When a table of 15 business patrons at Rizzuto’s Prime wanted separate checks, proprietor Jack Rizzuto knew how to handle it. The answer was no.
Rizzuto is second-generation scrappy. His family started their restaurant business in the French Quarter, slinging pizza and daiquiris on and around Bourbon Street. The family expanded to a coal-fired pizza place, Amici, on Magazine Street, and its five-year run ended with them selling to the Felix’s Restaurant Group.
Their Jester Mardi Gras Daiquiris remains a growing profit source for them, but for Rizzuto, who runs the business with his brother Philip, fine dining is the way to go.
The family opened Rizzuto’s Ristorante & Chop House in 2017 in the former Tony Angello’s space in Lakeview, where Rizzuto knew that 90% of his customer base was local. The business grew during the pandemic with his team’s focused effort on safely serving guests during the evolving shutdowns. That built loyalty and deepened repeat business.
When he decided to open Rizzuto’s Prime at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans near the Superdome in January, Rizzuto had no illusions of it being like Lakeview. “We knew we’d get 80% out-of-town guests,” he says.
In the CBD, he saw potential growth tied to the meeting and convention business. The 200-seat restaurant is designed to handle groups as well as hotel guests. And about a fifth of business is locals tapping into Rizzuto’s flavor without having to make the drive to Lakeview, he says.
“We wanted to do something different to figure out a different customer base,” Rizzuto says.
The menu still includes some of his grandmother’s Italian recipes, but here, steak and seafood dominate. “We have multiple cuts of meat and are expanding the seafood program with more whole fish offerings,” he says.
Chef Dayne Womax is leading the kitchen at the Hyatt location in the space that used to house chef John Besh’s Borgne. Womax was tapped by the company’s corporate executive chef Jason Caronna. The two worked together for years running Sun Ray Grills.
More recently, Womax and business partner Simon Beck ran Brown Butter Southern Kitchen + Bar in Mid-City. Womax stepped away after nine years.
“I gave him all the recipes and wished him luck,” Womax says. “I was done with the sleepless nights worrying about making payroll. Jason called me right away. I didn’t even have to look for a job.”
Although it took a minute to get used to having a boss, Womax spent his first year getting embedded in the Rizzuto’s culture. “I learned their family recipes, and I took a lot of razzing because I’m not Italian,” says the LaPlace native.
At the new location, instead of pimiento cheeseburgers, Womax is overseeing a menu that ranges from an extensive raw bar to a variety of grilled oysters and a handful of Italian specialties, including the Rizzuto grandma’s meatballs, pasta Bolognese and oysters Bordelaise. Steak cuts include the crowd-feeding tomahawk rib-eye and the house specialty spinalis, or rib-eye cap, prized for its tenderness and flavor.
A few of Womax’s signature dishes also are on the menu, including his balsamic-glazed boneless short ribs over mascarpone grits, a dish that won him a Gambit’s Emerging Chef competition in 2015.
Rizzuto’s Prime offers lunch, brunch and dinner menus, along with a daily 3-6 p.m. happy hour. The menu changes often, with recent additions including osso buco, steak-filled ravioli, crawfish arancini and Roman artichokes. Some dishes, like the meatballs and the jumbo lump crab cake, are on the menu for life.
“My brother is in Lakeview; I’m here,” Rizzuto says. “We take a hands-on approach.”