5 Exciting New Restaurants in the Crescent City

2021 turned out to be an explosion of chef-driven delights in New Orleans

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It hardly needs to be said that opening a restaurant in New Orleans in 2021 was no easy feat. Despite obstacles in the form of major hurricanes, the Delta variant, and staffing shortages, a handful of tenacious chefs were able to successfully found exciting new restaurants that firmly hold their own, even in a town with an overabundance of delicious options. 

Mister Mao

“Oh shit, what are we gonna do with our lives?” 

It’s safe to say that Chef Sophina Uong and her husband and partner William “Wildcat” Greenwell are not the only people who had such a thought in the throes of the pandemic.

In their case, though, the moment of existential weirdness and uncertainty is what led them to open Mister Mao, the “unapologetically inauthentic” “fun, spunky, tropical roadhouse” that opened on Tchoupitoulas Street in July 2021.

Diners who come into Mister Mao—which is not a Chinese restaurant, despite the name’s implications (actually, it’s named for the couple’s cat)—are asked to approach the experience with an open mind.

“I felt for like the past two years we’ve just all been just kind of stuck inside, so it was just like, ‘Okay, if you want to come outside to see your girlfriends … come in this little loud place and have different flavors,” Uong said. 

Originally from Long Beach, California, where her mom ran a chain of donut shops, Uong first experienced Louisiana years ago when she and her daughter took a Greyhound bus to spend a weekend in Lafayette with Runaway Boucherie: a group of young, up-and-coming talented chefs that included Ryan Trahan of Vestal. “I spent the weekend with them and met a bunch of folks out there and cooked for a couple of days and drank a lot of Jameson,” Uong remembered. “And then just learned the difference between what a roux does and a jambalaya.” 

After she and Greenwell’s stint living in what she described as the “Polar Vortex” of Minnesota, the pair, “headed towards the sun,” and landed in New Orleans. They opened Mister Mao first as a popup and now as a brick-and-mortar in the building that formerly housed Dick & Jenny’s. 

A self-proclaim eclectic, Uong furnished the space using items found in thrift and vintage stores. On a prominent wall in the dining room presides a mural by artist Margie Tillmam depicting two tigers, inspired by Greenwell (who runs the bar program’s) tongue-in-cheek nickname, “Wild Cat”. 

The menu at Mister Mao reflects its chef’s widely-varied culinary background, which notably includes her claiming the Grand Champion title on the Food Network’s Chopped: Grill Masters Napa in 2016. While Uong draws flavor inspiration from all over the map, the cuisines she leans into most at Mister Mao are Southeast Asian, Mexican, and Indian. Uong is of Cambodian descent herself. “So I know all of those flavors, which is what I grew up with,” she explained, noting that Cambodian cuisine is more akin to Laotian or Thai food than the lighter, sweeter flavors of Vietnamese food that New Orleanians tend to be more familiar with. She picked up an affinity for Mexican ingredients and techniques while working at Oaxacan farm-to-table restaurant Calavera in Oakland, California. And, “Indian is all just through memory, and like taste memories of what I’ve had,” Uong said, recalling that she had a friend back in California whose mom would teach her certain masalas, but withheld some details and ingredients. “Sometimes you learn from people, but they don’t tell you everything,” she said. “So, you have to figure it out.”

Some standouts from the unusual menu include: Escargot Wellington; Pineapple Hawaiian Rolls served with  charred eggplant, mint, garlic confit, and balsamic; a version of the Indian street food panipuri with pickled blueberry and “fiery mint water” poured table side; Kashmiri Fried Chicken with Szechwan pepper and black salt lime cream; and a Dark Chocolate Tart with black garlic and peanut sesame brittle. The menu is divided into playful categories like “Drinking Snacks,” “Food We Love to Share,” “You Don’t Have to Share,” and “These Bring Us Joy & Hellfire Heartburn”. 

Uong said that she markets her use of these various influences as “inauthentic” largely due to past experiences working in restaurants that were lambasted for being culturally appropriative—notably Lucky Cricket, Andrew Zimmern’s Chinese restaurant and Tiki Lounge, in Minnesota. “And so, part of me is a little bit traumatized by all of that, just, you know, when you have picketers in front of the fence,” Uong said, noting the particularly challenging climate for today’s chefs who are interested in incorporating international flavors they may not personally have a claim to. “I’m just really sensitive to the fact that I don’t want to feel like I’ve stolen anything, but I think cooking belongs to everybody.”

As for her own heritage, Uong has happily observed that South Asian guests have generally enjoyed the offerings at Mister Mao, “inauthentic” as they are. “So that’s for me, that’s a personal victory, you know?” Uong said. “My mom, she’d be like, ‘That’s not Cambodian’ and I’m like, ‘I know.’”

Each influence on the menu is “mostly personal” for Uong and Greenwell. “We just like spicy stuff in general,” Uong said. “And we do miss some of the Asian food that we could get on the West Coast, or through traveling to New York or something,”

She also wanted to ensure that the price point was accessible enough for younger service industry employees to be able to afford a meal at Mister Mao. “I wanted to price things where it’s fairly affordable for people of our industry. You know, the younger cooks and servers … we wanted to have a fun place, a celebratory place. I mean, we are kind of loud and obnoxious I think for Uptown,” Uong laughed. “But Uptown needs a little shaking up.” mistermaonola.com.

Saint John

“As weird as it sounds, it was almost like the accidental restaurant,” Chef Eric Cook, who opened local-favorite restaurant Gris-Gris in the Garden District in 2018, said of his newest venture, which opened in the French Quarter in October of 2021. “We didn’t seek out Saint John, Saint John kind of found us.” 

The happy accident came about as many things do in New Orleans: via a cocktail of serendipity and personal connections. The sequence of events was sparked by a casual phone call about a property in the French Quarter that had been recently put up for sale by a friend of a friend of a friend of Cook’s. Even though he wasn’t particularly planning to open a new restaurant at the time, Cook and his wife Robyn went to scope out the storied old building at 1117 Decatur. “We said, ‘Yeah, sure, why not? We’ll take a road trip to the Quarter,’” Cook said. 

Upon first arrival at the building that formerly housed a restaurant called Trinity, and before that Maximo’s, Cook and a chef friend he brought along headed straight for the kitchen. “We’re kicking equipment like tires in a used car lot,” he chuckled. As they scoped out the residual kitchen appliances from the previous business, Robyn was already envisioning the restaurant that would become Saint John. “My wife was up front, and she saw the potential. She saw what it was gonna be long before any of us ever did,” Cook said. He teased her that day, saying: “Hey, did you name it?” “That was the first time we walked in the building,” Cook recalled. “And she was like, ‘Yeah, it’s Saint John.’”

The name came so easily because it’s close to the couple’s hearts. “That’s where our lives began as a couple, on Bayou Saint John in Mid-City,” Cook said. “We walked on the Bayou every time we had a chance…Bayou St. John was very near to us for a multitude of reasons. It was super organic.” 

Cook said he immediately knew the cuisine he would serve at Saint John would be “hardcore Creole”. “I mean, [I thought to myself,] we’re just gonna get down,” he said. “We’re gonna go old school.” Cook, born and raised in New Orleans with ancestry that traces back to city founder Bienville himself, knows a thing or countless about old-school Creole cuisine. And he knows that New Orleans’ indigenous cuisine is not about looking pretty, but about sustainability at its most delicious. 

“Brown on brown is the new black,” he said. “That’s our move: let’s get the gravy going, let’s get the sauces going, let’s get the stock pots going,” Cook said. “The influence of all those different cultures and heritages coming in, you know, it wasn’t trying to be anything beautiful. It was just sustainable. It was what was available in the woods and in the waters around them at that time, throughout the seasons… So we want to dive into that.” 

This Creole-inspired philosophy does in fact manifest in more elegant dishes too, though—such as the first item that went on the menu, which came to Cook in a dream: Oysters Saint John. The appetizer entails oysters prepared three ways: poached in a cream sauce, fried crisp, and in oyster dressing embraced by a puff pastry. Other dishes are comforting favorites with contemporary updates, like a Whole Fish Amandine, Shrimp Étouffée, Beef Daube, Gulf Fish CourtBoullion, or a side of Creole-Italian-inspired Macaroni Pie sitting in a classic red gravy. Yet, a couple of items stand out as new creations of Cook’s own—perhaps the most notable is a Bacon Fat Seared Duck Popper entrée, which includes root beer-braised pork belly to accompany crispy-seared duck breast and jalapeño Creole cream cheese with a satsuma glaze and fried duck skin.

Cook explained that amidst a trend of chefs trying to “out-menu” each other by creating ostentatious dishes featuring molecular gastronomy, classic Creole cuisine takes on new life. “To me, as a guy who has been banging around kitchens for thirty-plus years now, it’s brand new again, it’s exciting,” Cook said. Some of he and Saint John Chef de Cuisine Darren Porretto’s primary resources for menu inspiration were old cookbooks from Cook’s massive collection, including many of his grandmother’s. “It’s really cool to dig up old things out of a book that’s barely hanging on, you know, the ribs in the book, you’re turning it like you’re in a museum—because that was my grandmother’s book that she was flipping around in the sixties and the fifties and forties.”

While the atmosphere and cuisine at Saint John coincide for an elevated yet understated dining experience, Cook knew that there was no way around leaning a bit into the rowdy party culture of lower Decatur Street. “I said look, there’s going to be a separation of church and state in this building. We’re not going to turn our nose up to lower Decatur.” Cook noted that dive bars on that stretch like The Abbey made up his former stomping grounds. “It’s the block that I ran around as a young teenager, a punk rock and roll guy…the red mohawk and the skateboard. That was me. I was that kid.” 

With such deep New Orleans roots of his own, Cook has a profound appreciation for the history of the building Saint John sits in, which Robyn’s extensive research indicates goes all the way back to 1726. Initially, stained glass windows were installed as a play on the name Saint John, before the couple realized the building actually housed a ministry at one point. At another moment in time, it was a head shop lambasted in local papers for encouraging hippie culture; later, it was home to a renowned Mardi Gras headdress maker. Cook, Robyn, Porretto, and their team are excited to write the building’s newest chapter, all while paying homage to its past and the local cultural and culinary heroes who contributed inspiration; in the form of the menu, the artwork, and design details.

“Everything came together. It felt right, it was the right time. And I really, really believe that it came to us, and for all the right reasons,” Cook emphasized. “And we believe in that a lot. You know, the way we do things, we trust the universe…this was just our time to walk in that building. And bring it back to life.” saintjohnnola.com. 

Other chef-driven New Orleans restaurants that opened in 2021

Lengua Madre

Spanish for “mother tongue,” Lengua Madre is an upscale, modern Mexican restaurant that opened in August. The ever-rotating five-course chef tasting menu is inspired by Chef Ana Castro’s childhood memories of cooking with her paternal grandmother in Mexico City, where she grew up. These experiences combine with her training at Le Cordon Bleu Mexico, and her culinary studies in India and throughout Europe to create a menu that was recently recognized in the New York Times as one of “The 50 Places in America we’re most excited about right now”. lenguamadrenola.com. 

Seafood Sally’s

Seafood Sally’s is a second venture from CEO Caitlin Carney and her executive chef and partner Marcus Jacobs, whose flagship restaurant Margie’s Grill was named one of America’s Best New Restaurants in 2019 by Bon Appetit. Nestled comfortably in the Oak Street house that most recently housed La Casita, Seafood Sally’s is named for Jacobs’ grandmother and inspired by a trip down the East Coast; with a menu featuring a variety of boiled, fried, and blackened seafood, occasional wild-cards like Buffalo frog legs, plus a daily happy hour and all-you-can-eat crab on Wednesdays. seafoodsallys.com. 

Miss River

At the new restaurant inside the Four Seasons Hotel, Alon Shaya deviates from his Israeli roots to focus on the cuisine of his current home, New Orleans. This manifests in the form of a dark roux duck and andouille gumbo served with potato salad, salt-crusted whole Gulf red snapper, and clay pot dirty rice with seared duck breast and a duck egg yolk; all of which guests can watch the chefs dramatically plate on an open “Food Stage”.  missrivernola.com.