It's a food museum, so there's a kitchen. It's in New Orleans, so of course there's a bar.

Some museums are rarified repositories for priceless art. Some frame the grand sweep of history and human achievement. In New Orleans, though, there is a museum devoted to understanding a piece of culture we interact with daily, and with which every person has an intimate relationship.

The Southern Food & Beverage Museum, or SoFAB, is a 16,000-square-foot showcase of the culture and history behind regional food and drink, and a vehicle to explore it through classes and events. Fittingly, it also has a bar, which is a hands-on, bottoms-up exhibit in its own right.

This colorful culinary hub marked its milestone 20th anniversary this month and is starting a new chapter after the slog of the pandemic with a new leader at the helm and a new cookbook on the shelves.

“SoFAB Cook Book: Recipes from the Modern South,” by museum co-founder Elizabeth Williams and Maddie Hayes, includes recipes from around the South, reflecting the museum’s overall collection and mission. 

What's ahead

Connie Jackson, who became CEO of SoFAB in June, sees the anniversary as a chance to reintroduce the museum and its programs and facilities to the local community.

“Tourists seek us out, they’re coming to New Orleans for food, and we tell that story here,” Jackson said. “But we’re also looking at where we can be of more service to the community.”

Some ideas center on food-themed education camps for kids, community health partnerships around home cooking and programs for food entrepreneurs and chefs to use the museum’s professional kitchen facilities.

In the months ahead, the museum has planned a series of new exhibitions, including one on the coffee culture of New Orleans opening July 24, and another coming this fall on tailgating, synced to the city’s upcoming role as host of Super Bowl LIX in February.

Another fall event will celebrate the 125th anniversary of oysters Rockefeller, created at Antoine’s Restaurant, and the museum is planning a gala around its 20th anniversary for later in the year.

Museum evolution

SoFAB started as an idea to illustrate our relationship with food. Its first exhibition was held in 2004, and later it found a home inside the Riverwalk Marketplace. In 2014, it moved to this much larger new home on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard in 2014.

The museum’s address was once part of the old Dryades Street Market, which was one location in the city’s public market network (of which the French Market is today the best known). That’s why Williams calls the museum’s home “our largest exhibit.”

Across this space, there are now exhibits on each of the 15 Southern states and the District of Columbia and a series of other galleries including one devoted to Al Copeland, the larger-than-life founder of the Popeyes fried chicken chain.

Touring the museum gives the feel of walking from state to state, following their history and geography and how that influenced the way people cook and eat around the South.

For New Orleans people, a spin through the museum can be particularly evocative. There’s the pink neon script spelling out the name of the long-lost McKenzie’s bake shop brand, and the vintage Commander’s Palace sign that found a home in the museum after the restaurant installed a modernized LED version in 2020.

There are enough Popeyes artifacts to fill a parade party pack of reminisces and also reminders of much quieter pieces of the local food story, like the sign of the Bluebird Café, a low-key Uptown breakfast nook for two decades.

The museum’s collection is constantly growing as individuals and local businesses bring more objects, artifacts and touchstones from the world of Southern food and drink to its door. That’s a testament to the highly accessible nature of its subject matter.

“People donated artifacts, sometimes by leaving them at the door with a note saying ‘please take care of this,’” Williams said. “That’s how the collection has deepened and become more meaningful. They knew they had something that other people would value.”

Food and drink, in hand

The story of Southern food and drink plays out here beyond the exhibits and artifacts.

There’s an open kitchen that looks like it could host a Netflix cooking series, and was once the kitchen for the in-museum restaurants Purloo and Toups South. Now it’s the home base for Deelightful Roux School of Cooking, where chef Dee Lavigne runs classes on Creole and Cajun dishes. That means you might smell gumbo cooking while you check out an exhibit on the dish’s roots.

The beverage part of the SoFAB name is richly represented around the exhibits, including a wall-sized timeline of cocktail development.

Eve Haydel, who oversees the drinks program at her family’s landmark Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, is planning to start a cocktail class series at the museum later this year.

SoFAB’s bar is fully functional again after the museum restored its liquor license, mixing drinks and also serving a custom coffee blend made by local roaster Congregation Coffee. Like everything here, there’s a story behind the bar.

The grand old mahogany bar was once a fixture of the West End seafood restaurant Bruning’s, a lakefront destination that dated back to 1859. The restaurant was wrecked by Hurricane Georges in 1998, and relocated nearby but was again hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Bruning’s never reopened, but the bar that stood in the original location was recovered, painstakingly reassembled and outfitted to serve museum visitors.

Today, you can peruse the exhibits while sipping cocktails, and toast what’s next at this unique manifestation of regional culture.

Southern Food & Beverage Museum

1504 O.C. Haley Blvd., (504) 569-0405

Thu.-Mon. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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