NEW ORLEANS (AP) - New Orleans restaurant group Dickie Brennan & Co. has been quietly developing a multifaceted new project called the Commissary. It starts with a commercial kitchen big enough to feed an army. Now, it’s being redeployed to help feed a community.
Under the original plan, the Commissary’s first goal was to prepare food for the five restaurants in Dickie Brennan’s company — Palace Café, Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse, Bourbon House, Tableau and Acorn.
In its second phase, the Commissary would also become a market, giving the public access to many of the same foods the restaurants use, from steaks, seafood and charcuterie to desserts and prepared items (like soups and stocks). It would add an in-house eatery and a bar, to create a place where people can eat, shop and see the inner workings of bringing regional food from producer to plate.
The coronavirus shutdowns have changed those plans, and effectively flipped them. The Commissary will open in the Lower Garden District next week. With the group’s restaurants all temporarily closed, the Commissary will start by supplying meals for home, and also meals for people in need.
“There was a different plan for this, but we felt the sooner we could open with what we have now, the better for everyone,” said Geordie Brower, a chef with Dickie Brennan & Co. and part of the next generation of the family behind it.
On April 30, the Commissary will start serving complete family-style meals for home, a rotating selection of its signature restaurant dishes and DIY kits for home cooking (see details below).
However, the first food served from the Commissary will be “extended family meals,” offered free to the company’s staff as well as other hospitality workers and musicians now out of work. The first edition of these meals happens Friday (April 24), from noon to 2 p.m., with a drive-thru format for people to pick up free servings of shrimp and grits and ice cream po-boys from New Orleans Ice Cream Company.
Contributions from Jim Beam and Crystal hot sauce maker Baumer Foods are helping fund the community meals. More family meal distributions are planned for next week, and the company is looking for ways to extend it to a regular service during the shutdowns.
The Commissary was developed at 634 Orange St., in a former garage in a stretch of old warehouses and maritime businesses just off Tchoupitoulas Street.
Across 7,000 square feet there’s a glass-in butcher shop and dry aging room, seafood handling areas, a bakery, rotisserie ovens, wood-fired grills, and a bank of kettles so big they look like personal hot tubs. Some of the equipment is repurposed from the company’s restaurants, since the group planned to transfer some of the work normally done across five busy kitchens to the Commissary.
Many of the pieces here are being directed by the next generation of Dickie Brennan & Co.’s family owners. That includes Brower, Matthew Pettus, Sara Brennan, a baker, and her brother Richard Brennan III, who has been working to expand the company’s whole animal butchery program.
The unveiling of the Commissary was supposed to be different. But in changed times, they think the facility might be more important now.
“The whole picture for what’s in demand has changed, but we can still use this to provide the community with restaurant quality food for home and help feed more people,” said Richard Brennan.
The idea behind the Commissary had been taking shape for years. Company managers saw it as a transformational addition to the group, helping streamline operations, boosting consistency for signature dishes served at different restaurants and opening new career-building avenues for staff, who could train and add skills in different areas.
All of that is still in play for the future when restaurant start getting closer to normal business. Now though, they’re focused on how customers as well as food purveyors and producers can use the facility.
It could become a distribution point for fishermen and farmers who normally supply the restaurants to reach the public directly, and it can put more of the company’s staff back to work sooner. The Commissary’s open design and ample space gives it adaptability, including the potential to get back to some of what it was original envisioned to provide. After all, a bar was drawn into the blueprint early on.
“When we’re allowed to gather again and do all the things New Orleanians love to do, this will be a great place to come eat and drink and be together,” said Sara Brennan
The Commissary’s opening menu has three sections, all by pre-order and all for take away (orders begin April 30):
- Hot items are portions for family-style meals, including whole and half rotisserie chickens with duck fat potatoes and vegetables, crawfish etouffee with salad, and desserts like white chocolate bread pudding and take-and-bake quarts of cookie dough.
- This will be joined by rotating selections from Dickie Brennan & Co. restaurant menus, like Palace Café crabmeat cheesecake, Bourbon House redfish on the half shell and the Dickie Brennan Steakhouse prime burger.
- Cook-at-home packages include steaks for the grill with steakhouse sides, pizza kits, charcuterie and cheese boards, shrimp boil kits and a “breakfast for dinner” riff. There are also prepared foods for home include stocks and turtle soup and gumbo ya-ya by the pint or quart, steakhouse side dishes (like creamed spinach), dips and salads, plus steaks by the cut to grill at home.
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