Destin New Orleans Style

If you live in Destin, New Orleans is moving closer — or at least its cuisine is. The well-known New Orleans institutions Pat O’Brien’s, Camellia Grill and Commander’s Palace have all announced that they’ll be opening new locations in Legendary’s HarborWalk Village on Destin harbor.

Clark and Blake Brennan, whose family own the Brennan’s Restaurant of New Orleans, have opened the Brennan’s Royal B Restaurant on Emerald Coast Parkway. Over in Walton County, another Big Easy restaurant, Fire, relocated earlier this year to Grayton Beach. “The economy in New Orleans is just in such a state that I couldn’t stay open,” Fire owner Brenda Darr said in an interview.

“After all of us living through Katrina, we thought this would be peaceful and the quality of life would be better. And it’s not too far from New Orleans for us to go back home and visit if we want.” Keeping close to New Orleans was important, Darr said, since eight staffers relocated to County Road 30A with her.

The current wave of Louisiana restaurants isn’t the first. Tommy Green’s Another Broken Egg Cafe on U.S. 98 is named for his brother’s Broken Egg Cafe in Mandeville, La. Since Another Broken Egg opened about a decade ago, the Greens have added restaurants in Sandestin, Panama City Beach, Grayton Beach, Baton Rouge and Huntsville.

Louisiana Lagniappe followed the reverse course: Kevin and Gwen Ortego founded the Cajuncooking restaurant in Destin in the early ’80s, then returned to Baton Rouge in 1998 and opened a Louisiana Lagniappe there. The Southern Restaurant Group runs the Destin restaurant and has opened another Louisiana Lagniappe in Orange Beach, Ala.

Darr said the newer crop of restaurants has probably been prompted by the financial situation back in New Orleans and the fact that so many Louisiana residents have relocated to the Emerald Coast. She added that unlike Brennan’s or Commander’s Palace, Fire doesn’t serve New Orleans-style cooking but contemporary American meals with a heavy emphasis on fresh, daily fare: “It’s more Napa Valley than anything else.”

Craig Tingle, who owns the Destin Pat O’Brien’s franchise, said that the people still living in New Orleans are as important to the new bar’s success as the Louisianans who’ve moved to the Emerald Coast.

“I think a lot of these folks are so busy working in their own town they don’t get an opportunity to experience New Orleans until they come here on vacation,” Tingle said. “To take a week and come here to Pat O’Brien’s, Camellia Grill ... appeals to them.”

Pat O’Brien’s, known for its signature “Hurricane” drink and flaming fountain, has previously opened franchises in Cancun, Orlando, Memphis and San Antonio. Tingle said Destin is good for a new franchise because the city is already established as a place where highquality and upscale restaurants can succeed.

HarborWalk Village is “the best location in the Southeast” for a new Pat O’Brien’s, Tingle said, and the view will make for a winning combination with its food and signature drinks.

Legendary’s Peter Bos said it’s important to remember that Pat O’Brien’s, Commander’s Palace and the others aren’t chain restaurants with branches throughout the country: Destin’s Commander’s Palace, for instance, is the first one to open outside the original in New Orleans.

Bos said it’s the owners themselves who are drawn to the Destin area: “Most people in New Orleans have a great affinity for Destin. This is where they came as children; this is where their parents came. They think of Destin as the harbor — people who came here before the Mid-Bay Bridge was open think of the harbor and the goosebump feeling you get coming over the Marler Bridge.”

That’s not surprising, Mayor Craig Barker said, since Louisiana has been the state providing the largest number of Destin tourists. “I think there’s been by and large an influence from the state of Louisiana here,” Barker said. “I think a lot of the tourists that come here from Louisiana like it quite a bit and decide they would like to live here and open a restaurant here.”

Bos said it’s precisely because of New Orleans’ affinity for Destin, and because the restaurants are native to the Gulf Coast, that the restaurants fit well with Harbor-Walk. Until now, he said, they didn’t have a suitable place to set up, but HarborWalk Village has changed that.

Bos said Legendary has received inquiries from other Big Easy restaurants, but HarborWalk was planned with a limit on how much space would be devoted to restaurants. “Right now,” Bos said, “our quota is full.”

Published on Saturday, December 1, 2007