5/21/2007

Drago's New Downtown Restaurant Opens

After two nights of packed houses for charities, followed by a Saturday evening when it was open without letting anyone know about it, the Drago's big new restaurant on the riverfront is now fully open.

It's inside the New Orleans Hilton Riverside, at the foot of Poydras Street. However, it has its own entrance (right next to the main entrance of the hotel), and it doesn't occupy any space that you're likely to remember from past operations in the hotel. (Kabby's, for example, is still right where it was.)

This first branch of the thirty-six-year old original Metairie restaurant--has more or less the same spare interior design of Drago's #1. People who attended the first dinner there last night registered a sleek look. The hotel built the place out to the specifications of the Cvitanovich family, which manages the operation fully.

The menu is the same as the one in Metairie. In fact, a lot of the food is cooked back at the old place and brought downtown, for the sake of consistency. The gumbo and other soups, many of the sauces, and a few other items that lend themselves to this commissary approach make that trip.

But most of the food is cooked to order, starting with the oysters, from a large raw bar to the char-broiling grill.

Tommy Cvitanovich, the grand poo-bah in charge (when his mother Klara isn't watching, anyway), says that the two big run-throughs went well. "We were able to get more staff than I thought we would, although not quite as many as I wish we could, of course." They had over three hundred people each night for a platted buffet, so the waiters and cooks could practice. No big problems turned up.

Meanwhile, the restaurant raised thousands of dollars for Children's Hospital and a pair of educational charities. So that aspect of the Drago's continues without spare.