Nearly two years after Hurricane Ida collapsed part of the building that houses Central Grocery, the historic muffuletta maker is anticipating a return. The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate reports that Tommy Tusa is expecting to reopen Central Grocery in October or November 2023 after completing a complete rebuild of the building at 923 Decatur Street. While the plan is to recreate the store to be a mostly familiar space, one main goal of the rebuild is to make it more accessible to wheelchair users.

Last call for Chance in Hell’s popular porch sno-balls

Chance in Hell Sno-Balls, the hugely popular three-year-old sno-ball pop-up, is facing its last weekend in business on its Bywater porch. The City of New Orleans is shutting it down, founders Kitten LaRue and Lou Henry Hoover announced on Instagram this week, saying they’ve been caught up in a pop-up crackdown while they work on permitting for their permanent location set for a few blocks away. They’ll be open this weekend at France and Burgundy Streets from Friday to Sunday, 2 to 7 p.m., and expect to open on Louisa Street in the next year.

New restaurant from two local restaurant vets headed to the Cotton Mill

The Warehouse District restaurant space that’s sat empty since the closure of The Mill (and before that, Sac-a-Lait) is soon to be home to a new restaurant. Expected to open at 1051 Annunciation Street in September, the restaurant is called plates — all lowercase — and is from two local veterans of the New Orleans restaurant industry. According to the website, Farrell Harrison (Borgne, Josephine Estelle) and Brian Weisnicht (Cochon, Gianna) will serve shareable plates incorporating a huge amount of influences: Spanish, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Mediterranean, German, Cajun, and African. The menu includes bruleed manchego, white anchovies, tuna crudo, scallop maque choux, saffron pork ragu, braised rabbit, and coq au vin.

City orders several Bywater and Marigny bars to remove parklets

In further frustrating city ordinance news, several bars in New Orleans’s Bywater and Marigny neighborhoods have received letters from the Department of Public Works to shut down their parklets, reports Gambit. Those parklets (belonging to Pepp’s Pub, R Bar, and Bud Rips) do not fit into the guidelines of an ordinance passed by the City Council last summer, apparently, making them illegal. The businesses have been given until the end of August to remove them or face substantial fines, and while amendments to the ordinance are planned, they are not likely to be made in time for the deadline.