Take a beautiful room that deserves a first-class restaurant, in a part of New Orleans where the dining scene is seeing much change; add a rising local hospitality team that’s already made two stand-out hits across town. There you have Brutto Americano (600 Carondelet St.) and the reasons for my excitement at the debut of this modern, mostly Italian restaurant in the CBD.
It’s a little like seeing actors you admire getting their turn on a storied stage.
Brutto Americano opened last week after a few test runs and is now serving breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. You’re coming here for a cocktail with an Italian accent at the grand bar up front, as the streetcar rattles past the big windows. Stay for a meal and you’re having a glass of well-priced Italian white wine and a run at a menu with a style perhaps already familiar from its two Uptown siblings — Costera and Osteria Lupo.
A few more introductions are in order, starting with the venue. That’s the Barnett, the new name for the hotel that first opened as the Ace Hotel back in 2016, converting a historic art deco building into a hive of hipness. The new name comes from the property’s more prosaic past as Max Barnett Furniture Store, a downtown fixture until the 1970s.
The hotel operators are different (it’s now a Hyatt-branded property), and it feels just a bit toned down from the Ace days. But all the pieces are still there — the cool lobby bar, the suite of retail spaces, the coffee shop (now called All Good), the in-house music venue (now called Good Measure), and the rooftop pool bar (now called High Five).
Classic room, new talent
Left largely untouched through the rebranding change is one of the more striking restaurant spaces in town. This soaring room, incredibly once hidden under drop ceilings as a furniture showroom, was a major revelation when the first restaurant opened. That was Josephine Estelle, also an Italian concept, from the Memphis chefs Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman…