Creole Restaurant Sassafras Closes Second, Downtown Location After Short Run

Sassafras, a longtime New Orleans restaurant known for Creole soul food like smothered okra and stuffed bell peppers, no longer has a second location in the CBD’s Wyndham Garden Baronne Plaza Hotel. The family-run restaurant, which remains open at its Gentilly address, expanded to the downtown hotel in late 2018.

Representatives of the Wyndham Garden hotel and Sassafras confirmed to Eater that the restaurant closed earlier this month, though both declined to provide a reason. The hotel, located at the corner of Baronne and Common Streets near Pythian Market food hall, says it’s looking for a new tenant for the restaurant.

Mother and son team Sandra Duckworth and Corey Duckworth continue to run the original Sassafras near the UNO Lakefront Arena, where they’ve been serving baked macaroni, redfish, and seafood pasta for eight years. The Duckworths first opened Sassafras in New Orleans East in 2004, followed by a move to Read Boulevard forced by Hurricane Katrina just a year later. In 2011, Sassafras landed permanently on Leon C. Simon Boulevard, where its become a destination for the UNO campus and Gentilly neighborhood.

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