Thursday, June 27, 2013.
Brennan's Shuts Down, Leaves Questions Open. The Munch Factory Again.
As the last few customers were spooning up the bananas Foster end of their breakfasts at Brennan's this afternoon, something unexpected occurred. The Orleans Parish Civil Sheriff's deputies entered the restaurant and told everyone to leave.
They were enforcing an order requested by the new owners of the well-known pink building at 417 Royal Street--Brennan's home since 1955. When all the customers and employees were gone, the electricity and gas were turned off. Those who showed up for dinner tonight and every other meal as of this writing were turned away. Brennan's was closed.
And so ended Part One of an already long, complex story. It began last year at the latest, when Brennan's and its owners found themselves with a cash flow problem. A group of businessmen took advantage of this and bought the mortgage on the building from the Brennan's longtime bank. After decades of leasing 417 Royal--the historic former home of famous New Orleans chess grandmaster Paul Morphy--Pip, Jimmy and Ted Brennan purchased the building some twenty years ago.
Having one's mortgage bought by a new lender is hardly unusual. It can happen at any time, usually harmlessly. My own home mortgage has been sold twice. But these new investors saw an exploitable weakness. Especially since the Brennans were apparently not aware that the transfer of the mortgage had happened.
What followed were claims that the monthly mortgage payments were not being made, a foreclosure, a sheriff's auction of the property (the new mortgage holders bought the building for $7 million), and now an eviction.
As of Thursday afternoon, Brennan's was still in business, but had no premises in which to operate. Ted Brennan and Owen "Pip" Brennan are brothers. But that, it seems, is about the only thing they agree on at the moment. Since 1973, they and their brother Jimmy Brennan operated Brennan's very profitably and with no sign of turmoil. That ended when Ted and Jimmy ejected Pip from the business because, they claimed, he violated a clause in the byzantine agreement under which the brothers operated Brennan's. Jimmy's death a few years ago complicated everything. Pip recently attempted to assert ownership rights, kicking off another set-to.
In the years before all that legal action, the Brennan brothers were suing their cousin Dickie Brennan over whether he had the right to use his name on his steakhouse. It was another eruption of the long-running feud between the Brennans on Royal Street and the Brennans of all the other restaurants (including, confusingly enough, Brennan's in Houston). The expense of litigating that matter was not insubstantial, and that may have triggered the cash issues at Brennan's. It's one of many ironies that have come to light.
The Thursday eviction--as shocking as it was--was eclipsed by what the Times-Picayune called "a bombshell." Ralph Brennan--another of the brothers' cousins, and owner of five New Orleans restaurants (Ralph's on the Park and the Red Fish Grill, most notably)--was revealed as one of the major investors in the new corporation that now owns and took taken possession of 417 Royal Street. A statement from Ralph says that he knew about the money problems at Brennan's and offered to help, but that he was turned away. He said that he was concerned about keeping the restaurant in the Brennan family.
Ralph's presence in this mix gives a good idea of where all this is headed. Ralph is not only an astute restaurateur, but a well-trained businessman. He was a CPA before joining the family's restaurant business. And unless more surprises come out, there shortly will be a new restaurant in the superb location that has been Brennan's since 1955.
In order to go on, Pip and Ted Brennan will now have either to find a new location pronto, or somehow make a deal with the building's owners. They also have to come to an understanding between themselves. None of these will be easy.
One other thing the Brennan brothers had to do: get all the food out of there, a demand of the new owners of the building. It all went to Second Harvest Food Bank.
But here's a question that has not come up. Brennan's had a large and distinguished wine cellar. Where will that go? Have the new owners seized it? If not, where will it be stored until what I predict will become known as "The Real Brennan's" opens?
I have received over two dozen letters from people who are pleasing to put all this maneuvering to a stop, and to reinstall Pip as owner. They all mention the many lost jobs--something Pip has referred to, himself. But I don't think even the loudest public outcry will make much difference in what will certainly be the biggest restaurant story of the year, or perhaps the decade.
The thing that gets me most about it is that when the brothers took over from their aunts and uncles in 1973, Brennan's was the most profitable restaurant in the world. It always had great food, doing the traditional New Orleans restaurant dishes with first-class ingredients. Beautiful place, too. Its business has not been flagging; a waiter told me that the place had a thousand people on the reservation books for this past weekend. At its lofty prices (the highest in town, except perhaps for tasting menus at places like Stella!), open seven days a week from morning through night, Brennan's was a money machine. What the hell happened?
To dinner at the Munch Factory, a nice surprise when I first tried it a couple of weeks ago. Especially because of its Gentilly location, close to the University of New Orleans. That's a part of town that has never had many restaurants worth talking about. I might go so far as to call it the best restaurant in that part of town since Leona's Il Ristorante closed, over thirty years ago.
I learned from the manager that the Munch Factory's premises were those of the infamous Luigi's Pizza. That was one of the first restaurants I ever reviewed, back when I was writing for The Driftwood, the UNO student newspaper, in 1972. I thought I recognized something about the place.
Despite the frivolous name, the Munch Factory's cooking is ambitious and imaginative. An appetizer special was a quartet of delicate (if you can imagine) taco shells filled with raw tuna, cilantro, and wasabi aioli. These were not only delicious and refreshingly cool, but good-looking and a bargain at $10.
How's the herbed chicken, I asked. It's one of the most popular dishes in the house, said the server. I can see why. It's the better part of a half-chicken (it looked to me that some parts had been trimmed away, but that still left a generous plate of food), baked first then broiled right before being served. That allows faster service than the half-hour that a broiled chicken requires when cooked from raw. The sauce was a buttery, spicy, light-golden affair with a nice pepper glow. The potatoes came in the form of croquettes, with a bit of tasso inside, and garlic-sauteed green beans finished the plate.
Reading that description again, we find here a decidedly Creole flavor in a rather original dish. I love it when that happens. It confirms my belief that our local kitchens are still moving ahead.
Dessert was a large cube of tres leches cake--more than I could finish. It was as wet (well beyond merely moist, but wet is what this Latin American cake is supposed to be) as it was sweet (very--but that's authentic, too).
The manager (a very pleasant young woman, which describes the rest of the dining room staff, too) told me something I've never heard before. "We were wondering what we would do when you can in to try us," she said. "We didn't think you'd just show up without us knowing it was you! It made it easier to know you liked us first."
I've never known how people figure out who I am. As I recall, the guy who ran Luigi's had me nailed, too--and that's when I was truly an unknown. Must be my body language.
Munch Factory. Gentilly: 6325 Elysian Fields Ave.. 504-324-5372.
