Bon Ton to Reopen in 2023

Nola.com article by Ian McNulty.

I hope the new owners dont make too many changes in the menu. It's fine to add dishes, but I hope they keep many of the old favorites, particularly, the au gratin and crawfish bisque with the stuffed heads. So good.

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Long before Cajun cooking became a global phenomenon, the Bon Ton restaurant was a beloved destination for these flavors in downtown New Orleans. The restaurant’s history reached back further, to 19th century New Orleans, and it was an enduring part of the local restaurant scene.

When its longtime owners, the Pierce family, decided to retire, they lined up a buyer with plans to continue the restaurant. They hosted their regulars for heartfelt, sometimes tearful farewells over crawfish étouffée and strong rum Ramsey cocktails. And then they closed the doors.

That was in March 2020, and the next plans here were quickly overtaken by events as the pandemic arrived in the United States. Ever since, the old Bon Ton restaurant has sat quiet and snug behind locked doors and drawn blinds.

But now work is underway to bring the storied restaurant back to life.

The restaurant and its historic building at 401 Magazine St. were purchased in 2020 by Larry Greenbaum.

He is the proprietor of Chophouse New Orleans, the steakhouse located just across the street, and he is chairman of Charleston-based restaurant group CentraArchy.

Greenbaum is now proceeding with plans to open reopen the Bon Ton sometime in the first few months of 2023.

Amber Stewart, marketing director for his company, said the restaurant would continue under the same name. She said Greenbaum regards it as the next chapter of its long story.

Greenbaum is a Tulane University alum who has been a major benefactor to his alma mater. There is a residence hall on campus named for his wife, Barbara Greenbaum (the two met at Tulane). Stewart described Greenbaum’s work on the Bon Ton as part of his strong connection to New Orleans.

"It's the historic significance to him," Stewart said. "New Orleans is really special to him, and having the opportunity to purchase a building with this kind of history and preserve it and bring it back as a restaurant instead of whatever else it could have become, that was significant for him.”

The menu is still under development, but it will continue to serve Creole and Cajun food, she said.

Plans for the renovation call for the interior to be gutted and rebuilt along a similar floor plan, though with a newly configured bar set up for dining. The older design had a bar that was mostly a service bar and waiting area. The exterior will look much the same, Stewart said.

Long history, next course.

The Pierce family owned the Bon Ton for 70 years, though the restaurant’s history goes back much further.

It began in 1877 and just down the street, at 308 Magazine St., when an Englishman named Edward Prophet renamed what had been called the St. James Hotel Saloon, according to a restaurant history compiled by Ned Hémard.

The tenure made the Bon Ton the third-oldest restaurant in New Orleans, behind Antoine's and Tujague's, though it changed a great deal through successive owners. It moved twice, first to 322 Magazine St. (which, coincidentally, is the address now occupied by Greenbaum’s other local restaurant, Chophouse) and finally to its present home.

Today’s incarnation took shape between those moves. In 1953 it was acquired by Al and Alzina Pierce, who were Wayne Pierce’s uncle and aunt.

The term bon ton is French for good taste, not to be confused with bon temps, or good times. After the Pierces took over, however, the Bon Ton Café became synonymous with Cajun flavor.

The Pierce family hailed from the bayou country around Houma, and they installed a menu of dishes from that region, especially crawfish dishes. For New Orleans, this was a major departure from the French Creole standard. A generation before Paul Prudhomme came to fame as an ambassador of Cajun foodways, the Bon Ton had established itself as an outpost for Cajun cooking in the city.

Dishes like crabmeat au gratin and redfish bon ton (topped with buttery crabmeat) became house signatures at the Bon Ton, served for many years right up until the 2020 closing.

The old restaurant was also known for its extraordinarily long-tenured staff. The head chef at the time of the closing was Dorothy “Dot” Hall, who cooked there for 47 years. She retired after the restaurant closed. Many customers had similarly long track records, with regulars who could track their relationship with the restaurant by generations.

How this will play out when the Bon Ton reopens remains to be seen. But former co-owner Debbie Pierce said her family was very pleased to learn plans were progressing to bring the restaurant back.

“Part of the heartache of our decision was the question of whether it would live on and our hopes that it would,” Pierce said. “This news makes us very happy.”