Bam! Emeril Lagasse Is Expanding His New Orleans Empire by Bringing Home a Las Vegas Icon

Emeril Lagasse has never been one for understatement, and his latest New Orleans opening is no exception. The chef behind “Bam!” has opened Delmonico Steakhouse and The Café by Emeril in the city’s Central Business District, bringing his Las Vegas steakhouse home to the town that gave it its name. Chateaubriand is carved at the table, the Caesar is tossed in front of you, and the Bananas Foster arrives in flames, which in New Orleans, the city that invented the dish, feels less like showmanship and more like good manners.

It’s a homecoming, of sorts, for a man who wasn’t born here. Lagasse grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts, but it was New Orleans that turned him into Emeril. He took over the kitchen at Commander’s Palace in the early 1980s, then opened Emeril’s in 1990 in the Warehouse District, back when people needed convincing to go there for dinner. (They were convinced.) Television turned a few catchphrases into national vocabulary, and by the end of the decade he was one of the most recognizable chefs in America.

Photo Credit: Matias Vargas

The Delmonico name has followed him the whole way. In 1998, Lagasse revived Delmonico, a St. Charles Avenue Creole institution dating to 1895, and that restaurant went on to lend its name to his steakhouse at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Now, for the first time, Delmonico Steakhouse has an address outside the Strip, and it’s in the city where the name has been part of the conversation for more than a century. I do love a bit of symmetry.

“I’m thrilled to bring Delmonico Steakhouse to New Orleans alongside The Café by Emeril, creating two distinct dining experiences that reflect what I love about cooking and bringing people together,” Lagasse said.

Photo Credit: Matias Vargas

The timing is rather lovely, too. The family name is already shining a little brighter in New Orleans these days: Emeril’s, now led by Lagasse’s son, E.J., earned two Michelin stars when the guide made its debut in the American South in 2025. The son has the flagship and the stars. The father, it seems, has gone back to doing what he does best: throwing a very good party.

At Delmonico, that party is a grand American steakhouse with a touch of 1970s swagger, all walnut, velvet and green marble inside the new Fairmont New Orleans. Creekstone Farms beef is dry-aged in-house, Japanese Wagyu shares the menu with seafood, and the oysters and caviar make a compelling case for not rushing to the steak. Order the Caesar, if only for the pleasure of watching someone make it properly.

Photo Credit: Matias Vargas

The Café by Emeril is the daytime counterpart: a French brasserie with Creole accents, Southern touches and chicory-laced coffee. It’s the easygoing one of the pair, the place for a long lunch with a friend, and for deciding whom to bring back for the Bananas Foster.

More than 30 years on, Lagasse is still doing exactly what made New Orleans fall for him in the first place. He’s just doing it at the table now.

Photo Credit: Matias Vargas

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