With the new year upon us, it’s time for a look ahead to the harvest of new restaurants taking shape around town, including the next projects from big names, neighborhood spots and new debuts.
Some have been in the works so long it’s reasonable to wonder if they’ll actually open. Others I have just recently confirmed. A few are poised to open very soon.
Here’s where they stand and what’s to come. I’ve arranged them by projected opening timelines (“projected” being the operative word in any plans like these).
The former home of Splish Splash Washateria will soon open as the new Bonafried chicken sandwich restaurant. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Bonafried
3101 Grand Route St. John, projected opening early January
A fabulous fried chicken sandwich is the basis for the Bonafried food truck, and very soon it will be at the center of the menu for its new restaurant.
Plans to convert the former Splish Splash Washateria just off Esplanade Avenue into a restaurant for Bonafried were announced in the spring of 2024. The conversion turned out to be much more involved than planned. But now the doors are set to open in early January, likely the first or second week.
Garlic chile oil finishes the spicy fried chicken sandwich from the Bonafried food truck in New Orleans.
Stephen Maher and Rebecca Elizabeth Hollingsworth started Bonafried a decade ago as a pop-up. By 2016, they converted a one-time bread delivery truck into a food truck and joined the ranks of mobile vendors. In 2022, Bonafried’s sandwich won the National Fried Chicken Festival award for “best use of chicken in a dish.”
The restaurant will have a menu of sandwiches, fries and other items, including salads, and it will have a full bar.
Ryan Iriarte (left) and Fredo Noguiera will open Cafe Conmigo.
Café Conmigo
2511 Jena St., projected opening mid-January
Fredo Noguiera and Ryan Iriarte, co-owners of High Hat Café, share a heritage as first-generation Cuban Americans. They are tapping those roots for this new restaurant, based on the Cuban cafés of Miami.
It’s a few steps from High Hat, in a tiny building that was previously home to the Ice Cream 504 scoop shop.
Café Conmigo translates cheerfully as “coffee with me,” and coffee will be a big part of the program. The food menu will start off with a short list of sandwiches, led by the Cuban of course, and also the Cuban-style frita burger along with a selection of pastries, desserts and snacks, like pastelitos, croquetas and flan.
Café Conmigo will also have a cocktail program, starting with classic daiquiris and mojitos.
Espíritu Mezcaleria & Cocina in Mid-City is the second location for the local Mexican restaurant that started in the CDB. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Espíritu Mezcaleria & Cocina (Mid-City)
139 S. Cortez St., projected opening early January
The former home of Rosella will soon be a second location for the founders of Espíritu Mezcaleria & Cocina (520 Capdeville St.), the downtown Mexican restaurant that has introduced many to mezcal.
Owners Haley Saucier and Grant Carey are bringing much of the same style and flavors to this new Espíritu in Mid-City.
The menu will start with some of the “greatest hits” tacos from downtown and add more plates, including fajitas and enchiladas. At weekend brunch, look for dishes like huevos rancheros and chilaquiles, as well as live performances with mariachi bands and Latin drag among the possibilities.
Chef Alon Shaya runs the restaurant company Pomegranate Hospitality, which includes Saba for modern Israeli cuisine in New Orleans.
Safta’s Table
129 Allen Toussaint Blvd., projected opening February
“Neighborhood Mediterranean” is the idea behind the next project from Emily and Alon Shaya. This all-day café will present some of the flavors for which their Uptown modern Israeli restaurant Saba is known in a more casual, deli-style format, with more influences from Greece, Morocco and Italy as well.
Safta’s Table is part of a new mixed-use building by the lakefront in the West Lake Shore Shopping Center. It will serve food from breakfast time through dinner, with weekend brunch, and will have wine and cocktails.
The restaurant will also be home base for catering and offer grab-and-go packaged items, like hummus and salads, and dishes to heat up at home, like lasagnas, potpies and casseroles.
This is rendering of the exterior of the building that will replace the old Star Theater in downtown Covington. It will have space on the ground floor for a restaurant, office space and rooftop lounge.
Feliciana and Paradise
332 N. New Hampshire St., Covington, projected opening early February
The latest from BRG Hospitality, the company led by John Besh and Octavio Mantilla, is on the northshore, part of Covington’s growing restaurant scene. It’s two concepts in one, and both are now nearing completion in the new two-story building that replaced the old Star Theater, right next to the group’s restaurant Tavi.
On the ground floor, Feliciana will be a French bistro. Paradise is the rooftop lounge, conceived as a cocktail and wine bar with both open-air and covered areas.
The names both reference settings from the work of novelist Walker Percy, who long made Covington his home.
Sophia Petrou and Adolfo Garcia work the front and back of the house respectively at Chi Chi’s, their restaurant for Korean fried chicken and beer in New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Dolfy’s
4508 Freret St., projected opening March 2026
The chef Adolfo Garcia Jr. grew up working with his father at the family restaurant RioMar. Now the young chef and his wife Sophia Petrou are taking some inspiration from the old place for their new project.
Dolfy’s will be centered more squarely on Spanish regional cooking, especially from Basque country.
The home of the former Ancora pizzeria at 4508 Freret St. The restaurant closed in summer 2025. (staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
It is taking shape in what had been Ancora pizzeria. The massive wood-burning oven remains and will be a centerpiece of the menu, for dishes like lamb, dry-aged beef and Basque cheesecakes. Also in play is Spanish style seafood, pinchos (small bites, typically served on bread stuck with toothpicks for snacking), jamon and cecina, a type of air-cured beef.
The couple also run Chi Chi’s, the hit Korean fried chicken and beer joint at 4714 Freret St.
The main bar at Effervescence, a destination for Champagne in the French Quarter. (Staff photo by Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The TImes-Picayune)
The Crustacean Club
1036 N. Rampart St., projected opening spring
The Champagne bar Effervescence closed in August, but now the chefs who ran its kitchen from the start are developing this new upscale seafood restaurant in its place.
Brenna Sanders and Evan Ingram are a married couple who have worked at Michelin-star restaurants in San Francisco and at Restaurant August locally before helping open Effervescence in 2017.
Chefs Brenna Sanders and Evan Ingram in the kitchen at Effervescence in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The Crustacean Club will focus on elevated treatment Gulf seafood in particular (plus caviar from other waters). In addition to the regular menu, it will have a private dining room for about 20 people where the chefs will serve special tasting menus. An oyster bar and Champagne will remain part of program, too.
The historic New Orleans Cotton Exchange building is on Carondelet Street in downtown New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Armada
231 Carondelet St., projected opening fall 2026
Amanda and Chef Isaac Toups of Toups’ Meatery and their partners are planning to create an elegant new downtown restaurant on the ground floor of what started in the 1920s as the Cotton Exchange Building, long ago converted to a hotel.
Amanda and Isaac Toups created Toups’ Meatery in New Orleans as a restaurant for modern Cajun cuisine. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The menu will be a blend of Spanish and French cuisine, and the setting will be luxe, with seating for 175 between the dining room, banquette booths, a private dining room and a big bar up front.
The historic New Orleans Cotton Exchange building is on Carondelet Street in downtown New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
There will be an open kitchen with a view to a rotisserie, one of the many items on the chef’s culinary wish list being built into the Armada concept.
Though initially targeting an opening in 2025, the restaurant is now aiming for October.
A rendering shows the bar at Mildred’s planned for the future Warbler Hotel in New Orleans, now under construction. (Image from EskewDumezRipple)
Mildred’s and Upstairs at the Warbler Hotel
1923 St. Charles Ave., projected opening fall 2026
The Warbler is a new boutique hotel now rising on the lot that was once home to the old Trolley Stop Café. The six-story hotel will have 58 rooms and a bar and a restaurant each led by Neal Bodenheimer, founder of the acclaimed Uptown cocktail lounge Cure, and other projects, along with his longtime collaborator Kirk Estopinal.
The hotel’s ground floor will be home to Mildred’s, a martini bar and restaurant inspired by European café culture. Upstairs, meanwhile, will be the poolside lounge on the hotel’s roof, with its own menu in more of a Mediterranean style.
The future Warbler Hotel is taking shape at 1923 St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The overall project is from Verdad Real Estate, led by principal Joe Mann, a New Orleans native who envisions the Warbler as part of a revival along this part of lower St. Charles Ave.
Callais Capital Management bought the former Uptown Delivery Pharmacy, an historic building on the corner of Magazine Street and Nashville Avenue. The firm has partnered with Chef Jean Paul Bourgeois for a new Italian-Cajun restaurant concept.
Callais family restaurant
741 Nashville Ave., project opening second half of 2026
What was once a pharmacy is slated to become an as-yet-unnamed restaurant from the Callais family, a prominent name in the offshore oil services industry who are making moves in hospitality. The same family brought Gracious Bakery earlier this year.
An extensive renovation of the old Uptown property is underway with the plan to open a restaurant with Italian and Cajun flavors. The family is working with Jean-Paul Bourgeois, a Thibodaux native known for his outdoors-meets-cooking series Duck Camp Dinners.
Details are scant at this point, but look for more as plans develop.
