The Party is Over For Café Adelaide

After 15 years, the party is ending for Café Adelaide, the Commander’s Family of Restaurants eatery named for Adelaide Brennan, Ella Brennan’s lively sister who never descended her staircase before 3 p.m., wore perfume to bed each night, and whose idea of “casual” was no sequins. The restaurant and the adjoining Swizzle Stick Bar, both in the Loews Hotel, will close their doors on August 24, according to a press release.

While the Brennan family celebrated the past in honoring Adelaide’s over-the-top life, it also pushed cocktails into the future. As with its sister restaurant, SoBou, the bartender took a bigger role at Adelaide as the “bar chef.” The idea was that cocktails could pair with food just as well as wine, a concept the family will continue to explore as it celebrates 125 years of Commander’s Palace with a symposium on American cuisine and hospitality in September.

“We have cherished our strong, 15-year relationship with the Loews New Orleans Hotel. The Swizzle Stick Bar was ahead of its time and a leader in the cocktail revolution,” Ti Adelaide Martin in a statement.

In recent years, the restaurant has seen a lot of young talent, from its current executive chef, Meg Bickford, who will move to Commander’s Palace, to its previous executive chef, Carl Schaubhut, who left to open Bacobar and DTB, and who was Eater New Orleans’ 2017 Chef of the Year.

Ti Adelaide Martin (co-owner of the restaurant group), Tory McPhail (executive chef at Commander’s), and Darryl Reginelli (of Reginelli’s Pizza) are working on a casual restaurant at the corner of Magazine and State streets called Picnic Provisions & Whiskey.

Meanwhile, the Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group (different restaurant group, same family) announced this week that it will close its Metairie bistro, cafe B, by the end of the year.

• Commander’s Palace and Reginelli’s Teams Are Bringing Fried Chicken Uptown [ENOLA]
• Old Metairie Is Losing Ralph Brennan’s Café B [ENOLA]
• The Teams Behind Commander’s Palace and Reginelli’s Pizza Are Plotting a New Restaurant [ENOLA]
• All Café Adelaide Coverage [ENOLA]
• All of 2018’s New Orleans Restaurant Closures [ENOLA]