Bayona owner adds spice to New Orleans with Herbsaint debut

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 30, 2000 by Ron Ruggless

NEW ORLEANS -- Susan Spicer, noted chef-owner of the 11-year-old Bayona restaurant here, opened a new casual spot, called Herbsaint in late October.

"I'm a partner and kind of like executive chef," Spicer said of her role in the new restaurant which she launched with Ken Jackson and chef Donald Link.

"It's exciting creating a place that I would really like to go out to and eat at," Spicer said, adding that the 100-seat Herbsaint fills a niche in the city's restaurant offerings. "New Orleans has a lack of good, independent casual restaurants. It has a lot of the chains represented here, but we wanted to strike a blow for a casual place where the food is great and simple with an interesting wine program."

The restaurant is named for the local Herbsaint liqueur, created originally in the 1890s as an absinthe and later, without that product's dangerous wormwood, as an ingredient in the Sazerac cocktail.

Jackson, who worked with Spicer at the now-closed retail venture Spice Inc., is co-owner and business manager of Herbsaint. He said its menu's entrees are $10 to $14 for lunch and $12 to $18 for dinner.

"We're calling it casual fine dining, French-American," he said. "A lot of the dishes are based on traditional French but updated and using ingredients indigenous to Louisiana."

Chef Link said: "We're trying to do real straightforward, simple French-based cuisine. There's nothing tricky or froufrou about the food." His dinner menu includes such dishes as roasted chicken with olives, lemon and garlic, $14, and cane-braised beef short ribs with mashed potato and celery root, $18. Among the side dishes, each $4, are stone-ground grits and french fries with aioli.

The chef, a Lake Charles, La., native, was a sous chef for Spicer at Bayona before moving to San Francisco, where he worked at Jardiniere and Elite Cafe.

Link and his wife, who have an 11-month-old daughter, were seeking to return to New Orleans, Spicer explained.

"A lot of things came together in the past three months," she said. "Donald came back to town, and we all had had our eyes out for a nice, little casual restaurant space. Before we closed Spice Inc., where we had opened a little cafe as part of it, people in the neighborhood had responded well.

"The very first chef that I worked for, who remains a friend and mentor to me, Daniel Bonnot, had this place on St. Charles Avenue," Spicer continued. "He had been looking to take a break from the restaurant business for a while, after having done it for 42 years, which I can totally relate to."

Herbsaint is located in the former space occupied by Bonnot's Bizou, in the heart of New Orleans' business-warehouse district. It is near cehf Gerard Marais' Gerard's Downtown and cater-corner to Mike Ditka's in the Lafayette Hotel, which was formerly Mike's on the Avenue.

Herbsaint has two dining rooms, the main one with 60 seats and about 12 more at the bar, and a rear dining room with about 40 seats for private parties and main-room overflow, Jackson said.

Bonnot owns the building, so he is also involved in the project, Jackson added.

To maintain the casual atmosphere of Herbsaint, it is opening with reservations only for lunch. "We like to encourage walk-in traffic and a more casual atmosphere," Jackson said. "We are taking reservations for lunch, because we are in a business district and customers are somewhat time sensitive."

Before working with Spicer at Spice Inc., Jackson managed specialty groceries in New Orleans and Nashville, Tenn., and made cheese on a farm in Indiana. Herbsaint offers a wide variety of cheeses and wines.

"We have about 70 listings," he said of the wines. "We offer 15 by the glass, and pairings are encouraged. All the glass wines and a few additional ones we will be selling by the half bottle, pouring half of a full bottle into a carafe on the table at exactly half the bottle price."

Herbsaint's general manager is Averriel Thomas, formerly of Commander's Palace, Emeril's and Emeril's Del Monico. "He has a real strong connection with the local clientele here," Jackson said.