Cheeseburgers, boiled seafood and chicken tenders are about to start flowing from a dockside kitchen on a stretch of Pass Christian shoreline that has sat empty since Hurricane Katrina. Tiger Beach, the long-awaited boater and beach destination at 103 W. Bayview Ave. on Henderson Point, is aiming to open its downstairs food service to the public in time for Cruisin' the Coast week in October, with an upstairs dinner restaurant still roughly 60 days from completion.
Developer Thomas Genin, who owns the property, has wanted to build something on this exact site since 2009, according to WLOX. He says the project itself has taken five years to bring to life, transforming a peninsula surrounded by water on two sides into what he believes could reshape how people experience Henderson Point. Genin trained under celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse early in his culinary career before opening his first coastal restaurant, Tigres, in Pass Christian — a restaurant Hurricane Katrina destroyed in 2005, according to a Medium profile of his career.
A Peninsula Wiped Clean by Katrina
Henderson Point had zero commercial activity in the two decades after Katrina's storm surge, which reached up to 28 feet along the Mississippi coast on August 29, 2005. The storm destroyed the Gulfshore Baptist Assembly retreat center, per the same account. The Tiger Beach site itself was previously known as the old Pelican Cove Marina property.
That long gap without any commercial presence is part of why Tiger Beach's opening resonates locally. The station's report notes Genin envisions the finished property reshaping how people experience the point, a sentiment echoed by his broader track record: he opened the original Blind Tiger in Bay St. Louis in May 2013, an early anchor of post-Katrina waterfront rebuilding that has since grown into a regional chain with locations in Biloxi, Slidell and Madisonville.
According to the City of Pass Christian's official history, French-Canadian explorers named Pass Christian in 1699. The city's official history says the community was officially chartered as a town in 1848.
Two Restaurants, a Boathouse and a Water Taxi
Tiger Beach's finished footprint will include two restaurants: the fast-casual, dockside restaurant downstairs, and a sit-down dinner restaurant upstairs. The property also features cabanas, a boathouse and fuel docks, with visitors able to rent pontoons, boats and jet skis on-site, according to WLOX. Madison Abbott, a bartender and member of Tiger Beach's opening crew, told the outlet she is ready for the place to open and that the area lacks any comparable attraction.
Abbott said the opening crew bonded, got to know each other, and built the place together over the run-up to opening. One of the property's more distinctive features is a planned water taxi that will connect Tiger Beach directly to the Blind Tiger in Bay St. Louis, crossing the 1.8-mile span of Saint Louis Bay in roughly 13 to 14 minutes, according to WXXV 25. Genin said people had specifically wanted a boat connection between the two waterfront spots, and the taxi is set to begin operating on weekends starting next week.
Racing the Calendar Toward Cruisin' the Coast
Genin has not set an official opening date for the downstairs food service, and Tiger Beach is currently running test runs with invited guests as it works out the kinks. The target is to have the downstairs restaurant open to the public by Cruisin' the Coast week, the eight-day classic car event running October 4 through October 11, which brings thousands of vehicles to multiple coastal communities, according to RetireCoast. The upstairs dinner restaurant remains about 60 days from being finished, leaving the formal opening date still unresolved.
Tiger Beach's arrival fits into a broader shift along the Mississippi Sound, where a regional real estate report found more than 30 vacant beachfront lots sold along the Pass Christian-to-Biloxi corridor over the prior two years, even though at least 50 empty lots remained listed 21 years after Katrina, as Hoodline previously reported. Rising visitor traffic has also gotten easier: Amtrak restored its Mardi Gras passenger line between Mobile and New Orleans in August 2025 after a 20-year hiatus, and the route now runs through Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula.
