New chef rolls out fresh menu items at The Colonel’s Club, in time for its one-year anniversary

One of the region’s most stylish restaurant openings of 2024, The Colonel’s Club is marking its first anniversary in early September with fresh menu items and a new chef at the helm.

Chris Motto, former executive chef at Jubans Restaurant and Mansurs on the Boulevard, and once a contestant on FOX’s culinary reality show Hell’s Kitchen, took the reins at the Perkins Road Underpass eatery last month. Motto says he’ll maintain the restaurant’s globally influenced menu, but is also introducing a dedicated lunch lineup with lighter fare and under $20 entrées. This fall, The Colonel’s Club will also roll out a new brunch menu, he says.

The self-taught chef and New Iberia native says he’s looking forward to building out his kitchen team and having fun with the restaurant’s travel theme.

“I’m super excited to be here,” Motto says. “I mean, when you walk in the doors, you feel like you’re somewhere else.”

Motto replaces Chef David Dickensauge, who returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after several years in Baton Rouge. He opened Field’s Mediterranean in Biloxi in January.

The Colonel’s Club owner Jordan Piazza invested more than $2 million in transforming the Underpass restaurant, a former airplane hangar turned speakeasy in the 1950s and ’60s, that later hosted a number of restaurant concepts. Most recently, it was home to Kalurah Street Grill. Piazza converted the space into a buzzy concept with a restaurant on one side and a piano lounge on the other. Local design firm Tiek Byday developed its Belle Epoque travel theme, expressed through artwork installed by Ann Connelly Fine Art, elegant lighting, velvet drapes, tufted cushions, and Gilded Age-inspired details.

Piazza says sales have exceeded expectations over the first year. Now the goal is to refine the menu by keeping popular dishes, like the top-selling short rib Bolognese, while adding salads, sandwiches and reasonably priced entrees at lunch.

One new addition is the lox wedge salad, Motto’s riff on a traditional wedge in which bacon is replaced by smoked salmon. Crisp iceberg is mingled with salmon slices and topped with variations on traditional lox accompaniments: hard-boiled egg, capers, crispy onion, rye breadcrumbs and house-made dill cream cheese vinaigrette.

Motto has also reworked the restaurant’s lobster roll, restraining its sauciness to elevate the plump chunks of lobster. The dish features slow-poached Maine lobster blended with tartar, dill and drawn butter served in a split-top bun. It’s joined by truffle frites.

The Grecian chicken is one of Motto’s new lunchtime $19.36 options, a nod to the year the building was constructed. Playing off of Baton Rouge’s longtime obsession with chicken shawarma, it features a marinated grilled chicken breast served with cucumber and tomato salad, hummus and pita.

“We wanted to do some entrees that won’t leave you feeling sluggish when you go back to work,” Motto says.

The Colonel’s Club’s cocktail program and piano lounge continue to be among its biggest draws, says general manager Bradley Easley. A pianist cranks up every day at 5 p.m. while patrons relax next to a year-round fireplace and sip craft cocktails. The espresso martini has been a consistent best seller, thanks to an imported Elektra espresso machine. It can be mixed with bourbon, tequila, or vodka, and also ordered smoked at the table.

“It really enhances the flavor of the espresso,” he says.

While some new menu items are available now, the fully updated lunch menu will be available in early September. The new brunch menu will follow later this fall, Motto says.