In the second half of the twentieth century, two iconic restaurateurs, Leah Chase and Ella Brennan, redefined dining in New Orleans. Dooky Chase, run by Chase and her family, was radically welcoming, while Brennan’s Commander’s Palace was wildly celebratory. Both restaurants still make each diner feel like family: At Commander’s Palace, a birthday boy can expect balloons and a serenade from the band at brunch. At Dooky Chase, you might get fussed at for adding salt to your bowl of gumbo without tasting it first. Since the passing of these matriarchs, a new generation of women has taken up that mantle, helming restaurants that expand the idea of home.
Melissa M. Martin
“My mom is a goddess,” says Melissa M. Martin, leaning back from a communal table under a chandelier at Mosquito Supper Club, her intimate restaurant in the Milan neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans. “You’ll never go to my mother’s house when there’s not something to eat. She took care of us, and so I’ve had the great privilege of learning to take care of people.”
Growing up in the fishing village of Chauvin surrounded by aunts and cousins, the chef has led a life defined by family meals. When she set out a decade ago to magnify the Cajun cuisine of her matriarchs, she realized she had to do it “in a space that felt like home”—and she succeeded so well that guests were sure (counter to fact) that she lived upstairs.
At Mosquito Supper Club, locals sit side by side with visitors, sharing Velma Marie’s oyster soup along with tales of the city to which Martin adds her own deep love of Louisiana and the women who made it. Those themes will extend to her new restaurant, Saint Claire, opening this spring beside the Mississippi—a nearly four-acre dreamscape set beneath live oaks.
Nina Compton
Nina Compton’s wish, upon moving to New Orleans, was to have a rose garden and a restaurant where regulars would know their order before picking up a menu. Compère Lapin, her lauded restaurant in the Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery, and BABs (formerly Bywater American Bistro), set in a warehouse near the river, may not have roses, but Compton sources produce from gardens as close as the Ninth Ward, and patrons won’t let her retire the shrimp cavatelli or the curried goat.
Compton and Larry Miller—her partner in business and life—have spent Christmases at the homes of regulars, and when an industry friend lost his apartment in a fire, she invited him to dinner to console him. “I think when people feel they’re taken care of, they want to extend that,” Compton says. That sense of community recalls Sunday lunches with her family in her native St. Lucia. “We had a big cook-up when we went home in July,” she says. “We had conch, we had fish. We had so much food.” Their guests asked, “Is this how you guys normally eat?” In New Orleans, the answer is yes.
Ana Castro
“This fills me with energy,” says chef Ana Castro, looking around the rosy dining room at Acamaya—a year-old Bywater gem that has already made The New York Times’ list of the best restaurants in America. “I get to hang out with my best friends and my sister every day and share this vision with them.”
The restaurant is a feat of self-actualization. Castro always wanted to cook, but her family had different ambitions: She would be an architect; her sister, Lydia, a lawyer. Growing up in Mexico City, the sisters led a fast-paced childhood—eating meals out of Tupperware on their way to French school or swimming lessons. Later, when Castro “lost the joy of cooking” in manic Manhattan kitchens, Lydia lured her down to languorous New Orleans. Together, they built a restaurant that respects its employees, celebrates their ancestors, and is, above all, true to themselves. The world of Acamaya is the Castro sisters’ world: a party of plaster walls, Latin trap and cheeky tiki mugs, hamachi al pastor tostadas and shrimp costras—on flour tortillas—just like Lydia used to order from the taquerias of CDMX. “You’re walking into our home,” Castro says. “And we want you here.”
