Redemption

We had our wedding reception here and it was really great. Maria helped me plan over the phone from Alabama and we worked out all the details. It is easy to worry about how something is going to go when you have to trust someone with something soooo important. Well, I can say that feel free to put your trust in this place. Everything exceeded my expectations. Not just the food but also the staff, location and even the chef came out and was part of the party. Everything was in place early and they even put up with us as we lingered a little longer than we should have. The wait staff was very friendly and personable as well as the bar staff who did a great job with the drinks. Lastly, we were married in a park and this reclaimed church was the perfect setting for a reception. The big windows and old hardwood floors had a great feel to it. We had minimal floral arrangements and I have no regrets because this space with its personality did not need any help. Love to give a reference here if there are any brides that would like to contact me :) Thank you Redemption! You really helped make our day perfect!

I attended a wedding reception here last night and we had such a great time! The building is BREATHTAKING. Our food was wonderful too. Gumbo, a spinach salad, and I had a filet topped with an onion and a side of asparagus. But what really made the night amazing was the staff! The service was absolutely perfect and we were treated so well. The bride and groom felt like royalty and the night was just wonderful. Thank you so much for everything!

If you are going to be closed for the entire month of July, you might want to make sure your reservation system reflects that. We made a reservation for 3 on Open Table last night, only to find the restaurant shuttered when we arrived. And we weren’t the only ones. In the five minutes we were there trying to piece together what was up, a gentleman rolled down his window and said the same thing had happened to him.
Instead of having dinner at 7:30 like we had planned, we had to stop in at half a dozen restaurants before finding a table… at 9pm.

Went for Sunday brunch. The service was great for us as there was only one other table being served. The gumbo was so salty with burnt roux. It was not edible. The Bar B que shrimp and grits had twice as many shrimp heads as shrimp. Don’t think air condition works. The inside of the restaurant is very nice. It’s just such a shame they can’t serve good food. I won’t be back.

Went here last night and was blown away. The setting is amazing — so beautiful inside with the old church fixtures and local artist’s work on the walls. Came for the happy hour and ended up staying for much more than that. Oysters are 50 cents during happy hour, and master shucker Aaron delivered beautiful, clean and sweet oysters to us that we’re simply delicious. Bartender Madeline hit us up with some awesome Pimm’s cups. We shared the foie gras and stuffed mushroom appetizers, the foie gras was awesome, mushrooms lacked salt. For entrees we had the smoked soft shell crab pasta which was amazing, daily fish (grouper) with vegetable jambalaya which was prepared perfectly, but the winner of the night was the duck cassoulet with Terranova sausage and foie gras. So many wonderful flavors on one plate! We didn’t have room for dessert.
I look forward to our next dinner at Redemption!

Awesome service, great atmosphere, excellent wine selection, and very tasty food. I loved the eggplant and grilled oyster apps, and enjoyed the filet as well. The filet was cooked to perfection (medium rare as I requested). I’ve been to Redemption several times and I always leave extremely satisfied. Chef Greg and Maria are very welcoming and accommodating. I highly recommend Redemption.

A couple months ago my fiancé and I decided to have our wedding here for next year. We sat down with the owner «Maria» and decided on everything we were going to do. The next day, I tried to get her the deposit, but we could not get in touch with her at all. We emailed, called, nothing. Now we are searching for a new location because of Maria’s poor business offerings.
She was very unprofessional and very discourteous for not responding to ANY OF OUR ATTEMPTS TO GET IN TOUCH WITH HER. To anybody else attempting to have your wedding here, BEWARE, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT! LOOK ELSEWHERE!!! DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME!!!

Below Average! When a menu item states poached egg & you are served a hard boiled egg… WTF! Chef states it was put under broiler to melt the cheese! Okay you should be able to adjust the cooking time to prevent this! Just a sad place, if our party of 20 was not present the restaurant would have had 2 tabletops! I think I know why people not coming for Sunday Brunch! Get a new Chef ASAP, it might be able to save you!

I was visiting New Orleans with my wife to visit my daughter and son who’ve both lived in NO for years and we were celebrating my birthday and her graduation (as well as other my son’s). We arrived early for our 7:15 reservation and were seated at 6:15 in a largely empty restaurant. Very accommodating waiter (Gregory) took care of our drink order and first round of appetizers which were a dozen oysters on the half shell. By 645 or so our dinner order was placed. Our party of 7 ordered a mix of wine, beer, cocktails and water as we chatted and enjoyed oysters and hot bread. The AC was out so it was warm … some would say sticky but we were having a nice time. By 815 (one hour after ordering) my son sensing my nascent restlessness, that it was taking a little long for dinner, explained to me that the slow rhythm of dinner at Redemption was all part of the experience and that hearkened back to days gone by; not to worry… more good conversation and by 8:45 and more drinks and wine, I’m asking the waiter «what’s the deal?» and he said he’s sorry acknowledging the long wait and said it would be a few minutes. 9:40 PM, 3 hours after ordering we were served. We ate hurriedly just because we’d all been in those chairs for close to 4 hours, we were hot and wanted to leave and go home. The food was good I guess but the wait ruined what could have been a fantastic meal. My daughter had let them know it was my birthday and they agreed to do a cheesecake. They botched that too and told her it was not available. I expressed my disappointment to the owner and she said she would compensate us and then sent the waiter over to he the table with a bill discounted 30%. In the end I tipped the waiter 20% based on the full bill and paid for drinks. I was inclined to walk on the whole bill but we did have a nice time with our group enjoying drinks and conversation. But I wasn’t about to spend 1 penny on the food. I was told by the owner he was training new staff and was having a bad night… REALLY? So what I say. You don’t train new staff on a Saturday nite and you check your bad mood for after the shift. The chef would be gone if he worked for me. In summary I will never go back because it seems the owner doesn’t have a clue or the guts to act like and owner and the chef sounds more like talented child with a lot of maturing to do.

Absolutely the worst experience I’ve had in New Orleans after living here for two and a half years.
We arrived as a party of 7 at 6:15 — we had a reservation for 7:15, and they were able to seat us soon as we walked in. Wine service was fine, we got drinks and appetizers at an adequate speed (however, no one would describe it as fast) — and then we waited for our entrées to be served 2 and a half hours later. Overall we waited in the restaurant 3.5 hours for our dinner, then ate it and left within twenty minutes. They didn’t communicate why food was late until we asked to see the owner, who still didn’t give us a reason, and when we asked the waiter he said «the chef is a perfectionist and he’s training new people». This was 3 hours after we arrived at the restaurant. To top it off, I had arranged to have a surprise dessert brought out for my dad’s birthday. Unsurprisingly, by the time they served tables around us and ignored us for 3 hours, they were out of cheesecake. Really, really, really disappointed in this place.

Yeech. 9:30 PM reservation. Not many people in the restaurant. We had to wait way too long for table to be set up. That was minor but it continued to go downhill from there. Ordered cocktails — nothing extravagant. After 40 minutes and several inquiries, and then just plain begging for our drinks — we were finally told they are out of the vodka that two of the party had ordered, and had no tonic anyway. Why they didn’t tell us this immediately is still a mystery. About an hour in to sitting there, we were given overcooked, and tasteless bread. There were 5 of us. The dishes either had no taste/​flavor, or were downright bad. Its terrible when not even 1 of 5 meals were tasty. To their credit, the crab cake that was part of my entrée was ok, but it was about 1 bite worth of food. We were so looking forward to dining there as we LOVED Christians and hoped it would be a similar experience. There are numerous grocery stores nearby — when you are out of something as basic as tonic — get in the car and go buy some. Also, how hard is it to buy some decent bread in New Orleans of all places??? In addition to the food, it was one problem after another. In spite of the fact that the person who appeared to be the manager and/​or owner was seated no more than 10 feet from our table the entire night, she never once came by and made any apologizes, offer a bottle of wine, nothing! Oh, and the fly/​pest strip that is sitting on a beam above our table does not make a nice touch when you are dining in a restaurant with those prices. The prices are extravagant given he lack of quality. For instance, the food portion of my bill at Commanders the night before was about the same. Maybe they were just having an exceptionally bad night. but I don’t think I would give it a second try.

Attentive waitstaff. Fun atmosphere! They accommodated a large group of us (14!). They were even nice to my 16 month old that wanted to wander around.
Everyone could find something they wanted to order. However food was mostly forgettable… except the chocolate crème brûlée!

The venue was awesome, the food was good and the service was strange.
We had a reservation. We arrived. We were greeted super friendly by a staff member who was cut off by the hostess. The hostess asked us to wait and let us standing 10 minutes. Then she looked for our reservation and had to put together a table for us even though they weren’t busy.
The waiter told was not familiar with the wine or beer menu menu and asked us for the lot number or what number from the top of the list the wine was.
The food was good. With a few changes, it could be really awesome. Our group really liked the crab stuffed mushrooms. They were awesome. The soup and fish of the day were also good. Many of us ordered the soft shelled crab pasta dish. The pasta and the crab cake were amazing. The smoked soft shell crab had potential to be good.

This is the place to wash away your sins… with wine. Food and service was great. Pumpkin butternut squash soup was amazing. We all left full and content

Uninspired food — a nice waiter — fine dining with Denny’s execution! Clueless hostess. Christmas day dinner choices sorely lacking — won’t be back. Too expensive for what it is — they think a lot of their restaurant!

Our annual holiday luncheon was at Redemption today. When we were deciding on a location for our party we checked into a few places. Our admin staff sent us the menu and everyone liked what they saw so we settled on Redemption. We called to make the reservations and were told that a banquet menu would be offered due to the size of our party (14 people).
At that point, we said thank you but we were going to pass because we wanted to order from the lunch menu. The person taking the reservation quickly reversed and said ordering from the lunch menu would not be a problem. We made the reservation for 12:30pm today but were called later and asked if 1pm was acceptable. We agreed and planned accordingly.
We arrived today at about 1:05pm, no later than 1:10pm. We were seated and saw that we had banquet menus at our place settings. Our office manager, who made the reservation, asked about this and we were offered lunch menus.
We ordered drinks, appetizers, and entrees and thus began a 2+ hour fiasco.
The appetizers took an hour to arrive. My colleagues did seem to enjoy theirs as did I. However, it was lukewarm.
The office manager was a little upset with a couple of service related issues and that it was after 2:30 pm and our entrees had not yet appeared. She asked to speak to a manager. One of the wait staff went into the kitchen and got the «chef». Said office manager gets up and goes off to the hallway by the restrooms with him and lodges her complaint.
So what does the chef do? He harangues her about our party being «late» for the 1 o’clock reservation and says that the entrée preparation is being delayed further by her asking to speak to a manager who also happened to be the person making us lunch (as if she would know that). He also managed to throw in the irrelevant points that he was also a «manager» and «part owner». The only thing that would have made it better is if he’d said it with a thick french accent while throwing his hands in the air in outrage.
We finally got our entrees near 3:00pm and were able to resume our lives.
My takeaway is–
The owners need to find someone who is capable of managing the expectations of the customers spending the money. Our party overlooked quite a few things without complaint; getting drinks spilled all over 2 of our staff (no biggie, mistakes happen, hey why are none of the waitstaff helping clean it up?), 15 minute waits for a single glass of wine while when we were the ONLY customers in the place, etc.
The owners need to hire people who are thoughtful, considerate, and professional. The «chef» was not it.
PS — We liked the food! Thus 2 stars.

First let me say that I looked forward to a meal at Redemption for months based on the architecture alone. Turns out that would be the only thing that was enjoyable. Sadly, for a one hundred dollar meal for two, the only positive was the bread served before the meal and the poor waitress whose tips I am sure suffer for the terrible food. We arrived at 6 pm and were the only table for almost an hour — this should have told me something. We left at almost 8 and at that point there was only one other table of guests. We asked the waitress if this was normal and she sheepishly said it must be the drizzle of rain… but both Katie’s and Pascale Manale’s within two blocks, had guests on a waitlist outside the door and full parking lots.
We each ordered the three course offering of the day. Not one dish had anything to write home about or anything impressive. They only offer about 5 wines by the glass. Of course the one I pick — they dont have. Strike one but hey, that happens right?
First Course:
Gumbo: Very salty. Standard thick brown roux you can get at just about any average restaurant in the city. Grade: C.
Greens and Roma Tomato Salad: They forgot the tomatoes. We were the only table and they forgot one of the only three ingredients that make this salad. When we were done they brought out a sliced roma tomato on a coffee saucer with salad dressing. Really? Grade: F.
Second Course:
Pork Tenderloin with pasta and greens: Ever had dish placed in front of you and you can tell by looking at it that it isn’t going to be memorable? The dish was lukewarm. The brown sauce was similar to the thin brown sauce that you can get at a Chinese restaurant. Grade: C.
Catfish Courtbouillon: I *love* courtbouillon. I was hopeful even after the salad that this was going to be the redemption of this experience. Not. at. all. Living in New Orleans there are too many options for amazing food to offer inedible food. The piece of catfish was covered in what tasted like chunky ragu– only not good ragu– the taste was «off». The catfish was completely «fishy» and tasted questionable. This may be one of the three times in my life I have had to send a dish back after two bites. What puzzles me is that there are other reviews on here about the catfish being fishy. What’s up with that? Grade: F– (if that were possible)
Replacement dish — Grilled Chicken with potatoes. I asked for the sauce on the side in the event that somehow you could screw up grilled chicken with sauce. They couldnt even do that. The «sauce» which was watery with chunks of ham in it was put in a little side dish on the plate — had run over and the chicken was sitting in it. The grilled chicken was just that, a piece of grilled chicken. The potatoes were ok. I took two bites of chicken and ate two pieces of potato. Grade: C+
Dessert:
Chocolate Torte: Eh. Nothing special at all. A very thin wedge of torte with a little sauce drizzled on top. It was nothing more impressive than what you could pick up at Sam’s. Grade: C
Crème Brulee: Ok. Seriously. This dish has some minimum requirements… I only found one on this dish. The caramelized sugar was perfect on top. The rest of it? Sigh. It was more the consistency of pudding that had been watered down with some ice cream. The taste would have been good if the consistency was right. Consistency kind of makes this specific dessert. Grade: C
At the end of the meal we found ourselves having to laugh at how terrible this meal was. We even debated going some place else when we left for a meal. We settled on two cups of coffee and a cookie from a local coffee shop. I kept shaking my head and saying «this poor waitress». She tried to cover for the terrible food and experience… but sadly there is no way I will ever recommend this restaurant or its food to anyone. For $ 100 for two people, try any place else.

A very nice local Nola find!
Located inside a small old renovated church, the natural yellow glow created from the sun shining through the stained glass is unlike anything I’ve seen in any restaurant. Great mood setter — I’m sure it’s even more beautiful around dinner time at sunset.
Tasty dishes prepared in the style of classic New Orleans cuisine. Lots of great seafood options. Large wine selection. Great dessert and I’m not even really a sweets guy. Prices were also reasonable.
Bring a date for a special occasion!

The most expensive dinner I’ve had in New Orleans should not be a two-​star meal. There is something devilish afoot if that is the case, and yes, it is.
We thought it would be romantic to have dinner at the old church, what with our proposed careers as ministers. When the old church is half empty at peak hours on a Friday night, there is something devilish afoot.
Opener to the meal: the ceiling is leaking on our table. No one notices but us, despite a growing stain on the tablecloth and the steady plink-​plink-​plink of water on a bread plate. I tried to convince my dining companion to just put his wine glass under the drip because it would have entertained me. He was having none of it, and I agreed that we probably shouldn’t have to dine in a rom-​com just because we could. When we asked to move, we were given the stink eye by a waiter. Something devilish was afoot.
First act: service was slow, and we were often ignored. It took us 20 minutes to get water and place drink orders. In another 20 minutes… something devilish was afoot.
Second act: the menu looked delicious. Everything was tempting except the prices. I was a little taken aback at the numbers compared to some of the other big games in town. Something devilish was absolutely afoot.
Intermission: this is the part in the meal where the food takes half a century to appear. Because that happened. Yes, friends, something devilish must have been afoot in the kitchen if it took that long to make our food.
Third act: the appetizers were stellar. My choice of wine was stellar. I am clearly superior to my higher instincts. Things look very good from this vantage point. Nothing devilish was afoot.
Climax: entrees appear after a pause of forever. Neither are quite hot enough. Both are too salty. Let me repeat that: both entrees are way, way too salty. At $ 26+ per plate, we should not have salt issues. (Lest you think I’m an anti-​salt crusader, I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with salt in any of my other Unilocal reviews. Me and NaCl are buddies. We go way back.) This is Not Good. Can we find a server to comment on this? Nope. We were both hungry so we plowed ahead on the eating portion, but I probably should have brought the salt thing to a staff member’s attention. It just seemed like an extra pain in the butt at the time. Something was afoot, and it was devilish.
Final act: dessert was necessary to wash away that entrée disaster. We shared something or other, completely not memorable. At this point, we were looking at our watches and wishing for a swift end to the evening. The kitchen drew the meal out for far too long, and the service didn’t help things along. The game afoot was devilish, no mistaking it.
Critical review: devilish and not in the «eggs, which are delicious» way. I am still grumpy about the price of this meal versus the quality.
Accessibility notes: several steps up into the restaurant. Space is loud with lots of echo. No Braille menu or signage. Tables are close together. Restrooms are a bit small for mobility devices.

It was our last night in NOLA and I made dinner reservations for 7:30 pm. I was impressed with the décor and design of the interior which use to be a church many years ago. The building had it’s 100^th birthday in March and is located Mid City in the midst of cemeteries, funeral homes and some residential.
Our waiter Gregory N who formerly worked for a well known restaurant in town was humorous, professional and a native of NOLA. We started off with a bottle of Merlot and ordered the smoked deep fried soft shell crab and a cup of seafood gumbo. When the soft shell arrived I was taken back how large it was and tasted divine. The gumbo was also yummy and contained generous amounts of seafood.
For dinner I selected the Flounder, fried green tomato, and stuffed mirliton. OMG this entrée was so delish. The fish was superb and the stuffed mirliton which was my first time experiencing and was delish. I can honestly say I experienced authentic Cajun food at Redemption. I sampled the stuffed gulf shrimp with crab stuffing and the taste was also outstanding. We ended our magnificent meal with the Crepes with Louisiana strawberries
What’s funny is how I stumbled onto Redemption’s by dinning at their casual sister restaurant earlier in the week which is located in Prairieville — Tommy’s Fish house. Christian who runs Tommy’s recommended Redemption.
We had the pleasure to meet the owner of Redemption Marie and head chef Greg Picolo who were gracious to spend some time with us and make us feel welcomed. I must say that the seafood was the freshest quality and reasonably priced compared to several other high end restaurants we dined at NOLA.
Redemption exceeded my expectations and I would definitely return here next time I’m in NOLA.

I’m so glad this is a restaurant space again. Pre-​K I went to Christian’s often and it was nice to back inside this churchy location.
The food was wonderful. I started with a lovely mixed green salad with a pungent & delicious blue cheese. And then had the stuffed baked shrimp withe hominy cakes. Seriously tasty. My dining companion had a very lemony/​anchovy-​y caesar salad (and I mean that in a good way) and then stuffed salmon with gnocchi and asparagus. Since I sampled her food too, I thought the gnocchi were a bit heavy, but still delicious. Then for dessert? AMAZING dark chocolate crème brûlée. Seriously y’all, I love fancy chocolate pudding and this was the fanciest (and tastiest).
Only off note was that our server was struggling. The restaurant was busy because of superbowl weekend, but we never did get to hear the specials and had to ask for more bread. Not that big of a deal really, especially when you view it in light of AMAZING dark chocolate crème brûlée.