your customers, so that when they come to your restaurant, they know what they’re going to get, time and time again—and occasionally a little flair for change now and again. That has proven to be, I think, the real secret.”
