It's frustrating that the two most famous elements of New Orleans culture have only rarely come together in one venue. In restaurants with live music or music clubs with food, either the food or the music are usually distinctly inferior to the other. It took equal measures of guts and capital to build and open the Little Gem. But it seems to be catching on, and it's hard to imagine a better place for immersion into the local voodoo.
The Little Gem serves two very different clienteles. At lunchtime, its down-home menu grabs a big slice of the workforce in the nearby City Hall and Louisiana State offices, plus some from the LSU Medical Center. From late afternoon through the evening, it becomes a full-blown jazz club, with well-known local musicians performing at listenable but modest volumes, while a serious bistro kitchen turns out creditable gourmet bistro dinners. Still later, the center of action moves to a theater upstairs, where the food and drinks keep coming but the music takes over. All this takes place at menu prices a shade below average for comparable food.
The original Little Gem appeared on South Rampart Street in the early 1900s. It and clubs like it incubated the new music called jazz. All the great early jazz musicians played in this sketchy neighborhood, where all pleasures of the flesh were available, with jazz playing in the background. The neighborhood was all but destroyed in the 1950s, when the city razed South Rampart Street wholesale to widen it. The modern Little Gem opened in 2012 in one of the few buildings that survived. It sat empty for decades until neuroscience research doctor-winery owner Nicolas Bazan and partners Tim and Charles Clark took over. He and his son (who also own RioMar and La Boca) performed a superb renovation. Three menu concepts came and went in the first couple of years, ranging from steakhouse to homestyle Creole cooking. About a year ago it settled on contemporary Creole-French groove, with vestiges of the earlier menus.
The renovation of the old building was so well accomplished that even the tiled floors are level. On the ground floor, a bandstand big enough for a half-dozen musicians runs along a long wall, with the bar at one end and the hard-to-find entrance at the other. All the tables have a good, close view of the music being made. It's almost too good to be true that you can hear both the music and the voices of your dining companions simultaneously. The upstairs space has more of a nightclub feeling.
A dinner made entirely of appetizers would be as good an order as you can make. Pay attention to the specials, which are more ambitious and interesting than you might expect.
| Attitude | 2 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 2 |
| Hipness | 3 |
| Local Color | 3 |
| Service | 2 |
| Value | 1 |
| Wine | 1 |
