Gabriel Stulman Opens the Jones

"A longtime Cajun spot was completely reinvented while leaving several exterior relics intact — an orange-and-blue façade, an Elvis bust draped in cheap Mardi Gras beads, a neon EAT sign, chipped blue benches and the original bar — as deliberate nods to its history under Jim Moffett. The new operator kept the building’s character but performed a gut renovation inside, replacing leather banquettes with kilim-trimmed seating, swapping center tables for a communal table and leather sofa, covering the old wall menu with a large mirror framed in blond wood, and repainting daffodil-yellow surfaces white with exposed wood. The kitchen, led by longtime collaborator Jack Harris, leans café-to-seafood: morning service (opening at 7:30 a.m.) features egg sandwiches, artful pastries, fresh-baked bread and third-wave coffee, while dinner expands into a sharable, seafood-forward lineup — a cheffed-up Filet-O-Fish, tinned sardines with salted butter and baguette, poached prawns, spaghetti with sardines, Manila clams with a Cajun barbecue twist and a raw bar — alongside low- and no-ABV cocktails (examples include a Five On It and salted celery lemonade) and a compact wine list. The owner frames the redesign as honoring the site’s storied past (Basquiat and Madonna anecdotes) while updating it into a familiar, lived-in neighborhood destination inspired in part by intimate, ungimmicky seafood-focused spots in Paris." - Nikita Richardson