Coquette Chefs Are Planning a 12-Table Restaurant in the Old Shamrock Tavern

Coquette chefs and owners, Kristen Essig and Michael Stoltzfus, are planning to open a new, smaller, more neighborhood-centered restaurant in a 4,400 square foot Lower Garden District space built in 1894 that once housed the Shamrock Tavern. The 12-table restaurant with a small “holding bar” will move into the corner building at 1245 Constance Street, reports Robert Morris at the Uptown Messenger.

The Shamrock Tavern, a segregated bar with a separate entrance for black and white customers, operated from the 1930s to the 1960s. “It was a segregated bar, but people kind of ignored it. They just did their own thing,” property owner Beverly House tells Morris.

Since the Shamrock Bar days, the space has been used as a boarding house and, most recently, a millworks business. Large, faded Dixie beer murals still cover the walls.

Essig hinted at the new restaurant in an April 14 Instagram post with a photo of the corner of the building with the hashtags “#deliciousthingscoming and #wesignedonthedottedline.

The project requires a zoning change, which is expected to be approved.

Essig and Stoltzfus, residents of the Lower Garden District, tell Eater they are “really excited about the new restaurant.”

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• Coquette Chefs Plan New Restaurant in Lower Garden District Building [UPTOWN MESSENGER]