The 234 Apartment

CLOSE Robert St. John has learned a lot in the restaurant business. Such as: Never store butane in an oven. Robert St. John/Special to The Clarion-Ledger Wagyu Beef with long grain rice , cashew, okra, benne seeds at Coquette. (Photo: Special to The Clarion-Ledger) The following is the third in a four-installment summer- column series covering my top 10 dining experiences for breakfast, lunch, dinner and brunch in New Orleans. There are a few items to note: This list purely subjective . Everyone has varying tastes and preferences. This is not a ranking of overall quality from a critical/review standpoint. This is my personal list. These are my personal favorites. Everyone has personal connections to restaurants. These happen to be mine. According to the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, there are more than 1,400 restaurants operating in New Orleans today. That’s an impressive number for a city with a population of only 390,000. There are obviously hundreds of restaurants I...

As you do more banking by smartphone, that bank branch you used to visit may soon turn into a restaurant, a day care center or even a condo tower. After a branch building boom a decade or so ago, banks are closing offices by the thousands as more of their customers bank online . They're leaving behind space ready to be transformed into something else, whether an urban storefront or a free- standing brick building with a drive-thru in the suburbs. "If the real estate is strong, any number of things can happen to the property," says Kim McGuire, senior vice president in the Chicago office of CBRE. It's a problem or an opportunity, depending on your perspective, that will be here for a while. Banks operate about 89,300 branches in the United States today , down 8 percent over the past decade, according to Chicago- based real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle . JLL expects an additional 20 percent drop over the next decade. In the Chicago area, the number of branches d...

Development Aug 21, 2017   Share Pizza Fire opening to come as first Eighth South condo closing looms authors William Williams The four retail spaces at soon-to-open Melrose-based mixed-use building Eighth South are fully leased, with the final announced tenant an Ohio- based pizza chain . Bobby Kirby, a member of the development group that undertook the project, said Pizza Fire has signed a lease for about 3,000 square feet of space in the building. The eatery — with the franchise to be the state’s first — could open “soon,” he said. The lease comes as the owners prepare to close early this week on the sale of first of the building’s 52 condominiums. “We’re excited to have Pizza Fire,” Kirby said. “They are a very cool restaurant concept that will be new to this market. The time is perfect,” he added, noting up to 12 condo closings could be finalized by this week’s end. Eighth South’s ground-level retail, in addition to Pizza Fire, will feature restaurant Holler & Dash (te...

The best restaurant cookbooks are like time capsules, preserving a moment, a feeling. That’s what this year’s stack of restaurant- focused books achieves — with variable levels of success. Don’t miss chef Wylie Dufresne ’s look back at wd~50 or the new two-volume set from NYC’s highly lauded experiential dining room Eleven Madison Park . Casual restaurants, from the Publican in Chicago to Juhu Beach Club in Oakland, also got the book treatment this year. Each collection stands alone as a testament to the hard work of a team pushing for one pristine goal. Cheers to the Publican: Recipes and Ramblings from an American Beer Hall Paul Kahan, Cosmo Goss, Rachel Holtzman Lorena Jones Books, September 19 Starting with the first time I ate at there, shortly after its opening in 2008, the Publican has been my favorite restaurant. It was an instantaneous love — the room, the food, a swirling feeling of commensality and broad-shouldered abundance. So for me, the promise of this book, Cheers t...

The Fremaux Town Center retail - residential development continues to be a bright spot in Slidell's economic picture, and more construction is coming to the area, Mayor Freddy Drennan said Friday (Aug. 18). During his annual State of the City presentation before the East St. Tammany Chamber of Commerce, Drennan said the Fremaux Town Center has created 1, 800 retail jobs . "That's a lot of jobs, folks. A lot of work,'' he said during the address at Pinewood Country Club in Slidell.   Developers Stirling Properties, based in Covington, and Chattanooga, Tenn.-based CBL & Associates Properties Inc., opened Fremaux Town Center at Interstate 10 and Fremaux Avenue in March 2014. Additional stores and an apartment complex have been added since then, with more construction currently underway. Drennan said a Spring Hill Suites hotel is in the works, as is a Saltgrass Steak House . Developers also will soon begin building some corporate office space , he said. Whe...