Popeyes Founder’s Cheesecake Bistro Has Closed | Eater New Orleans

"Renovated by Al Copeland in the late 1990s (he said he’d never read Ann Rice’s book before that) into Straya, the space became a garish, peach-colored restaurant flanked by golden panthers with rhinestone-studded collars that sold sushi and California cuisine. I found that Ann Rice publicly denounced the building as a "monstrosity," and the two traded thousands of dollars’ worth of full-page ads in the Times-Picayune and even faced a libel suit, making the building notorious; by 2001 Copeland had closed Straya and replaced it with Cheesecake Bistro (sans golden panthers)." - Stephanie Carter