The Tchoupitoulas Room is located along the street of the same name with views of the historic area through the original wood sash windows. This room accommodates up to 50 guests for seated meals and up to 65 guests for receptions.
The Higgins Room is Calcasieu's largest room boasting an open floor plan with access to the main bar. This space is ideal for formal seated meals as well as cocktail reception for up to 100 guests.
The Higgins Room and Tchoupitoulas Room combined offer an extensive dining area to accommodates up to 150 guests for a seated meal and up to 200 guests for receptions. This space also allows for combining cocktail receptions with sit-down dinner, or business presentations followed by formal meals.
The Wine Room offers the most private dining experience, accented with hand-crafted, cherry wood furnishing by a local artist and carpenter. The space accommodates up to 20 people for a seated meal or up to 25 for a small cocktail reception.
The Mezzanine at Cochon restaurant accommodates semi-private gatherings. The lofted space offers room for up to 30 guests for a seated dinner and accommodates up to 40 guests for a reception.
Executive Chef + President, Link Restaurant Group
Inspired by the Cajun and Southern cooking of his grandparents, Louisiana native Chef Donald Link began his professional cooking career at 15 years old. Chef Link has peppered the streets of the Warehouse District of New Orleans with a collection of award-winning restaurants over the past two decades. Herbsaint, a contemporary take on the French American “bistro,” is the flagship of the Link Restaurant Group. Cochon, opened with chef-partner Stephen Stryjewski, is where Link offers authentic Cajun and Southern cooking featuring the foods and cooking techniques he grew up preparing and eating. Cochon Butcher is a tribute to Old World butcher and charcuterie shops honoring the traditions of house-made meats and sausages, serving specialty sandwiches, a bar menu, wine, and creative cocktails. Calcasieu is Chef Link’s private event facility that takes its name from one of the parishes in the Acadiana region of southwest Louisiana. Pêche Seafood Grill serves simply prepared coastal seafood with a unique, modern approach to old-world cooking methods featuring rustic dishes prepared on an open hearth over hardwood coals. La Boulangerie, a neighborhood bakery and café, offers handcrafted pastries, breads, coffees, and lunch specials. The latest addition to the family, Gianna offers rustic Italian cuisine rooted in Louisiana tradition and technique.
Herbsaint earned Chef Link a James Beard Award in 2007 for Best Chef South. The same year, Cochon was nominated for Best New Restaurant. The James Beard Foundation also nominated Chef Link for the prestigious award of Outstanding Chef for multiple years. Pêche Seafood Grill was awarded Best New Restaurant at the 2014 James Beard Foundation Awards, and Gianna was honored to be named a James Beard Award Nominee for Best New Restaurant 2019. Gourmet Magazine listed Herbsaint as one of the top 50 restaurants in America and was inducted into the Nation’s Restaurant News Hall of Fame. Cochon was listed in The New York Times as “one of the top 3 restaurants that count” and named one of the 20 most important restaurants in America by Bon Appétit. For his commitment to the industry, the Louisiana Restaurant Association named Chef Link Restaurateur of the Year in 2012. In 2024, he was honored with the New Orleans Wine & Food Experience Ella Brennan Lifetime Achievement in Hospitality Award.
The James Beard Foundation bestowed Chef Link’s first cookbook– Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link’s Louisiana (Clarkson Potter), with its top award for Best American Cookbook, released in 2009. Real Cajun is a collection of family recipes that Chef Link has honed and perfected while honoring the authenticity of the Cajun people. In February 2014, Chef Link celebrated the release of his second cookbook, Down South: Bourbon, Pork, Gulf Shrimp & Second Helpings of Everything (Clarkson-Potter), which looks beyond New Orleans and Louisiana at dishes in nearby states.
In 2015, Chefs Link and Stryjewski created the Link Stryjewski Foundation to address the persistent cycle of violence and poverty, as well as the lack of quality education and job training opportunities available to young people in New Orleans. www.linkstryjewski.org
Chef/Partner, Link Restaurant Group: Cochon, Cochon Butcher, Calcasieu, Pêche Seafood Grill, Gianna and La Boulangerie
Winner of the 2011 James Beard Foundation “Best Chef South,” Stephen Stryjewski is Chef/Partner of New Orleans’ award winning restaurants Cochon, Cochon Butcher, Pêche Seafood Grill, Calcasieu, a private event facility, La Boulangerie, a neighborhood bakery and café, as well as Gianna, the latest addition to the family. Stephen has been honored as “Best New Chef” by New Orleans Magazine, and as a “Chef to Watch” by The Times-Picayune. In 2007 Cochon was named a “Best New Restaurant” finalist by the James Beard Foundation, and in 2014, Pêche Seafood Grill won the James Beard Foundation award in the same category. Cochon has been recognized in the New York Times by Frank Bruni, “Coast to Coast, Restaurants that Count;” and Sam Sifton, “Dishes that Earned their Stars,” and has been consistently listed as a Top Ten New Orleans Restaurant in The Times-Picayune Dining Guide and was recently named one of the 20 most important restaurants in America by Bon Appétit.
In 2015, Stryjewski and his business partner Chef Donald Link created the Link Stryjewski Foundation to address the persistent cycle of violence and poverty, as well as the lack of quality education and job training opportunities available to young people in New Orleans. http://www.linkstryjewski.org
In 1997, Stryjewski graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and went on to work for some of the most notable chefs and restaurants in America including Michael Chiarello at TraVigne, Jamie Shannon at Commanders Palace, and Jeff Buben at Vidalia. Stryjewski grew up moving frequently as an “Army brat” and has traveled extensively in the United States and Europe. He resides in New Orleans’ Irish Channel with his wife and two daughters.
Chef and Partner
Ryan Prewitt began his culinary career in the farmer’s markets of San Francisco, where a burgeoning interest in food developed into a full-blown career. After spending time working for chefs Robert Cubberly and Alicia Jenish at Le Petite Robert Bistro, he moved to New Orleans to work with Chef Donald Link at Herbsaint. Ryan proved to be a quick study under Link’s tutelage and became Chef de Cuisine in 2009. He subsequently moved on to oversee culinary operations at Link Restaurant Group as Executive Chef for the company.
With a new job came an increased ability to learn and travel. As a member of the Fatback Collective, a group of Southern chefs who have compiled numerous accolades and awards in restaurants across the South, Ryan has learned new traditions and techniques from many talented BBQ pitmasters and has traveled to Uruguay to study traditional open-fire cooking. These experiences, along with a trip to observe grilling techniques in Spain, culminated in the opening of Pêche Seafood Grill. Ryan received the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: South in May 2014, the same year Pêche earned the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
Chef de Cuisine
Nicole was born and raised in the Philippines. She grew up in a small town called Cagayan de Oro, in Northern Mindanao. Her family owned a bakery where she grew up watching the production of fresh baked bread in an old fashioned wood burning stone oven. Farm to table has always been part of the Filipino culture. Nicole’s family was known for growing and producing some of the sweetest corn in the area along with farm raised pigs, chickens, and lamb. Her mother specialized in making and selling siomai and siopao at the family’s Dim Sum stall. Food has always been part of the family business.
After graduating from Ateneo de Manila University, Nicole moved to New York in 2001 to attend the French Culinary Institute in Soho. Her culinary career began with Danny Meyer and Union Square Hospitality Group cooking at both Eleven Madison Park and Gabriele Kreuther’s the Modern at MOMA. She worked as a tournant for Chef Alain Allegretti at Atelier in the Ritz Carlton Central Park and later with Chef Dan Kluger at the Core Club. After New York, Nicole moved to Los Angeles to work at the Thompson Beverly Hills with Chef Brian Redzikowski.
Nicole moved back to her hometown in the Philippines after L.A. to open a Creole concept restaurant. After a few years back home she relocated to New Orleans. She joined the Link Restaurant Group to be part of the opening team at Peche Seafood Grill in 2013. Nicole became the Chef de Cuisine at Peche in 2019.
Executive Pastry Chef Link Restaurant Group, Chef/Partner La Boulangerie
Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Maggie Scales pursued her undergraduate degree at the University of California, San Diego majoring in Language Studies. She then moved to Boston to attend the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts in the Professional Pastry Program under Pastry Chef Delphin Gomes. While in school, Maggie worked at Chef Bob Kinkaid’s Sibling Rivalry Restaurant and the Metropolitan Club under Chef Todd Weiner. Upon completing culinary school, Maggie worked as a Pastry Chef at Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse in Boston. In 2009, she had the opportunity to work with James Beard winner Lydia Shire at Scampo Restaurant at the Liberty Hotel. When Chef Shire opened Towne Stove + Spirits, Maggie became the Executive Pastry Chef of the 300-seat establishment. In June 2011, Maggie relocated to New Orleans and began working for the Omni Hotels. She then joined Link Restaurant Group as a Pastry Chef, and in the summer 2014 Maggie accepted the position of Executive Pastry Chef overseeing all aspects of Link Restaurant Group’s pastry department. In 2015 Scales became Chef/Partner at La Boulangerie, a French bakery on Magazine Street in New Orleans.
General Manager
Our passion to showcase the remarkable bounty of the Southern region is revealed through our commitment to developing long-lasting relationships with the network of farmers we work with. Chef Donald Link, Stephen Stryjewski, and their culinary team have cultivated those relationships over the years by working hand-in-hand with the growers to develop and procure the exact ingredients each restaurant chef wants to utilize when crafting their menus at our family of restaurants. Our recipes honor the simplicity of the food and we celebrate the ingredients that are incorporated into each dish.
Please find here a listing of some of the farmers we are proud to work with on an ongoing basis.
Cajun Growers
Cajun Growers is one of Peche’s main tomato sources. We love utilizing a wide variety of their tomatoes including cherry tomatoes, slicers and heirlooms. Cajun Growers is located in Cut Off, Louisiana. Farm owners Tad and Lillie Ledet suffered significant damage from Hurricane Ida including complete destruction of their greenhouse but thankfully they have fully recovered and are back to producing their well-loved tomatoes as well as cucumbers, peppers + arugula.
Cicada Calling
Cicada Calling is a 2-acre diversified vegetable and cut flower farm in Southeast Louisiana run by Becks Hilliard and Sierra Torres. They are a non-till, naturally grown farm and source a majority of their seed from cooperative seed growers in the South as a means of growing food better adapted to our climate and to increase seed biodiversity of our region. Peche consistently sources salad greens, baby kale, flowers and herbs from the farm.
Compostella Farm
Compostella is a vegetable farm specializing in salad greens, arugula, and carrots. The farm is located in Picayune, Mississippi. After apprenticing on organic farms in the Northwest, owners Madeline Yoste (a native New Orleanian) and Timothy Robb, made their way back to New Orleans to start their own farm. They named it Compostella, meaning “field of stars” as an expression of how they see their place in the universe. They were certified organic from 2017-2018 and continue striving to minimize the inputs to their farm and to nurture their farm’s expression as an individuality.
Covery Rise Farms
Covey Rise Farms began as a 10 acre farm which has grown into a 50 acre farm in central Tangipahoa Parish. Covey Rise Farms grows over 30 types of vegetables throughout the year with a retired LSU Agriculture Professor as their crop consultant.
Indian Springs Farmers Co-op
Incorporated in 1981, Indian Springs is a farmers cooperative with 31 active members located in Petal, Mississippi.
Isabelle’s Organic Citrus
Isabelle’s Orange Orchard is a small, family-owned farm nestled on the old winding River Road in New Orleans. Isabelle’s orchard is fertilized by the rich Mississippi River alluvial soil and the only thing on her trees are sunshine, ladybugs, honeybees, and rain.
Johndale Farm
Johndale Farm is a berry farm located in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, owned by Heather Robertson, who we have worked with for eight years. Heather primarily produce strawberries, as well as blueberries and blackberries, and is usually the first farm to bring berries to market.
Local Cooling Farms
Local Cooling Farms is located on sixty acres of land south of Bogalusa. Their primary goals are to grow nutrient-dense food for people, raise livestock with dignity, care and transparency, recycle some of the community’s agricultural residuals, and rebuild a healthy ecosystem on the property. The farm is owned and operated by Kate and Grant Estrade. Kate personally delivers farm fresh eggs to Peche on a weekly basis.
Peeps Farms
Peeps Farms is a poultry farm located in Carriere, Mississippi that specializes in yard eggs with love.
Perilloux Farm
Perilloux Farm is a six-acre farm in St. Charles Parish owned by the friendly farmer, Timmy Perilloux, who we have been purchasing from for the last 10 years. The restaurants utilize Perilloux’s traditional Southern greens, up to four varieties of kale, tomatoes, peppers, corn, beets, and anything else Timmy is willing to grow for us.
Poche Family Farm
Poche Family Farm is a small vegetable farm located in Independence, Louisiana that we have worked with for five years. The farm is a family venture run by Albert and Charise Poche along with their children Billie and Camille, that resulted out of a desire to eat well. While their produce is not certified organic, they focus on sustainable agriculture by using cover crops, organic pesticides and natural fertilizers wherever possible.
River Queen Greens
River Queen Greens is a Certified Naturally Grown vegetable farm in Lower Coast Algiers on New Orleans’ West Bank.The farm is situated ten miles down river from downtown New Orleans, across the street from the Mississippi River levee.Farm founders Cheryl Nunes and Annie Moore produce consistently abundant, healthy vegetables. Peche tries to utilize everything River Queens is able to offer which has included but is not limited to baby kale, salad greens, daikon radish, turnips, zucchini and summer squash.
Veggi Farmers Co-op
Veggi Farmers Cooperative is a group of local farmers and fisherfolk dedicated to providing the highest quality local produce and seafood to the Greater New Orleans area. VEGGI was established following the effects of the BP oil spill on the Vietnamese community and was developed to provide sustainable economic opportunities in urban agriculture.
LINK RESTAURANT GROUP JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION AWARD RECOGNITION
The James Beard Foundation Awards recognize outstanding achievement within the food and wine industry. Considered one of the most coveted marks of distinction within the culinary community, Link Restaurant Group partners are honored to have been recognized for their culinary achievements. Link’s flagship restaurant Herbsaint earned him a James Beard award in 2007 for Best Chef South. The same year Cochon was nominated for Best New Restaurant; The James Beard Foundation also honored Link’s first cookbook– Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link’s Louisiana (Clarkson Potter) with their top award for Best American Cookbook. Link was also nominated by the James Beard Foundation for the prestigious award of Outstanding Chef in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Stephen Stryjewski, chef/partner of Cochon, Cochon Butcher and Pêche Seafood Grill was named Best Chef: South at the 2011 James Beard Foundation Awards. In 2014 Pêche Seafood Grill was honored with two coveted James Beard Foundation Awards Best New Restaurant and Chef Ryan Prewitt Best Chef: South. In 2017, Chef de Cuisine Rebeca Wilcomb was named Best Chef: South for her stewardship of the Kitchen at Herbsaint.
BRETT ANDERSON
New Orleans seafood cookery is, by and large, a minimalist discipline – flour, butter, lemon, fish – and you can be excused for not seeing Pêche as practicing it. The last time I had speckled trout at the James Beard Award-winning restaurant it was fried whole, glazed with chili aioli and showered with peanuts. The signature crawfish dish is a spicy capellini pasta. Got a taste for that other great Louisiana crustacean? Start with the shrimp toast, which is what you think it is, only topped with pickles. That’s just scratching the surface of Pêche’s menu, which drifts from transcendent steak tartare and bubbly cauliflower-fontina gratin to beer-battered fish sticks and baked drum served in hot cast iron with falafel-crisp spheres of rice calas. On paper, the kitchen’s repertoire reads like the crossbred mutt that it is. In practice, chef-partner Ryan Prewitt simply brings new hues to Louisiana’s minimalist tradition. The result is the perfect manifestation of this Link Restaurant Group property’s original mission: to create a local seafood restaurant that reflects how New Orleanians eat today. Be thankful it includes an oyster bar.
Times Picayune Top 10 List: 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018
Peche Seafood Grill earns Four Beans
Brett Anderson
Fish are beasts. Flounder resemble shrunken sea monsters, with their crooked lips and creepy migrating eyes. You can tell they hang in the murky shadows just by the color of their skin. It’s dark enough to show through miso chili butter. Redfish, speckled trout and red snapper are sleeker species but all still unmistakably animals, with tails, skeletons and spiky fins. That’s a representative sample from my scrapbook of Pêche Seafood Grill, where meals are lessons in piscine anatomy. Look up from your plate at any moment and you’ll find a room of diners taking to the food like Alaskan brown bears to spawning salmon. They’re tearing through whole gulf fish, grilled or roasted in the heat of a live hardwood fire. The fish, the flames, the bones everyone are pulling clean from their mouths: These are the visual signatures and culinary touchstones of this remarkable restaurant. Still, whole fish aren’t even the half of it. Pêche is the realization of a modest but still visionary vision: a traditional Louisiana seafood restaurant that owes little to any particular style of restaurant that has come before. Its chef and co-owner, Ryan Prewitt, is not prone to wild experiments. Whatever thought process goes into Peche’s food is concealed beneath a veneer of simplicity…
What to Do in New Orleans: The Black Book
Lauren DeCarlo
In the Warehouse District, Balise (refined Southern food, like Gulf shrimp pan roast, in a historic town house), chef Donald Link’s Herbsaint (for the duck-leg confit), and Peche Seafood Grill (ah, that smothered catfish) are all worth pacing yourself for.
Where to Eat, Drink, and Party in New Orleans Right This Second
Brett Martin
This youngest sibling of Donald Link’s restaurant empire (which includes Herbsaint, Cochon and Cochon Butcher) is focused on gulf seafood of every stripe. Start with the stellar raw bar and end with a whole fish for the table.
Beyond the French Quarter: Experiencing New Orleans Like a Local
Todd Plummer
This James Beard Award–winning restaurant is consistently a top contender for the best restaurant in town, with an exciting approach to seafood that preserves local cooking techniques. The smothered catfish and Louisiana shrimp roll are outstanding.
Editor’s Letter by Dana Cowin
“Where have you been eating lately?” I get this question all the time. And luckily, it’s one of my favorites to answer, since I have the opportunity to try the most amazing restaurants around the country. So here’s a little update of where I’ve been recently. Pêche I stopped counting after 10: That’s how many whole fish I saw waiters carrying out to customers at Donald Link’s new restaurant. The whole-animal trend has now been embraced by pescatarians. Two friends and I shared a moist, flavorful grilled redfish with salsa verde. It could have served six!
21 Best Restaurants in New Orleans
Paul Oswell
Pêche celebrates a visceral approach to eating seafood, so expect whole fish delivered to the table, ready to be sliced up and eaten between tables of friends. The menu is deceptively simple, but the presentation, choice of ingredients, and dressings is what elevates the experience beyond the tourist traps of the French Quarter. It’s a Donald Link restaurant, so fans of Cochon wanting to ease off on the meat are in abundance, as are people keen to go beyond the usual shrimp and fish dishes that permeate this city.
Things to do in New Orleans
Amira Hashish
Chefs Donald Link, Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt are inspired by the cooking of South America, Spain, and the Gulf Coast at Pêche Seafood Grill. Focused on working with local fishermen and farmers who harvest sustainably, dishes are rustic and utterly moreish. In 2014, Pêche won a James Beard award for Best New Restaurant in America and their standards haven’t slipped. This place has celebrity draw too with the likes of Jennifer Lawrence booking tables.
8 of the best restaurants in New Orleans
Carly Fisher
NOLA is all about the seafood, and here you’ll find some of the freshest in town.
Another instant hit from The Link Group restaurant empire, chef Ryan Prewitt culls the bounty of local seafood and transforms it into sophisticated Southern-inspired dishes, rightfully earning him a James Beard Foundation Award for best chef in the South.
Great Oyster Bars from Coast to Coast
For spectacular seafood in the Big Easy, wander out of the bustling French Quarter to the Central Business District, home to Donald Link’s seafood-centric Pêche. Guests at the oyster bar have a prime view as busy shuckers prepare Gulf-sourced bivalves (from Dauphin Island and Grand Isle to name a few) served exclusively raw. After slurping the salty shells, advance to mains like a Louisiana Shrimp Roll or the whole catch of the day. Be sure to heed the servers’ advice and finish with the smooth and salty peanut pie from Link’s partner in crime, Pastry Chef Maggie Scales.
Six Essential New Orleans Restaurant Reservations
Laurie Woolever
New Orleans has plenty of places doing great things with oysters, crawfish, and shrimp. But none are like the Warehouse District’s Peche, a restaurant specializing in rustic, live-fire cooking that takes its style cues from Uruguay and Spain as much as Louisiana’s coast and bayous. Local oysters are reliably briny, and snapper tartare with coconut and lime, served with slices of sweet potato and crisped rice, is soft and crunchy, creamy and sharp. Intensely flavored shrimp bisque is a can’t-miss dish, as is the fire-grilled whole fish of the day. Pêche is part of the Link Restaurant Group of chef-proprietor Donald Link, whose empire includes Herbsaint, Cochon, and Cochon Butcher.
The Most Classic Restaurants in New Orleans
Katie Chang
The seafood at this bustling, casual eatery in the Warehouse District might be local, but the inspiration by chefs and partners Donald Link, Stephen Stryjewski, and Ryan Prewitt is global. Make a meal out of the hearty snacks and small plates, including the smoked tuna dip with house made saltines, crawfish and jalapeño capellini, and fried bread. Desserts (like the salted caramel cake) ensure your meal ends on a sweet note, too.
50 States of Dips
Layla Khoury-Hanold
Louisiana native Donald Link grew up visiting family in Southern Alabama and taking trips to the Florida coast, so it’s fitting that Peche, his seafood-centric New Orleans restaurant, celebrates the flavors and foodways of the entire Gulf coast. Link’s Smoked Tuna Dip is reminiscent of the ones he enjoyed at Gulf Coast fish shacks throughout his childhood, but he adds extra Southern flair by gently smoking Gulf-caught tuna over pecan and oak woods in the restaurant’s smoker until just cooked through. The tuna is then shredded with forks to retain texture, and folded with Creole mustard, mayonnaise, sour cream and Cajun spices. The creamy, smoky dip is served with Saltines, the unofficial table cracker of NOLA seafood restaurants.
CONCEPT OF THE YEAR – Other Fish in the Sea; and Ways to Cook Them
Pêche means “fishing” in French, but change the spelling to péché and it’s “sin.” In the case of the restaurant on Magazine Street opened earlier this year by chefs Ryan Prewitt, Stephen Stryjewski and Donald Link, the former is what’s intended, but you have to admit that both meanings are apt for a restaurant in New Orleans. Pêche was conceived as a seafood restaurant, but after the chefs spent time in Uruguay and Spain, they knew that a wood-burning grill had to be a feature as well. Factor in a raw bar and a serious drinks program and you get one of the most interesting restaurants to open in New Orleans in quite some time. It isn’t as though the place is immune to trends – there are small plates and bar food on the menu – but there aren’t a lot of other places doing whole fish on a wood-burning grill (redfish with salsa verde and American snapper with Meyer lemon on my last visit) and certainly none where the fish changes with such frequency that they print an insert daily. That insert also lists the oysters they have available and what they’re doing in the way of raw fish. There are always a few other items available on the raw side – a seafood salad, crab claws with chile and mint and a seafood platter, for example and highlights from the “snacks” menu include a smoked tuna dip served with saltines, hush puppies and fried bread with sea salt that’s completely addictive…. A few months ago I ran into chef Link while I was eating at Pêche. Link (and this is true of Stryjewski and Prewitt for that matter) is the kind of guy who lights up when he’s talking about food. What I remember most about that conversation was the way he described the Royal Red shrimp. He is fond of them, and justifiably so; they’re large, sweet-salty things that are cooked in a little butter but otherwise basically un-seasoned. They are the perfect example of what ingredient-driven cooking should be – not an excuse for a lack of technique, but the recognition that some things are best enjoyed simply.
Best New Restaurants
Brett Anderson
This airy warehouse space is where Donald Link, who rose to prominence as chef-owner of Herbsaint, and Stephen Stryjewski, Link’s co-chef and partner at Cochon, are empowering their Peche co-owner Ryan Prewitt, Herbsaint’s former chef de cuisine, to run a restaurant of his own. Cut to the chase: At this stage of the game, the youngest member of the modern family that is Link Restaurant Group is as good as its sibling restaurants (both among the best in town). The concept is south Louisiana seafood dishes, much of it cooked over hardwood coals. The twist is that the food tastes thrillingly new without disconnecting from tradition. After a meal at Peche Seafood Grill, it’s possible to imagine a fantasy fish camp where ground shrimp is tossed with housemade pasta or embedded in buttery, cocktail-time toasts; where blue crab enriches eggplant gratin or chile-spiked capellini; where whole grilled redfish is draped in salsa verde and drum is baked with ginger and tomato. That place is, in fact, not a fantasy; just be sure to book a table in advance, because everyone in town appears intent on living it at once.
Top 50 New Restaurants – Pêche Seafood Grill, New Orleans
Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski—along with chef-partner Ryan Prewitt—opened this homage to fish just down the street from their famed pork emporium, Cochon. The centerpiece here is a roaring wood-fired grill onto which most everything on the menu is tossed. Come here with a crew on nights when you want to eat a grouper as big as a fire hydrant.
On Our Radar – Restaurant Hit List
In New Orleans, Donald Link, Ryan Prewitt, and Stephen Stryjewski recently revealed Pêche Seafood Grill, an open-fire emporium inspired by a trip to Uruguay. Don’t miss the smothered cast-iron catfish, a riff on a Cajun classic.
New Orleans chefs are reaching new scales
Great seafood has never been hard to find around here, but an argument could be made for a certain lack of inspiration in the way many places prepare it. However, a new wave of seafood establishments have come onto the scene offering a different take on what can be done with the daily catch. They approach the same ingredients with a fresh perspective – and the results are rewarding. Pêche, the seafood-centric offering from the Link Restaurant Group, is one of the year’s more anticipated openings. In terms of design it shares more DNA with Cochon than Herbsaint, offering a dining room defined by floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed wooden beams, creating a feel that’s simultaneously contemporary and rustic. And like Cochon, the menu puts the focus on small plates, snacks and sides. But it’s the beast of a wood-burning grill, a custom-built iron and brick rig in the back that serves as the real engine of Pêche and is its most defining feature…
From the Gulf Coast, With Love: A Southern road trip shapes the seafood-centric menu at New Orleans chef Donald Link’s latest restaurant
Julia Reed
It’s very late on an early-spring evening, and I’m sitting at the French farmhouse table in my mother’s house in Seaside, Fla., looking at the remnants of several astonishingly good seafood dishes and more empty wine bottles than people. It’s the sort of scene I’ve surveyed many times at Donald Link’s New Orleans restaurant Herbsaint, in the company of the same festive group: Donald himself, the engine behind a Crescent City culinary empire that also includes Cochon and Butcher; his top manager, Heather Lolley; Cochon chef-partner Stephen Stryjewski; and Ryan Prewitt, chef-partner at the soon-to-open Pêche Seafood Grill, the restaurant that’s a long-held dream of all four. This particular meal, though, is about more than late-night camaraderie. It’s the culmination of a research road trip along Florida’s Gulf Coast to collect ingredients and inspiration for Pêche. The restaurant was originally conceived, not long after Katrina, as a homage to the rustic seafood joints that once lined the banks of New Orleans’s Lake Pontchartrain. Now, after seven years and similar missions to South America and Spain, the glorified-seafood-shack concept has morphed into a worldly, gutsy and thoroughly modern restaurant. Two key inspirations are what Donald describes as “the primitive, soulful way of cooking” over fire in Uruguay, and the grilling wizard Victor Arguinzoniz, of Asador Etxebarri, in the Basque Country. Still, the team has never lost sight of the fabulous fresh ingredients closer to home, on the stretch of beach known as the Redneck Riviera. Our first stop is Burris Farm Market, in Loxley, Ala., where we stock up on the muscadine wine vinegar that Donald loves, along with loaves of fresh-baked yeast bread. Lunch at the Original Point (motto: “Not Fancy But Famous”), a landmark near Perdido Key, Fla., includes such old-style Gulf Coast classics as smoked tuna dip and fried mullet backbones (yes, you eat the bones, chased immediately by lots of cold beer), as well as Royal Reds, a ruby-colored deep water shrimp virtually undiscovered until the early 1990s and so sweet and salty that folks make the three-hour drive from New Orleans just to eat them. A half-hour away in Pensacola, the enormous market Joe Patti’s specializes in all things seafood. A crew of fresh-faced female 20-somethings in matching baseball caps takes orders (“Have I asked you yet if you’re having a good day?”), while 80-something Frank Patti (son of Joe), is the barker in their midst, hawking specials with a hand-held mike one minute and taking a cleaver to a tuna filet the next. After the team stocks up on Florida clams, more Royal Reds, Spanish mackerel, red snapper and scamp, a superior member of the grouper family, we head down Highway 98 toward Seaside, 75 miles away. The road to Pêche, slated to open on April 20, was a lot less direct. As early as 2006, Donald went so far as to nail down a location and mock up a menu, but parking was a problem, and everybody was already busy opening restaurants, writing books and collecting awards (a James Beard for Donald, another for Stephen and a third for Donald’s book “Real Cajun”). Still, they kept coming back around to seafood. So when a spot opened up in the perfect building, a one-time livery undergoing a meticulous restoration on a Warehouse District corner, they jumped. Not only did the space have great character and some weird history—Jefferson Davis was embalmed upstairs—there was room for a free-standing oyster and crudo bar as well as a wood-burning oven, modeled after the rigs used in Uruguay and built by Donald’s uncle Duane Link. In the kitchen at the Seaside house, the cooks get to work while Heather and I uncork bottles of Txakolina, a dry, citrusy and slightly fizzy Basque wine she and the boys discovered on a pilgrimage to Etxebarri. At Pêche, one side of the oven will have a raging wood fire throwing off coals that will be raked to the other side beneath a low grill. On our deck, we have a cheap gas contraption instead, but Ryan manages to pull off a perfectly cooked mackerel accompanied by delicious grilled chard, and Royal Reds dressed with garlic, oil and lemon. Inside, Stephen and Donald work on a chili-glazed scamp and a clam stew that is the essence of what Donald says they hope to achieve at Pêche: “seafood in a ballsy way.” Enriched with the leftover fish heads, bones and throats, it’s a way for the team to cook seafood without relying on typical go-tos like pork stock or bacon to provide nuance and depth. My favorite dish of the night is the raw seafood salad, enlivened by citrus and a dash of the farmers market muscadine vinegar, and served with grilled slices of the yeast bread that are deemed a great success. But then Ryan comes in with another accompaniment, snapper skin grilled to a perfect crisp and dusted with sea salt—an ingenious receptacle for the fish and the kind of productive playing around that all three chefs thrive on. Lunch the next day features the time-honored combo of Budweiser and Apalachicola oysters on the half shell, and sparks a conversation between Stephen and Ryan about the possibility of making their own saltines. Even the perfectionist Donald rolls his eyes at that. Pêche is poised to be a world-class restaurant, but it’s still, in part at least, an oyster bar. In New Orleans. “Guys,” he says, “the crackers have to come in the cellophane packets.”
seafood salad 15
gulf shrimp 14
steak tartare w/ oyster aioli 15
seafood platter 54
smoked tuna dip 10
fried bread w/ sea salt 6
hushpuppies 7
shrimp toast w/ sesame + pickles 12
crispy okra w/ cilantro 9
catfish w/ pickled greens + chili broth 12
fish sticks w/ urban south beer batter 14
grilled chicken w/ white bbq sauce 10
spicy ground shrimp + noodles 15
fried oysters w/ pickled corn + kimchi aioli 19
seafood gumbo 12
cabbage salad w/ carrots, peanuts + soy 10
baked drum w/ corn, squash, coconut + cashews 34
grilled tuna w/ okra, chili, garlic + tamarind 36
grilled hanger steak w/ salsa verde 37
grilled chicken w/ field peas + bacon 26
jumbo shrimp w/ eggplant, corn + tomato 29
whole grilled fish mp
22oz ribeye 85
brussels sprouts w/ chili vinegar 8
brabant potatoes 7
field peas w/ bacon + green onions 9
eggplant w/ almonds, sambal + basil 9
heirloom tomato salad w/ cucumber + cilantro 9
grilled zucchini w/ feta, capers + dill 10
carrot sticky toffee pudding 12
cream cheese ice cream + candied pecan
salted peanut pie 14
salted peanut ice cream + chocolate sauce
key lime pie 12
buttermilk chantilly + creme anglaise
salted caramel cake 12
caramel buttercream, milk chocolate ganache
rum cake 14
peaches + dulce de leche ice cream
ice cream or sorbet 7
daily selection
pastry chef maggie scales
cocktails
charred catalan 15
gin, blanco vermouth, smoked olive
little red corvette 14
banhez mezcal, hibiscus, jalapeno, lime
gintilly shakedown 14
gin, rosemary, ginger, cucumber,
lemon, cava
ponchatoula smash 13
bourbon, strawberry, basil
angry pirate 13
el dorado 5yr, plantation pineapple rum,
lime, pepita orgeat
no surrender 15
vodka, apple whiskey, cider,
honey, lemon
audubon boulevard 15
rye, cocchi americano, salers aperitif,
chartreuse, grapefruit bitters
sparkling
cava, conca del riu, raventós i blanc 2019 11
champagne, reims, henriot nv brut 24
white
sauvignon blanc, robertson, springfield estate 2021 12
sauvignon blanc, sancerre, girard 2021 17
chenin blanc, stellenbosch, stellenrust 2022 12
albariño, rías baixas, morgadío 2021 13
gruner veltliner, kremstal, stadt krems 2021 13
chardonnay, willamette, willakenzie estate 2018 13
chardonnay, chablis, droin 2020 21
rosé
grenache blend, mediterranee, domaine mesclances 11
red
nebbiolo, arneis, langhe, luigi giordano 2021 13
gamay, brouilly, cháteau de la terrière 2020 13
pinot noir, bourgogne, justin girardin 2020 14
cabernet sauvignon blend, napa valley, rocca family vineyards 2016 18
bottles
miller, highlife (wi) 5
abita, amber (la) 6
bayou teche, biere pale (la) 6
augustiner brau, edelstoffer pilsner (ger) 7
weihenstephaner, hefe weissbier (ger) 7
konig, pilsner (ger) 7
cans
pontoon, one ski ipa (ga) 7
cider
saint arnold dry cider (tx) 6
isastegi “sargardo naturala” (sp) 375ml 13
cambremer cidre pays d’auge (fr) 10/45
barq’s root beer 4
mexican coke 4
fentiman’s ginger beer 6
huhu ginger beer (16oz) 8
st. pauli girl n/a 5
aqua panna still water 9
mountain valley sparkling water 9
Inspired by the cooking of South America, Spain, and the Gulf Coast, Chefs Donald Link, Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt designed Pêche Seafood Grill. Focused on working with local fishermen and farmers who harvest sustainably, Pêche serves simply prepared contemporary dishes, rustic creations cooked on an open hearth, as well as fresh oysters and Gulf fish.
In 2014, Chef Ryan Prewitt was honored with a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: South. That same year Pêche won a James Beard award for Best New Restaurant in America. Pêche is continuously named one of the Top 10 Best Restaurants in New Orleans annually by Brett Anderson, Times Picayune.
“We strive to create a unique New Orleans seafood restaurant using the traditions of live-fire cooking techniques experienced here in the South and abroad.” - Donald Link
Limited seating available by reservation only. Please contact us at 504.522.1744 or info@pecherestaurant.com with any questions or concerns.
For private dining, we are pleased to offer Calcasieu, our private dining facility in the Warehouse District. For more information, please view our website or call 504.588.2188.
HOURS
MON-SUN 11AM–10PM
PH. 504 522 1744
EMAIL: info@pecherestaurant.com
MEDIA REQUESTS: LIZBODET@GMAIL.COM
800 MAGAZINE STREET
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130