It was a financial drama out of Tennessee Williams, who of course lived only blocks away: an old New Orleans family in a mansion worth millions, without a dime to fix up the place or even keep the lights turned on. Thanks to one of the nation’s most respected restaurant families, one of the nation’s oldest community theaters can turn on those lights again - and serve up a bigtime version of dinner and a show. In the French Quarter, the curtain is up on Dickie’s Brennan’s newest restaurant called Tableau, on the eye-popping seafood appetizer pictured above, and on the new season of Le Petit Theatre de Vieux Carre.
Le Petit had been making theater happen in New Orleans just steps off Jackson Square since the 1920s. In fact, the company started performing in a drawing room, explaining its early name, The Drawing Room Players. But the beloved old building took some hits from Hurricane Katrina and then, about a year ago, the money ran out. The community was saddened, even though money running out is what happens to New Orleans institutions. Ask any New Orleanian what he or she misses and the list will go on and on: Schwegmann’s groceries, D.H. Holmes and Maison Blanche department stores, K&B drugstores, Pontchartrain Beach amusememnt park. That last, now-lost institution on the lakefront would figure indirectly into the rescue of Le Petit.
Actor Bryan Batt, best known as Sal in the early seasons of TV’s Mad Men, grew up in the family that owned Pontchartrain Beach. And his late mother Gayle, hilariously and touchingly described in his New Orleans memoir She Ain’t Heavy… She’s My Mother, was a crazy-obsessed supporter of Le Petit. No doubt Bryan learned about theater there as a kid. The actor called his childhood friend Dickie - as in Brennan - and said: Hey, we can’t let this happen. They talked about it a while. Business partners were consulted, dreams were dreamed, plans were made.
As a result, Dickie Brennan and Co bought a piece of the historic Le Petit building - a piece that had the good sense to form the corner facing Jackson Square - and started turning it into a classic New Orleans restaurant. As a result, Le Petit not only could reopen with a season that includes such diversities as Hair and Death of a Salesman but could bank some of the money as an endowment for the future. How not New Orleans is that? And also as a result, you can now enjoy this sterling performance of BBQ Shrimp right up until the show’s about the start.
As the guy with his name on Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse, Brennan knows his way around a great piece of beef. Indeed, he is the only member of this amazing restaurant family to actually work as an executive chef - at the Brennan’s outpost in Houston and at Palace Cafe on broad Canal Street. This steak has a definite theatricality about it, being named Rossini in honor of the opera composer and showing up, as it must classically, with foie gras and a sauce kissed by lots of red wine.
Tableau serves excellent desserts, all made by a local-born pastry chef who’s worked her way through the Dickie Brennan family - Palace Cafe, Steakhouse, Bourbon House. And this is a good thing, since there’s a special door that lets Le Petit patrons step across and enjoy dessert and coffee before the show, during intermission or even after each night’s final ovation quiets down. One of the best sweet finales at Tableau is this New Orleans-style bread pudding made with the legendary “monkey bread.”
So Le Petit lives to act again, starting its new season Sept. 6 with a season-appropriate show called Lombardi - thanks to the two tallest guys in this picture, childhood friends Bryan Batt and Dickie Brennan. Saying New Orleans didn’t need another great restaurant is like saying the world didn’t need another great theater. We need them all and always more, along with the people who dream a little to make sure the show actually does go on.
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