Chef Donald Link plans Italian restaurant in the Warehouse District

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The latest restaurant from chef Donald Link of Herbsaint and Cochon will be an Italian restaurant called Gianna Italian Restaurant, which will open in spring 2019. It's planned for Magazine Street in the Warehouse District.

Link has picked Rebecca Wilcomb, currently the chef de cuisine at Herbsaint, as executive chef and partner for Gianna.

"If it weren't for Rebecca, we wouldn't be doing this," Link said. "We're doing this because we have an amazing talent that we want taken care of."

Wilcomb moved to New Orleans from Boston in 2008, when she started as a line cook at Herbsaint and rose to run the restaurant's kitchen.

Her family is from the Veneto region of Italy, and she grew up spending time there with her grandmother, Gianna, for whom the restaurant is named.

The menus for Gianna are still being developed. It will use local products, but prepare them with regional Italian recipes rather than in the local Creole Italian style. As Link notes, Italian food is interpreted differently in every part of the United States.

"It's really about an idea. Fresh. Simple. Driven by ingredients," he said.

In 2017, Wilcomb won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: South. She became the fourth chef in the Link Restaurant Group to receive that honor. Ryan Prewitt of Pêche won in 2014, Stephen Stryjewski of Cochon took the prize in 2011 and Link himself won in 2007.

Stryjewski and Prewitt are also partners in Gianna, along with the restaurant group's general manager Heather Lolley.

Gianna will be the Link group's sixth restaurant in New Orleans. Along with Herbsaint, Cochon, Cochon Butcher and Pêche, the group bought the Uptown bakery La Boulangerie in 2015. The company also operates Calcasieu, a private event space above Cochon.

The chefs began to plan Gianna five years ago, and have taken three trips to Italy together to research the cuisine.

Pêche, which opened in 2013, was the most recent Link restaurant in New Orleans. The seafood-focused restaurant centered around an open-fire grill was a success locally and nationally. In 2014, it received the James Beard Award for the best new restaurant in America. And this year, it made Brett Anderson's list of the top 10 restaurants in New Orleans.

The Link group, however, has experienced less success outside of New Orleans. An attempt to expand Cochon to Lafayette in 2011 lasted a little more than a year. A Nashville outpost of Cochon Butcher, the casual sandwich shop, survived only two years, closing in 2017.

"The best lesson we've learned about ourselves is we don't want to duplicate a restaurant," Link said. "Or open another one out of town."

The Link group also does not partner with hotels or other developers, preferring to opening free-standing restaurants that they fully own.

Gianna will be on the ground floor of The Kalorama, a new mixed-use, multi-building development on the corner of Magazine and Girod streets.

"You'll notice every one of our restaurants is on a corner," Link said. "We're fond of corners."

The main building, where Gianna will be, is newly constructed on a parking lot that for many years hosted the weekly Crescent City Farmers Market.

The corner space, with windows all around, is currently a construction zone with dirt floors. When it's done, however, guests will walk into a large horseshoe-shaped bar. Seats around the bar will let guests order snacks and small plates with their drinks. On the back wall, behind the dining room, will be an opening kitchen with a wood-fired oven and an area where cooks will roll out fresh pasta.

The restaurant will also have outdoor seating.

The Kalorama is around the corner from Meril, Emeril Lagasse's latest New Orleans restaurant, and down the street from Pêche.

"If you look around this city, it's booming. Especially the Warehouse District," Link said. "We've shown we're dedicated to this place and making it a better place."

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