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Where Y'Eat: Not The Same Old Feelings

Ian McNulty
Feelings Cafe in the Marigny has a new owner for the first time in decades.

Conjure an image of elegant decay, New Orleans style, and what comes to mind might look a lot like Feelings Café.

This is a restaurant found in the vestiges of a plantation established in the 1700s, and it retains the feel of a French country house even in the midst of its increasingly busy Marigny neighborhood. Framed in faded masonry, splashed with green fronds and steeped in a 40-watt glow, Feelings Café has been prized as much for this evocative ambiance as for its French and Creole cooking.

Just approach its gray edifice down a bend on Chartres Street, sit in its cloistered courtyard, have a drink in its bar, a room as narrow and close as a train car, and the old spell is intact. It feels classic New Orleans, and it feels timeless.  

But times have changed here, and the tip off comes from the menu. It could be a savory panna cotta, cool and silken, aromatic from smoked corn and dappled with crabmeat and salty black clusters of caviar. Or maybe it’s the gnocchi might follow, with rambunctiously juicy strands of beef under brittle sheets of fried kale.

These dishes are of a menu at Feelings Café that are modern, attuned to the seasons, often beautifully wrought and aimed squarely at the future of this historic restaurant. 

Feelings Café changed hands late last year for the first time in more than 30 years. 

That news was startling to some, who had strong impressions of Feelings and likely considered that the old place would always remain the same, even as the restaurant scene in general and the Marigny neighborhood in particular saw tremendous change.

But this spring, Feelings Café did reopen with a new owner, a new chef and a new direction. It got an early assist from Ray Gruezke. He’s the chef at Rue 127, the tiny, excellent Mid-City bistro. He came aboard to consult while chef Brian Doyle, alum of Rue 127 and downtown’s Le Foret, took the reigns of the kitchen directly. From a very quiet debut around Carnival, they’ve been slowly building a new identity here, and it’s been exciting to watch it grow. 

On the menu this takes the form of beet salad built in roasted red nuggets and thin golden bundles set in yogurt. It’s glistening smoked trout edged by dots of avocado purée. And scallops poached just past raw and splayed like petals artfully across the plate. It’s French, it’s modern and it feels more in synch with the pulse of contemporary New Orleans dining.

And yet, the intangibles that have always animated this place go beyond the menu and they resonate still. It's the way that, even on relatively quiet nights, the restaurant can feel abuzz as people wander the narrow catwalk balcony and poke around the many nooks and chambers. And it's the magnetism of the courtyard, which lures people outside even during a swelter. When ambiance trumps the edicts of an air-conditioned New Orleans summer, that's not just timeless. It's something for the ages.

Feelings Café

2600 Chartres St., New Orleans, 504-945-2222; feelingscafe.com

Dinner Tue.-Sat., brunch Sun.

Ian covers food culture and dining in New Orleans through his weekly commentary series Where Y’Eat.

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