17 January 2024
Good Catch, from the owners of Pomelo, is open downtown. | Pomelo
Thai seafood specialties in the CBD, king cakes and old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies in Bayou St. John, and bottle service in Mid-City
This is Eater New Orleans’s ongoing roundup of 2024 restaurant, bar, and bakery openings diners need to know, arranged chronologically (mostly). This curated list of notable openings will continue to be updated, so if we’ve missed something, send us an email. For Eater’s guide to the hottest new restaurants in New Orleans this month, see here.
January 2024
Good Catch
828 Gravier Street, CBD
New year, new Thai restaurant in New Orleans. 2024 continues the recent trend of Thai restaurants debuting in New Orleans after years of sparsity, a welcome proliferation that’s brought spots like Dahla, Thai’d Up, and Thaihey NOLA. The latest to open, Good Catch, is from a familiar name: Chef Aom Srisuk, a Bangkok native who moved to New Orleans in 2018 and opened Polemo with her husband Frankie Weinberg in late 2021. Good Catch serves specialties from all four regions of Thailand while also focusing on seafood, heavy on dishes with crab, shrimp, scallops, and sea bass. It’s larger than Pomelo, and also adds a full bar.
Nolita
3201 Orleans Avenue, Bayou St. John
Martha Gilreath opened her first bakery on King’s Day, January 6, the official start of king cake season. It was perfect timing for Gilreath, who founded her king cake pop-up a few years ago and quickly gained a fervent following for her version, based on the old-school style of McKenzie’s but adding satsuma zest and a brown butter sugar cane glaze. But there’s more to life than king cake, apparently, and also more to Nolita. Gilreath bakes blueberry muffins, banana bread, biscuits, sweet rolls, bialys, old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies, and sweet and savory danishes (like green pepper and smoked boudin) and croissants (like smoked tasso and provolone). It’s open Tuesday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Maze
5123 Canal Boulevard, Mid-City
Maze is New Orleans’s newest spot for nightlife, a cocktail lounge complete with VIP tables, bottle service, DJs, and neon wall signs with sayings like “She’s a Maze with no escape.” It had its grand opening in mid-January in the former home of craft cocktail bar Cask and has already launched daily specials like free charcuterie with a bottle of wine on Wednesdays and service industry nights on Mondays. Food trucks like Los Jefes will make appearances. Maze is open Sunday through Thursday from 4 p.m. to midnight and Friday and Saturday until 2 a.m.