Listen to this articleFor Brooks Reitz it was the similarities between New Orleans and Charleston that made the city an obvious choice when his team decided to open a restaurant outside of South Carolina.
But the search for the right location for The Bell was long.
Reitz, who owns several restaurants in Charleston, including Leon’s Oyster Shop, Little Jack’s Tavern and Melfi’s, decided to open a restaurant in New Orleans after one of his two business partners moved to the city about eight years ago. Reitz said they had been looking for something that “was similar to what we have in Charleston, typically kind of a neighborhood type of environment (in) a unique or interesting building.”
They finally found the perfect location with the house at 3125 Esplanade Ave., which has a large patio and central location in the Fairgrounds. Reitz cites its proximity to Jazz Fest, City Park and a number of classic New Orleans restaurants in the area as to why it was a good fit.
“We hope that we can create something dynamic enough to both please the most immediate neighbors, but also attract people from other parts of the city,” said Reitz about the overall ethos for all their restaurants.
The space mostly required cosmetic updates since the location had previously been a restaurant called The Post. The extensive cosmetic renovation included refinishing the wood floors, updating the layout of the bar, adding wallpaper and painting the exterior. Updates to the patio included a cast iron doorway shipped in from Charleston to be used as part of an outdoor oyster bar and hanging planters filled with flowers, similar to what you would find outside many classic British pubs.
Reitz says they want the feel to be a “cozy pub vibe” inspired by the classic English pubs that are traditionally “community gathering places often with a warren of rooms…pubs have cozy little nooks and they have little rooms. So, this being an old house, a pub felt like the right vernacular to work from.” The restaurant includes a pub room, dining room, bar and patio.
While the menu isn’t an exact copy of what you would find at a traditional pub, it does include dishes inspired by pub fare, like a fried fish sandwich with celery root remoulade. Local seafood, like Louisiana shrimp cocktail with Marie Rose sauce and broiled Gulf oysters with Neal’s Yard Cheddar, are also featured.
Reitz specifically highlights their salads, many of which are well loved and some of their bestsellers at his Charleston restaurants.
“We like when restaurants have options at various ends of the spectrum. So, you could eat something richer and fried perhaps, but you could also have a great salad,” Reitz said. “I kind of feel like salads get neglected a lot in restaurants.”
A celery and arugula salad with cheddar pistachio and olives, as well as an endive salad with apple, Stilton and walnut are currently on the menu.
The restaurant opens at 5 p.m. (closed Tuesdays). Reservations can be made here, the restaurant only accepts credit cards.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
