Latest in NOLA restaurants: Trading chicken for burgers in Lakeview, brewpub bows out (2024)

The Red Bird Fried Chicken location at 911 Harrison Ave. has closed. Taking its place will be Desi Vega’s Prime Burgers & Shakes, a second location for that Harahan restaurant (640 Hickory Ave.). It’s slated to open in early October.

“We’re really excited about the location,” said partner and namesake Desi Vega, best known for his Desi Vega's Steakhouse locations around the area. “We’ve been looking to expand, and this is ideal.”

The location is a familiar location for burger outings too. For 25 years, the address was home to Lakeview Harbor, a family-friendly tavern known for its thick burgers. After losing its lease in 2018, Lakeview Harbor relocated to the West End (8550 Pontchartrain Blvd.). Last summer, Lakeview Harbor opened a second location at 8201 Oak St., but this closed over the summer.

Before Red Bird, it was a restaurant called Three B’s Burger & Wine Bar. The owners of that restaurant later created Red Bird and last year turned Three B’s into another Red Bird location.

Vega said the new Lakeview location of Desi Vega’s Prime Burgers & Shakes will evolve the concept, with an expanded menu and added features. It will be more than a burger joint, he said, with full table service and an emphasis on the large bar already in place from previous concepts here.

It will serve some specialty drinks from his steakhouse menus, and some dishes from those more upscale menus.

Red Bird is a new brand, founded in 2023, and it’s growing. Red Bird’s original location is in Covington (70437 Hwy. 21), and was developed by the brothers Blake and Brandon Bennett and their cousin Jay Morris. The Lakeview location followed a few months later, and this year Red Bird has expanded in Gretna (145 Lapalco Blvd.) and Denham Springs (2660 Sac au Lait Lane).

The two newer Red Bird outposts are smaller and have drive-thru windows. That’s proven a better formula for expansion, said Brandon Bennett, so they decided to close Lakeview and look for future locations that fit their model.

“We were trying to fit a round peg in a square hole,” Bennett said. “But it’s a great location. I think (Desi Vega’s) will be great there.”

Brewpub bows out

Before brewery taprooms proliferated anew across the beer drinking landscape, brewpubs combining full-service restaurants and in-house breweries were all the rage. So it was a significant addition for beer lovers in 2004 when the national chain Gordon Biersch opened in New Orleans.

In August, however, the local outpost of the brewpub quietly closed, ending a 20-year run amid other closures of the Gordon Biersch brand around the country.

The brewpub, at 200 Poydras St., is in a prominent location fronting the Fulton Street pedestrian mall. The property is run by Caesars Casino (as it takes over the former Harrah’s).

A Caesars spokesman said there’s no word yet on what could come next in the space, but added the company is in discussion with some of its national partners about it.

The Gordon Biersch brand was born in the 1990s when the brewpub model was hot. It brought a range of German-style brews in a family-friendly setting to a city where craft brewing was only just starting its revival.

Gordon Biersch had 25 locations nationwide when it opened in New Orleans, but in more recent years the brewpubs have been closing. Today there are just three stand-alone locations left, in addition to a number in airport concourses.