It’s always exciting when a lauded local chef opens a new restaurant, especially for New Orleans gastronomes, and especially when that chef is Michael Gulotta. It was a bold move when Gulotta stepped down from his position as executive chef at Restaurant August to open a hip fusion spot in Mid-City that melded the cuisines of the Mekong and the Mississippi Deltas. That gambit paid off in spades, and MoPho became a favorite of local diners. That success eventually led to another, more elevated fusion restaurant, downtown’s Maypop, which similarly delighted local gourmands, and continued to make a name for Gulotta on the national culinary stage. For his next project, the chef decided to steer away from the fusion concept to something a bit more personal. Hence the recently opened Tana in Old Metairie, an upscale Creole Italian eatery that not only pays homage to the his Italian roots, but also has exciting gastronomical tricks.
Like many new eateries in the Big Easy, Tana got its start as a pop-up, and the concept quickly blossomed from there. “We did the pop-up at Treo years ago on Tulane,” Guolotta said. “My great grandmother was named Gaetana, and a lot of my family recipes are from her and her four sisters. Three of them were born in New Orleans and one of them was born in Sicily, so I always wanted to do that restaurant. My training was in Italy, and I used to be absolutely obsessed with pasta. And when we opened MoPho, it was supposed to be this funky little joint and then later on we’d open the high-end Italian place. But then Mopho blew up so much and then I was like ‘Man, I love this fusion thing,’ so then we did Maypop. I didn’t want to do Tana until I had the real space to do it. We talked a lot about finding a space for it, but we didn’t want to do it unless it was going to be like the Tana it is now, a sort of over-the-top beautiful restaurant.”
And that’s exactly what Tana became. Upon entering, it’s difficult not to be impressed by the space’s thoughtful, handsome design, which feels both elegant and cozy. But of course, the star of the show there is the cuisine, which one might describe most basically as “elevated Creole Italian,” and although Tana shares similarities with that quintessential style of New Orleans Italian fare, Gulotta and his team pull in ingredients and techniques that diners might find unique, with roots in both the chef’s Sicilian heritage as well as his experience cooking on the Italian Riviera.
“In Liguria, everything was light,” Gulotta said. “Seafood, fresh pasta, a little squeeze of lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, lots of sea salt and bottarga…it was all very simple preparations. I try to take the things we usually see in south Louisiana and just try to lighten them and bring that real Italian lens to it, while still keeping it rooted in New Orleans cuisine…it’s sort of a lighter, brighter version of what they’re used to.”
The menu at Tana will seem happily familiar to any fan of NOLA-style Creole Italian, but when the dishes hit your table, Gulotta’s idea to make things “over-the-top” becomes immediately apparent. Take a simple appetizer of foie gras mousse, for instance, a starter which, traditionally, is a small but lavish way to warm up the palate for more substantial fare. Instead, you’ll find a portion of mousse piped onto a toasted brioche bun, topped with dollops of mostarda and Averna syrup, that’s so generous it would make your cardiologist blush. According to Gulotta, this spirit of generosity harks back to a lesson he learned from his mentors in the kitchen. “Too many restaurants say, ‘It’s a foie gras this,’ and there’s like the tiniest bit of foie gras folded in. And I’m like, ‘Naw, man.’ If you’re going to order foie gras, I’m gonna give you foie gras. If you order caviar, I’m going to give you a big spoonful of caviar.” That caviar, by the way, arrives heaped atop a scoop of herbed butter that Tana serves with house-made zeppole.
Larger plates at Tana are similarly gratifying. The pasta program – all freshly made, of course – includes riffs on classics that all bear the hallmark of Gulotta’s culinary creativity: radiatori with “red gravy” features both stracciatella and Calabrian chili crisp; pasta con vongole incorporates saffron tomatoes with squid ink trenette (a distinctly Ligurian pasta) as well as Patton’s hot sausage, giving it an unmistakably Louisiana twist; and the smoked pork cappelletti sports spicy tomatoes and peppers and a blue crab crema that instantly reminds you that you’re in south Louisiana and not exactly northern Italy. Even a rustic chicken dish, the “Chicken alla Tana, pulls from Gulotta’s personal history. “It’s the exact chicken that my grandmother used to make,” says the chef. “It’s this very simple chicken with lots of olive oil and butter, black pepper, oregano, and garlic, peppers, onions and potatoes. You just put the whole thing in the oven and roast it, and it makes its own sauce in the bottom of the roasting pan, and that’s the only chicken dish she ever made. I still make that dish for my kids, because it’s so delicious.” And if you want a true show-stopper, look no further than the selection of steaks and chops, all available with the option to top them with jumbo lump crab, gorgonzola butter, fresh truffles or smoked bone marrow to make your night even more unapologetically decadent.
Tana’s current menu is packed so deep with stellar offerings, there’s no way anyone outside of a professional eater could enjoy every stand-out dish in one or even three trips there, which so far has been keeping diners from across the city coming out to Metairie Road for repeat visits. Still, Chef Gulotta feels that he’s only getting warmed up. “With every one of my restaurants, I’m always sort of showing people I think a little something that they weren’t expecting,” he said. “It’s still reflective of a New Orleans palate, and it’s still reflective of someone who was trained in New Orleans, but I’m bringing in the training that I had from other places. And I think that people are becoming more and more pleasantly surprised that it’s not just old school New Orleans Italian. It’s bringing in a lot of other cultures and a lot of other flavors. And I think, no matter what, it’s going to be great.”
About the Chef
A born and bred son of the Crescent City, chef Michael Gulotta made his bones – both literally and figuratively – under the tutelage of local culinary luminaries including John Folse, Emeril Lagasse and John Besh. His culinary journey took him all the way to a position as executive chef at Restaurant August (with a detour of several years cooking in Germany and the Italian Riviera), after which he struck out on his own, and in 2014 opened the funky-cool Mid-City fusion joint Mopho, which became an overnight sensation with local diners. A more luxe downtown eatery, Maypop, followed with similar success in 2016, and in late 2023, Gulotta returned to his Italian roots with Tana, which he opened with longtime business partner Jeffrey Bybee as well as local restaurateurs Gabe Corchiani (Fat Boys Pizza) and Christopher Keene (Rivershack Tavern). “We want to tell a story,” Gulotta said. “We want people to see something that they’re both comfortable with but also kind of shows them a little something new.”
