In May, when the restaurant Saint John shuttered in the French Quarter, chef/owner Eric Cook was adamant that it would return in a new location, one he said would help it reach its full potential. He wasn’t ready at the time to name that location.
But now it turns out Saint John’s new lease on life will come at a beautiful property that’s well familiar in the New Orleans restaurant scene.
Le Chat Noir was a new restaurant in a former cabaret space in downtown New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times Picayune)
Cook plans to reopen Saint John at 715 St. Charles Ave., the downtown space that was previously home to the restaurant Le Chat Noir (which closed last summer), and Marcello’s before that (it was also a cabaret theater called Le Chat Noir many years back).
It’s now slated to open here in early fall. The restaurant will serve lunch and dinner and have a daily happy hour.
The front bar and lounge seating at Le Chat Noir, the restaurant in a former cabaret space in downtown New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, Nola.com | The Times Picayune)
This is a gorgeous space with a large bar and lounge in the front leading to dining room with a view to the kitchen.
Le Chat Noir was a new restaurant in a former cabaret space in downtown New Orleans. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times Picayune)
“Having the opportunity to move Saint John to St. Charles Avenue is a dream,” Cook said in a statement. “We believe in this concept, and we’re excited to make the restaurant easily accessible to the New Orleans community and incoming visitors with a more central location – we’ve got walk-on access to the streetcar, increased parking, Mardi Gras Parade Route views and so much more. It’s time to show this city what Saint John can really be.”
He’ll be joined here by chef de cuisine Darren Chabert, who has worked with him at the previous Saint John location and also at Cook’s first restaurant Gris-Gris and its related takeout shop Gris-Gris to Go Go.
Darren Chabert is chef de cuisine for Saint John, the modern Creole restaurant in New Orleans. (Photo by Randy Schmidt)
Restaurant return, cookbook to come
A New Orleans native, Cook conceived Saint John as a love letter to the regional Creole cuisine he grew up with and built his career around, with a menu of dishes like Creole daube, shrimp etouffee, baked deviled crabs and chicken Clemenceau. It opened in the midst of the pandemic, in 2021.
Saint John was the subject of a high-profile dispute with Entergy last fall when the chef shut down the restaurant briefly, which at the time he described as the last straw in a culmination of issues that built through a slow summer. But the decision to close in May and relocate came from an assessment of the restaurant’s revenue, the high cost of lease rates and doing business in the French Quarter and the impending summer.
“This is my favorite thing I’ve done in my career," he said at the time. "I want to save it, so I had to look at our options."
"Modern Creole" is the first cookbook from chef Eric Cook of Gris-Gris and Saint John restaurants in New Orleans. (Contributed image)
It will be a busy fall for Cook. In addition to Saint John's return, the chef is also gearing up for the release of his first cookbook “Modern Creole: A Taste of New Orleans Culture and Cuisine,” due out Sept. 17.
715 St. Charles Ave., projected opening early fall 2024
1800 Magazine St., 504-272-0241
1804 Magazine St., 504-354-1520
