Larry Morrow Set to Shake up Mid City Dining With New Restaurant and Bar ‘Monday’

Local entrepreneur Larry Morrow and chef Lenora Chong, the duo behind Marigny hotspot Morrow’s, are expanding their New Orleans-meets-Korean smash hit to Mid City. The Morrow Group is opening a new bar and restaurant, called Monday, at the Bienville Street address currently home to Trep’s.

Morrow and Chong, Morrow’s mother, opened Morrow’s on the corner of St. Claude Avenue and Music Street in 2018, serving a menu of classic Creole items and Korean comfort food. It’s pretty much had a near-constant cluster of waiting diners out front since, helped in part by a trendy, Instragrammable interior that includes the beloved grass wall/neon script lights combo (it reads “Morrow of the Story”) and dishes like Oysters Morrow, a version of chargrilled oysters, and barbecue short ribs.

Josh Brasted/Eater NOLA

Trep’s opened as a family-friendly, outdoor dining hub on Bienville Street the fall of 2020, a partnership between notorious New Orleans developer and building owner Sidney Torres and couple Jerry Mixon and Danny Akers. Torres will continue to own the building, but Mixon, Trep’s chef and former Cafe Amelie chef, will move on to work with Torres at other developments including a villa in the Bahamas and projects in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, according to a statement.

Morrow’s was the first commercial tenant of Torres’s St. Claude Avenue development, so the new venture is a continuation of that partnership. The joint statement from the Morrow’s and Trep’s indicates that Morrow and Chong are bringing a new restaurant to the space as opposed to taking over Trep’s, and Morrow has since posted to social media about his “new restaurant ‘Monday’” at 4327 Bienville Street. The statement says that “The success of the Morrow’s at Sidney’s St. Claude development made this decision easy,” so it’s likely the restaurant will have at least some similarities to Morrow’s.

Prior to Morrow’s, Chong ran Lenora’s Grill in Pontchartrain Park. Morrow is a local event producer, entrepreneur, and author, and followed up Morrow’s with Warehouse District cocktail lounge and nightclub Treehouse in 2021. As far as Trep’s goes, its Instagram page has been deleted and its Facebook page also announced the new restaurant, so the transition appears underway. Eater has reached out to the Morrow Group for further details and timeline.

The Morrow Group is holding a hiring event for the new restaurant and bar at 4327 Bienville Street from 3 to 7 p.m. on Monday, May 23.