The Marigny and Bywater's New Tables Are Opening in Rooms You Already Know

"I moved the benches outside recently at the restaurant, to make sure they were out of the way for all our inspections," Katya Simkhovich wrote to her Dom Zakuski mailing list on September 22. "I realize this has created the impression that something is on the cusp of happening."

The benches are sitting outside 2440 Chartres St. That corner housed La Spiga, the early artisan bakery, then Cake Café, then Horn's Eatery. The same pattern runs through this year's openings in the Marigny and Bywater. Nearly every new kitchen with a real following moved into an address the neighborhood already knew, and the timelines show what it takes to get a room like that working again.

Four addresses and who was there before

Two of these openings started as pop-ups and one came from a group that already runs a restaurant, so the operators were familiar names before their buildings were. Zac Hill ran Gaijin Sandos as a pop-up at local bars before moving into St. Claude. Simkhovich grew Dom Zakuski at Anna's, a bar nearby in the Marigny, serving beef shank borsch, varenyky and "drinking plate" samplers. Ana and Lydia Castro, the sisters behind Acamaya, opened Casimiro in mid-April after Alma left the space.

Louisa Street changed hands with a lease

The Casimiro handoff shows how these rooms open up. Alma, Melissa Araujo's modern Honduran restaurant, closed its Bywater location after losing the lease. The Castros moved in and kept the room on a daytime schedule. The menu runs to chilaquiles, huevos con machaca, a mushroom tetela de hongos, tamales and house-made tortillas, served from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursday through Monday. If you're planning around those hours, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are the gap.

Up on St. Claude, Gaijin Sandos turned a former taco counter into a sando shop. The reported standouts include a fried chicken sando with pimento cheese and pickled jalapeños, tamago egg salad, fruit sandos and triple-cooked fries. A September 24 roundup still listed the shop at that address.

Burgundy Street went from event hall to dining room

Procida took the biggest leap in what an old room is used for. 2000 Burgundy was Barrilleaux's Weddings and Events, a space built for occasional parties. Chef Valeriano Chiella turned it into a restaurant that serves five nights a week. Earlier reports projected an opening in "early August." The restaurant's own site gives the official date as Wednesday, August 19, after a stretch of trial service.

The menu sticks to the coast. It includes seafood crudo, a Sicilian arancina with seafood ragù, bucatini with blue crab, whole grilled branzino, and flounder Siciliana with more blue crab. According to Gambit's late-September coverage, Procida was open Wednesday through Sunday with a 5 to 6 p.m. happy hour. Weekend brunch and another dinner night were still planned.

Chartres Street shows how long the paperwork takes

At Dom Zakuski, a history-heavy address hasn't made the opening any faster. Simkhovich's newsletter is a frank account of reopening a familiar room without a restaurant group behind her. It describes a three-week back-and-forth with the health department over adding a second hand-washing sink. She says she would have welcomed the sink but wished it had been flagged in the plan review back in June. She also describes repeated calls to the city's safety and permits line, and Sewerage and Water Board forms that warn "DON'T LEAVE ANYTHING BLANK" when only part of the form turned out to be required. She adds that when city staff do pick up, "they are generally very helpful," and that going in person gets the fastest answers.

"Opening in mid/late-October feels pretty dang close. Pretty 'on the cusp' ish." — Katya Simkhovich, September 22

One September roundup described the restaurant as recently opened. The owner's own update and the "coming soon" page on its website say it hasn't opened yet, so October is the date to plan around. Previews of the menu list small zakuski, soups, hot dishes and sweets. Early examples include rye bread with dill butter, pickles and salo, Siberian pelmeni and stuffed cabbage rolls.

Piety Street went the other way

Not every familiar room changed hands this year. Bratz Y'all closed its Piety Street biergarten on May 31 after nine years. Owner Sven Vorkauf cited a rent increase and rising operating costs. The business is still running. Its website says pop-ups are active and a new permanent home is in the works. This is the same pressure that freed up Louisa Street for Casimiro, seen from the side of the tenant who had to leave. Rent and lease terms decide which rooms open up, and the operators who already have a following are the ones ready to move in.

St. Claude added one more example in a different form. Baldwin & Co.'s NOLA Art Bar at 2128 St. Claude reopened in June as a reading lounge and wine bar, set up to encourage unplugged socializing. Same address, same owner, new purpose. One more operator may join the strip. Once Around the Kitchen, a pickle-and-jam pop-up, was reported in July to be preparing a permanent St. Claude space, with no address or date announced.

The new space this year is outdoors, and the new buildings are still in the works

Right next to the Marigny, the year's real new space is a park. Audubon's Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park opened April 16 on the old Gov. Nicholls Street Wharf. The six-acre phase cost close to $30 million. It has a playground themed on Louisiana marsh life, with alligator, frog, turtle and fish features, plus hammocks and swings facing the river. A covered shed billed as "New Orleans' Front Porch" holds food and drink concessions and restrooms. The next phase will redevelop the Esplanade Avenue Wharf, part of Audubon's long-running plan for continuous parkland from Spanish Plaza to Crescent Park. Each wharf phase that opens adds to the stretch of river walk running toward Crescent Park.

The neighborhood's big building projects are moving more slowly, and both again start from existing buildings:

• Queen Diva, 2114 Decatur St. Big Freedia and developer Zach Kupperman dropped a stalled hotel plan for this site. They now plan a 130-seat "elevated soul food" restaurant with a music venue and an outdoor pool. It won landmark approval September 2, and the team hopes to have permits by year-end. No construction start has been set.
• 2121 Chartres St. Construction has started on turning the former brewery and bottling plant into a 53-room hotel. No opening date has been reported.

Dom Zakuski's sink took three weeks to resolve. Queen Diva won its landmark approval and still has no groundbreaking date.

What's on before Dom Zakuski opens

October fills the gap. NOLAxNOLA runs through October 4, with neighborhood shows at Blue Nile, d.b.a. and Snug Harbor on Frenchmen Street, plus Cafe Istanbul, Hotel Peter and Paul, and Holy Diver. The New Orleans Ragtime Festival celebrates its 10th year from October 1 to 4, with New Marigny Theatre on its event calendar. New Marigny's listings also show New Orleans Fringe Festival programming starting November 12. Between those dates, the best timing tip is simple. Casimiro is closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and Procida opens Wednesday, so midweek still has somewhere to eat.

Every room on this list has passed through several owners, and in this neighborhood a building's history often matters as much as its square footage. If you own a home here and wonder how your property's history affects its value today, Burk Brokerage Real Estate can help you see it clearly. Get a free home valuation from a team that has spent decades renovating and selling New Orleans properties.