The Grill Room

Comfort food discipline in a formal room

The plate still has to land cleanly at the pass at The Grill Room in New Orleans: red snapper, duck breast, shrimp and grits, soufflé. The room sits on the second floor of the Windsor Court Hotel and is the only four-star, four-diamond restaurant in Louisiana, which sets a standard the kitchen has to meet twice a day rather than once a season. Its history has not been smooth. A New Orleans theme adopted in the early 2000s narrowed a national reputation to a city one, Hurricane Katrina reduced the room to standard hotel dining, and the revival came after 2009 under local ownership, with Drew Dzejak credited for returning the kitchen to consistency. Chef turnover has been high since. What survives that churn is the house language rather than any one signature: New American cooking with Creole and Cajun inflections, courtyard views, and a service style that asks the kitchen to work quietly, not casually.

Gulf fish, grits, and a deep cellar

The method of the room is not a single tasting-menu argument. It is a broad station map: à la carte, prix fixe, and small plates moving through a kitchen that can roast Gulf snapper, blacken grouper, hold a duck breast to temperature, and send beignets or chocolate soufflé without losing the thread of service. The Grill Room's signatures sit where hotel fine dining and New Orleans appetite meet, with red snapper, Chilean sea bass, shrimp and grits, duck breast, crème brûlée, and beignets carrying much of the room's identity. The beverage program gives the kitchen room to move. The wine list runs to more than 600 labels, with about 30 poured by the glass, and the restaurant holds Wine Spectator's Best of Award of Excellence. Sarah Kavanaugh has been noted for the sommelier work here, the kind of table-side discipline that matters when seafood, spice, butter, and sauce all have to find their glass without flattening the food.

The room above the courtyard

The room works in a lower register than the city outside it. Soft light, classic décor, and the courtyard below give the service a measured pace; the ivy-covered walls and the statue of St. George are part of the view, not a stage set. This is a medium-sized restaurant with a quiet noise level, which changes the craft. A server can read the table before the next course leaves the pass. A sommelier can spend time with the list. The kitchen can let a soufflé arrive as an ending rather than a flourish. The formal room asks for polish, but the food still has to carry New Orleans in the bite: spice in the grits, Gulf fish on the plate, beignets at breakfast or brunch.

A hotel dining room with its own obligations

The Grill Room carries AAA Four-Diamond and Forbes Four-Star recognition at the Windsor Court Hotel, but the harder obligation is daily. It has to serve celebrations, hotel guests, and locals without becoming only an occasion room. That tension is where the craft sits now: a formal pass, a deep wine program, and a menu that lets red snapper, shrimp and grits, and chocolate soufflé do the speaking, with the courtyard statue standing beyond the windows of The Grill Room.