Closed for years, former Cavan spot opens as new Uptown restaurant with celebrated chef's return

I’d walked up the porch steps and opened the etched-glass door at this particularly beautiful Uptown house-turned-restaurant many times before. But this time I was visiting Etoile, and I had little idea what to expect.

Fortunately, there was a map. Literally.

It was a map of Louisiana and adjacent states printed on the back of the evening’s menu, marking the sources of ingredients, from rabbit and chicken to garlic and cornmeal. It’s a bit of culinary cartography that defines this new restaurant and its long path to finally opening.

Etoile is in the historic townhouse at 3607 Magazine St. that was previously home to Cavan.

The new restaurant represents a homecoming for its chef and owner, Chris Dupont. He started out cooking at well-known New Orleans restaurants of a generation past, and then made his own name in Alabama in the mid-1990s by focusing ardently on arms-length supply chains and local sourcing relationships.

Now with Etoile, that same farm-to-table ethos is fused to a fine dining tasting menu restaurant. The result is a modern restaurant that feels timeless, and one that feels both highly personal to the chef and intrinsically of New Orleans. 

Long road to open

Many have been watching for Etoile to open and speculating about just what kind of restaurant Etoile would be — myself included. We all had plenty of time to mull it, possibly forget about it, and then remember it again while driving past.

A restaurant that takes longer to open than anticipated is the rule in New Orleans, not the exception. But Etoile’s germination time has been different.

Dupont bought the property early in 2022. Later that year a film crew took over, temporarily transforming the building into a set, and pushing back its opening schedule. But that work wrapped in 2023, and ever since Dupont has been slowly building the network of small-scale suppliers behind his menus.

He has a vision for Etoile, and he has not been inclined or compelled to hurry it to fruition.

“This is my cooking style,” Dupont told me. “I had a choice. I could get this building and just have it be a French bistro six nights a week. But I wanted to explore this idea of a restaurant that is just myself and how I cook, how I forage and connect with suppliers, and see how we can forge our own niche on this street.” 

How it works

Earlier this spring Dupont began quietly hosting private events, and the restaurant continues to book these, including for its second-floor space.  

Now Etoile is also open for dinner, served downstairs in the main dining room Thursday, Friday and Saturday with a single seating at 7 p.m. The bar opens an hour prior, at 6 p.m. Dupont is now serving a seven-course tasting menu at $110 per person, with an optional wine pairing (all French) for $60.  

Etoile may continue to evolve. The chef is considering adding at least one night with an a la carte menu, and also lunch.

“What I’m trying to do is thread the needle between neighborhood bistro and farm-to-table tasting menu restaurant,” Dupont said.

Every facet of it feels hands-on and personally directed now. Most nights, the menus are fielded in the kitchen solely by Dupont and pastry chef Dani Guillot; at the front of the house, it's usually just manager Christiana Yeager and Jennifer Wagner, who oversees the wine.

While Etoile looks much the same from the street, a redesign inside has accentuated the elegant lines across its parlors with its intricate plasterwork.

A second-floor bar is gone, leaving the event space larger. Downstairs, the dining room bar now has a sweeping marble curve, and vintage plates and silverware bring their own patina to the tables.

A chef’s path, and roots

Dupont grew up in Gretna and started working in restaurants including Christian’s in Mid-City (now home to Vessel), the Bistro at the Maison de Ville when Susan Spicer was its chef, and Tour d'Eiffel, the once-landmark restaurant on St. Charles Avenue from chef Daniel Bonnot. His first sous chef job was at Flagons on Magazine Street (now home to Basin Seafood & Spirits).

The chef opened the first iteration of Café Dupont in 1994 in Springville, Alabama, outside of Birmingham, a small-town locale that would set his path.

“No one was going to re-direct a delivery truck to get me the kind of ingredients I was used to working with, so I had to re-set my brain on how to cook to what was available next to me,” he said. “It was local farms, orchards, growing clubs. It turned out it was the best product I’d ever worked with.”

In 2003, he moved the restaurant to downtown Birmingham; it's credited with helping stir a revival of the city’s business district, which at the time emptied out after hours. The Birmingham News called Cafe Dupont the city's "premier downtown dining destination."

He sold the restaurant, and his Birmingham home, and with his wife Leslie moved back to New Orleans to create a restaurant closer to his roots here.

On the menu

The menu I last tasted at Etoile will be different from the one you find next, but the style is all Dupont. His dishes put the quality of the ingredients first, but also bring an artful eye to preparation and presentation.

Shrimp bisque, served in antique teacups, exuded the essence of shrimp through its velvety, oil-dappled texture. Chunks of fried chicken, from birds from Hilltop Poultry in DeRidder, had a dill cream and a glaze of honey and Steen’s cane syrup.

Sweet Caroline’s Rabbitry, in the north shore farming burg of Independence, supplied the meat for a rabbit tart under a buttery crust. A curl of Wagyu beef from Stone Creek Cattle Co. in Wiggins, Mississippi, sang with the sticky umami of black garlic, from local maker Crescent City Cultures. Dessert is simply “cake on a plate,” but the meal might not end there.

There can be surprises from the kitchen between the courses, and dinners sometimes end with postprandials on the front porch, or perhaps in another parlor inside. The small scale and personal approach mean Dupont and his staff can direct evenings here that can feel more like dinner parties than conventional restaurant service.

From the first tastes I’ve had, Etoile has been worth the wait.

Étoile

3607 Magazine St., (504) 582-9920

Dinner Thu.-Sat., bar opens 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. 

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