As birthdays go, this is a very, very sweet 16th. In March, the Palace Café on New Orleans’ Canal Street turned 16 and threw a weeklong celebration.
Sixteen years is a lifetime and then some in the restaurant business, but the anniversary is especially notable after the harrowing experiences restaurateurs here endured after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Crescent City in 2005.
Palace Café owner Dickie Brennan says: In most cities, any restaurant that survives 16 years is a rarity.
“In New Orleans—with restaurants dating back over 100 years—we like to think that we’re just beginning to hit our stride. Or at the least, we’re aging gracefully.”
Brennan, whose Dickie Brennan & Co. also operates the Dickie Brennan Steakhouse and the Bourbon House restaurant in New Orleans, says the city is coming to life again.
“We’ve seen the comeback of the Canal Streetcar, beautifully renovated sidewalks, a clean French Quarter, and a city that is rebuilding,” Brennan says. “We’re looking forward to [Palace Café] chef Darin Nesbit’s new dishes and the dining memories we’ll create over the next 16 years.”
Palace Café launched its birthday celebration with one of its noted Sunday jazz brunches on the actual opening date of March 11 and offered a special prize of a chef’s dinner for six as well as free pink champagne.
Fans indulged in the restaurant’s Creole specialties, including andouille-crusted Gulf fish, crabmeat cheesecakes, catfish pecan, crab and crawfish chops with Creole ragoût, seafood Napoleon, and such lauded desserts as Mississippi Mud Pie and white-chocolate bread pudding.
“Over the years, our chefs have created so many favorite dishes that we just can’t serve them all at the same time,” Brennan says. “Our birthday celebration is the perfect reason to bring a few back.”
The restaurant even rolled back the prices of its birthday celebration to those of 16 years ago, offering mud pie for $6 as well as is the chance to enjoy “oyster shooters” with mignonette sauce for $5. A rotisserie pork chop served with puréed sweet potatoes and roasted cauliflower cost $10.
Hurricane damage to the Palace Café, housed in the old Werlein Music Building, wasn’t as extensive as it was to many other structures in New Orleans, so it opened a few months after the storm.
The upbeat jazz brunch, which Palace Café has lifted to an art form, continues to provide shoulder-swaying, head-bobbing entertainment for diners.
The birthday has a special significance for Dickie Brennan. “For me, Palace Café will always be my first restaurant baby,” he says.