After more than six years in spaces across New Orleans, Nonno’s Cajun Cuisine & Pastries closed its latest home along a historic stretch in the 7th Ward last month and will reopen in Jefferson Parish.
Chef Shermond Esteen opened the restaurant in a mint-green building on Bayou Road two years ago, following brief stays elsewhere in the 7th Ward in 2020 and in the Marigny in 2022. Inside, he offered a menu rooted in the city’s vernacular cooking, with plates of cheesy grits, charbroiled oysters, po-boys and seafood eggrolls drawing steady crowds most weeks. Ultimately, Esteen said, rising costs made it difficult to sustain operations in the neighborhood.
Now he is entering a new chapter outside of New Orleans and is preparing to reopen Nonno’s in Metairie. The restaurant is among several vendors — including Purchase Kitchen, Coastal BBQ Company and Sabor Del Parque — that was selected to operate in the Pointe, a new food pavilion in Lafraniere Park.
Nonno’s will be the only vendor in the park serving breakfast, Esteen said. It will also offer lunch and a smaller dinner menu featuring jambalaya, fried chicken and fried catfish. Esteen plans to add beignets to the menu once the restaurant opens, which he expects to happen before Easter.
“It feels great just knowing that I still have people that support me and what I do as far as cooking and baking,” he said. “So that’s a blessing.”
His latest venture marks another chance for Nonno’s to help anchor a space that once sat empty. Bayou Road — one of the city’s oldest thoroughfares — struggled with long vacancies before a 2015 revitalization effort backed by the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority emphasized historic preservation. Today, the corridor is lined with Black-owned businesses, and among them was Nonno’s, which became part of the area’s revival.
Before launching his culinary career — one that would eventually include opening Nonno’s and being invited by chef Emeril Lagasse to cook with him — Esteen honed his cooking skills in an unconventional setting. At Plaquemines Parish Detention Center, he ran the kitchen and supervised the baking program to feed 600 inmates. Esteen, a New Orleans native, had first learned to cook from his mother and later trained in baking through a culinary program at B.B. Rayburn Correction Center, one of three prisons where he served 20 years for a 33-year sentence for possession of five ounces of marijuana
After his release, Esteen sought to pay it forward by hiring men and women returning from incarceration.
Dining and Cooking