Brennan's is a
Creole restaurant in the
French Quarter
The French Quarter, also known as the , is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. After New Orleans (french: La Nouvelle-Orléans) was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city developed around the ("Old Squ ...
of
,
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
.
History
Brennan's was founded in 1946 by
Owen Brennan, an Irish-American restaurateur and New Orleans native. It was originally called the Vieux Carré restaurant and was located on
Bourbon Street
Bourbon Street (french: Rue Bourbon, es, Calle de Borbón) is a historic street in the heart of the French Quarter of New Orleans. Extending thirteen blocks from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue, Bourbon Street is famous for its many bars an ...
across from the Old Absinthe House until 1956 when it moved to its current location.
This building, a two-story French Quarter mansion at 417
Royal Street constructed in 1795, was built for Don José Faurie and later housed the Banque de la Louisiane, the first bank in Louisiana. From 1841 to 1891, the mansion had been owned by the Morphy family, with
Paul Morphy
Paul Charles Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and is often considered the unofficial World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he was ca ...
, the celebrated chess player and unofficial world chess champion, living there until his death in 1884. In 1920 William Ratcliffe Irby gave the building to
Tulane University
Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...
and it was initially leased by Owen Brennan in 1954 to open the following year as Brennan's. The restaurant purchased the building in 1984.
Because Brennan's father owned a share of the restaurant, the restaurant was eventually inherited by Brennan's siblings as well as his children. In 1973, disagreement within the Brennan family over the expansion of the restaurant line led to a split into several different corporations, with the original New Orleans restaurant being wholly owned by Brennan's widow and children, and other restaurants in New Orleans, Houston, and Dallas, the
Brennan Family Restaurants
The Brennan Family Restaurants are a group of restaurants owned or operated by family members of the late Owen Brennan (restaurateur), Owen Brennan of New Orleans, Louisiana.
In the 1970s, there was a Brennan's Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia.
L ...
, being owned by Brennan's siblings and their children.
Although the section of Royal Street in the French Quarter was spared the flooding suffered by most of the city in the
levee failures during
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...
in 2005, Brennan's did suffer significant damage, largely due to the contents of second-story refrigerators melting and seeping onto lower floors. The restaurant's extensive
wine cellar
A wine cellar is a storage room for wine in bottles or barrels, or more rarely in carboys, amphorae, or plastic containers. In an ''active'' wine cellar, important factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system. ...
lost temperature control, ruining the entire wine collection.
Following an extensive renovation, Brennan's re-opened on June 8, 2006. Brennan's closed on June 28, 2013.
The new owners of Brennan's, Terry White and Ralph Brennan (a cousin of the former owners) purchased the building and the business at auction(s) after the former owners ran into financial trouble. For more than a year, the historic building (circa 1795) underwent an extensive renovation. The new Brennan's was unveiled in the fall of 2014.
Cultural references
Brennan's was featured in a season two episode of ''
Ghost Hunters'' in which the
TAPS team investigated claims of
paranormal activity
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...
.
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III ( ; January 12, 1951 – February 17, 2021) was an American conservative political commentator who was the host of '' The Rush Limbaugh Show'', which first aired in 1984 and was nationally syndicated on AM and FM r ...
once stated (in a
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
interview with
Maureen Dowd
Maureen Brigid Dowd (; born January 14, 1952) is an American columnist for ''The New York Times'' and an author.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Dowd worked for ''The Washington Star'' and ''Time'', writing news, sports and feature articles. ...
) that he would sometimes charter a jet and go somewhere for dinner, adding Brennan's was his "all-time favorite restaurant."
See also
*
List of Louisiana Creole restaurants
References
External links
Official Site(New Orleans location)
Official Site(Houston Location) (historical)
{{Restaurants in New Orleans
Louisiana Creole restaurants in the United States
Louisiana Creole culture in New Orleans
Restaurants in New Orleans
French Quarter
Reportedly haunted locations in Louisiana
Restaurants established in 1946
Houses completed in 1795
1946 establishments in Louisiana