Arnaud's

In 1918 a French wine salesman named Arnaud Cazenave opened a restaurant on Bienville Street in the French Quarter. He had immigrated to New Orleans in 1902 from France by way of New York. His philosophy: there are no less than 176 ways to prepare an egg, and each one is better than the other. Shrimp Arnaud — cold shrimp in Creole remoulade — has been on the menu since opening day. Cazenave died in 1948. His daughter Germaine Wells took over management and maintained the restaurant practices her father established. In 1957 the National Restaurant Association recognized her for her hospitality as a restaurateur. In 1956 The New York Times published Arnaud's recipe for Oysters Bienville, the recipe having been given to the paper by Wells. By 1978 the restaurant had deteriorated from neglect. That year Archie Casbarian and his wife Jane Casbarian acquired management, initially as a lease. The Casbarians had considerable experience in the hospitality industry. They restored Arnaud's to contemporary standards while retaining its original appeal, updating both the building and the menu. To finance the renovations they sold timeshare rights to tables: for $10,000, buyers received $12,000 in food and drink credit, a guarantee their table would be available within thirty minutes of contacting the restaurant, and permanent memorialization on a wall. The arrangement created a sense of ownership among some of the clientele. Under the terms of the lease, Wells continued to live in an apartment within the restaurant buildings and exerted some influence over management. The Casbarians acquired full ownership at the time of Wells's death in 1983. That same year they opened the Germaine Cazenave Wells Mardi Gras Museum. During the 1978 renovation, the family had discovered Wells's collection of Mardi Gras costumes and artifacts in storage at the restaurant. She had been active in the New Orleans Mardi Gras, serving as queen of several krewes. Arnaud's was one of the first local restaurants to reopen after Hurricane Katrina, which caused great damage in the Greater New Orleans area in August 2005. It reopened in November 2005. As of 2014 Arnaud's is run by the fourth generation of the Casbarian family. The restaurant serves classic Louisiana Creole food and has fourteen named dining rooms with a capacity of up to 220 customers. The bar remained open surreptitiously during Prohibition. More recently, the French 75 Bar won the James Beard Award for outstanding bar program — in 2010, Esquire magazine included it among fifteen bars worthy of a visit as a destination.