Pêche Seafood Grill
Reconstructed from a single photograph, a historic timber structure exposes thoughtful, modern interiors.
Category
Commercial
Hospitality
Interiors
Adaptive Reuse + Modernization
Size 5,000 SF
Location New Orleans, LA
Year 2013
800 Magazine Street is a $6.7 million, 30,000 square foot interior and exterior renovation on one of New Orleans’ best-recognized streets. Converted in 2013, this three-story mixed-use project was built in 1844 as a livery. It later housed an undertaker (widely accepted as the site of Jefferson Davis’s preparation for burial) and the American Coffee Company. Over the years successive owners modified the building repeatedly, damaging the structure, defacing its architecture, and obscuring its architectural significance.
Purchased for redevelopment by the Link Restaurant Group in 2008, it's now home to the twice-James Beard-awarded Pêche Seafood Grill.
Inspired by South American, Spanish, and Gulf Coast cooking traditions, the 5,000 SF restaurant features exposed ceiling joists, beams, columns, and exterior brick walls. Salvaged materials from the building itself were used in the renovation, including wood flooring, stair treads, and decorative wood and steel elements. The project was eligible for federal and state rehabilitation tax credits and preservation easements – an important storyline in the rebuilding of Post-Katrina New Orleans – and designed with historically compatible materials.
Outcome
800 Magazine Street also houses 9 apartment units with large terraces and onsite parking - revitalizing a historic Warehouse District corner through adaptive-reuse, and establishing a sensational and vibrant culinary destination.
The dining room and finishes highlight the warehouse’s rough timber construction. The reclaimed heart pine ceiling is a complex suspended acoustic ceiling that isolates restaurant noise from the residential units above. Custom tables, chairs and banquets were manufactured from reclaimed staves of oak whiskey barrels and steel frames. Large expanses of glass set in restored warehouse exterior millwork open the restaurant up to the world outside. Towering Cypress doors open into Pêche’s bar under the intricately reconstructed Italianate Gallery.
The bar consists of a custom bead-board back bar, solid sinker cypress countertop, faced with blackened steel. Brick and heavy timber structural elements are left exposed to retain the ambiance of the historic warehouse.
The kitchen wall is finished with blackened steel panels. An opening in the wall gives customers a glimpse into the kitchen and the custom wood grill. A custom designed open-flamed wood-burning grill, designed in collaboration between the client and Trapolin-Peer, is constructed out of a volcanic ash material, known as Isokern, and is the kitchen’s premier tool. Wood supply for the grill is stored under the service counter and serves as an additional focal point in the texture rich environment.
As in other traditional New Orleans seafood restaurants, the oyster bar, made from a white Carrera marble top and a blackened steel face, is a popular area to watch the preparation and enjoy freshly shucked oysters.
Awards
AIA New Orleans, Design AwardsHonorable Mention, 2017
AIA Louisiana, Design AwardsAward of Merit, 2017
AIA Gulf States Region, Design AwardsHonor Award, 2017
Associated Builders & ContractorsExcellence in Construction Award, 2014
Louisiana Landmarks SocietyAward for Excellence, 2014