A New Pizza Window Pops Up in the Lower Garden District, and More New Orleans Restaurant Openings

This is Eater New Orleans’s ongoing roundup of 2024 restaurant, bar, and bakery openings diners need to know, arranged chronologically (mostly). This curated list of notable openings will continue to be updated, so if we’ve missed something, send us an email. For Eater’s guide to the hottest new restaurants in New Orleans this month, see here.

February 2024

St. Pizza from Patron Saint

1152 Magazine Street Suite 103, LGD

St. Pizza, the new sister tavern adjacent to wine bar Patron Saint, isn’t 100 percent up and running — the tavern itself isn’t quite open for dine-in. The pizza window sure is, though: Grab a slice with pepperoni or fennel sausage and a chocolate chip sea salt cookie and take it next door, where you can enjoy it with a fuschia pet-nat or a glass of deep red. Keep an eye on Instagram for tavern opening updates.

Ruby Slipper Cafe on Canal Street

1001 Canal Street, French Quarter

Beloved brunch spot Ruby Slipper Cafe reopened in the French Quarter this February, five years after it first closed following the tragic Hard Rock Hotel construction collapse. All the brunchy favorites are back in full force, plus a few seasonal specials on the new spring menu: Expect lavender-lemon beignets, pineapple ham Benedict, gin blossom lemonade, almond berry pancakes, and more.

Wild South

1245 Constance Street, LGD

Wild South, a new tasting menu restaurant from chef Michael Stoltzfus of Coquette, is serving dishes that explore southern Louisiana’s traditional foodways and tap into the bounty of its waters: think sweet gulf shrimp harvested nightly; roasted black grouper; bycatch; and local oysters in fine dining presentations. Here’s the full story.

Crack’d

1901 Sophie Wright Place, LGD

Crack’d, a collaboration between chef Joshua Wetshtein and local restaurant group OnePack Hospitality, is open and serving a pork-free brunch menu in the Lower Garden District. Swing by for decadent brunch dishes like fried chicken and waffle cones, steak and eggs, bananas Foster French toast, and shrimp and grits, plus mimosas and breezy brunch cocktails.

Smoke & Honey

3301 Bienville Street, Mid-City

Vassiliki Ellwood Yiagazis’s “Greek and Jewish soul food” pop-up is now a fully fledged cafe, dishing up breakfast gyros (soft scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, fried halloumi, French fries, and creamy tzatziki stuffed into a pita). In the coming weeks, she plans to add more dinner-like dishes like gemista (baked tomatoes and peppers stuffed with rice), a few vegan and vegetarian options, and cinnamon-spiced pastitsio , a Greek-style lasagna. Expect a fish program of sliced lox and smoked salmon, too. Here’s the full story.

January 2024

Mae’s Bakeshop

3917 Baronne Street, Milan

Jeremy Fogg, former pastry chef of Emeril’s Restaurant, has launched his new Uptown bakery. For the time being, he’s dishing up buttermilk biscuits, glazed cinnamon rolls, muffins, cookies, and pie and cake by the slice, but the menu will eventually expand to savory sandwiches, toasts, and breakfast dishes next month. Fogg told Nola.com that the bakery’s menu is rooted in the family recipes he remembers from Sunday gatherings and holidays — it has notable Southern influences, including creamy chess pie and sour cream pound cake.

Good Catch

828 Gravier Street, CBD

New year, new Thai restaurant in New Orleans. 2024 continues the recent trend of Thai restaurants debuting in New Orleans after years of sparsity, a welcome proliferation that’s brought spots like Dahla, Thai’d Up, and Thaihey NOLA. The latest to open, Good Catch, is from a familiar name: Chef Aom Srisuk, a Bangkok native who moved to New Orleans in 2018 and opened Polemo with her husband Frankie Weinberg in late 2021. Good Catch serves specialties from all four regions of Thailand while also focusing on seafood, heavy on dishes with crab, shrimp, scallops, and sea bass. It’s larger than Pomelo, and also adds a full bar.

Nolita

3201 Orleans Avenue, Bayou St. John

Martha Gilreath opened her first bakery on King’s Day, January 6, the official start of king cake season. It was perfect timing for Gilreath, who founded her king cake pop-up a few years ago and quickly gained a fervent following for her version, based on the old-school style of McKenzie’s but adding satsuma zest and a brown butter sugar cane glaze. But there’s more to life than king cake, apparently, and also more to Nolita. Gilreath bakes blueberry muffins, banana bread, biscuits, sweet rolls, bialys, old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies, and sweet and savory danishes (like green pepper and smoked boudin) and croissants (like smoked tasso and provolone). It’s open Tuesday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Maze

5123 Canal Boulevard, Mid-City

Maze is New Orleans’s newest spot for nightlife, a cocktail lounge complete with VIP tables, bottle service, DJs, and neon wall signs with sayings like “She’s a Maze with no escape.” It had its grand opening in mid-January in the former home of craft cocktail bar Cask and has already launched daily specials like free charcuterie with a bottle of wine on Wednesdays and service industry nights on Mondays. Food trucks like Los Jefes will make appearances. Maze is open Sunday through Thursday from 4 p.m. to midnight and Friday and Saturday until 2 a.m.