District Donuts Banks on New Model and Saints Fans for Downtown Location

Popular slider and doughnut mini-chain District Donuts is trying something new for its latest restaurant, calling it District All Day Delicious and introducing full-service breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a bar. It opened in September in the former Company Burger downtown, right next to the new Tava Indian Street Food and across from Rouse’s on Girod Street, with a proximity to the Superdome that’s sure to make it a Saints game day hit. The menu is greatly expanded, adding Mexican breakfast dishes, lemon ricotta pancakes, and something called breakfast wings, which utilize breakfast sausage crumbles, to its many doughnut offerings. For lunch and eventually, dinner, burgers join fish and chips, a steak sandwich, and roast chicken, and frozen drinks, cocktails, and ice cream round out the offerings.

New Chapter for Creole-Italian Classic Liuzza’s

There are new owners of Creole-Italian stalwart Liuzza’s Restaurant and Bar (not to be confused with Liuzza’s by the Track), the latest round of ownership for a restaurant that first opened in 1947. Brothers Jason and George DeCastro, Erin Clark, and Michael Shelow are set to take over for the Bordelon family next week, a year after Liuzza’s co-owner Frank Bordelon died (the restaurant was on the market for a year before that, however). The brothers own sports bars in Miami, according to the Times Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, which Clark helps run, but they’ll relocate full-time to New Orleans, with Clark running the front of house and George DeCastro in the kitchen. As far as plans for the future, DeCastro might end up introducing dishes from his Filipino heritage, he told the newspaper, and Clark envisions creating an “Italian beer garden with bistro lighting” in the outdoor space.

Hit pandemic ice cream pop-up lands permanent location

Lucy Boone Ice Cream, which first popped up on the scene in early 2020 and swiftly grew a cult-like following, is opening a permanent location in the Milan neighborhood, right next to the brand new Zee’s Pizzeria at 3918 Baronne Street, reports Uptown Messenger. Husband and wife team Abby Boone and Aaron Schnell will sling ice cream sandwiches, scoops, and pints of flavors like oatmeal cream pie, peaches and cream, and brown butter hazelnut cookie in the new spot as early as October, they tell the Messenger, but will continue to sell their wares at Port Orleans at least twice a week.

All-star chef dinner at Mister Mao will benefit Vietnamese farmers’ co-op

There’s always something interesting going on over at Mister Mao, Tchoupitoulas Street’s funky tropical restaurant. On Sunday, September 25 Sophina Uong welcomes chefs Michael Gulotta and Mason Hereford, among others, to prepare a delicious-sounding five-course dinner priced at $85 per person, to benefit New Orleans East farmers’ cooperative VEGGI.

Another boutique hotel from Drifter, Hotel St. Vincent developers

A new boutique hotel from the folks behind local hotspots Hotel St. Vincent and the Drifter is planned for St. Charles Avenue, reports the Advocate, in a vacant lot between Aline and Foucher streets in the Milan neighborhood. It will be affiliated with the Columns hotel across St. Charles, as one of the Columns’s co-owners, Jason Seidman, is a developer on the project. Seidman also co-developed and co-owns the Drifter, used to to own the Frenchmen Hotel, and most recently opened the trendy Hotel St. Vincent along with Zach Kupperman. The as-yet-to-be-named hotel is expected to open in early 2024.