The Magazine Street building that housed Gris-Gris from 2018 until its 2026 closure is getting new life as two restaurants from a chef who has cooked at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's royal wedding and worked under some of the biggest names in European fine dining. Josh Adamo, 31, plans to open Twelve, a 12-seat tasting-menu restaurant, on the ground floor of 1800 Magazine Street, with Bar DND, a cocktail bar, operating upstairs.
Gris-Gris, the upscale Southern restaurant that had occupied the address since July 2018, closed for good at the end of July, as NOLA.com reported at the time. Owner Eric Cook said the restaurant wasn't doing enough business to continue, and the same report noted that a neighboring building collapse during a fully booked dinner service in December 2024 led to canceled reservations that cost Gris-Gris around $10,000 in lost revenue.
From Royal Weddings to Michelin Kitchens
Adamo, a native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, spent years working at Michelin-starred restaurants across Canada and Europe, mostly in London and southern France. He worked at Solo Trattoria as a teenager, later enrolled at Sault College, and was hired at Auberge du Pommier in Toronto in 2015. He interned at The Fat Duck in London before working with chef Clare Smyth at her London restaurant Core. According to villagereport.ca, within two weeks of being hired at Core, Adamo was part of a culinary team that traveled to Windsor Castle and cooked for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding.
He later returned to Core as sous chef in 2021, right after the restaurant earned its third Michelin star, the outlet reports. From there, Adamo worked with Alain Ducasse at Le Louis XV in Monaco, a three-star Michelin restaurant, where he met Emeril Lagasse. Lagasse pitched Adamo on returning to North America to help launch a tasting-menu concept at Emeril's in New Orleans, and Adamo eventually became chef de cuisine there before leaving in early 2025 to work as a restaurant consultant.
Twelve Seats, Twelve Courses
Twelve takes its name from its concept: 12 seats and 12 courses, with a revolving menu that Adamo says will tell a story through its dishes. The courses are expected to draw on local Louisiana cuisine alongside European fine-dining technique, with ingredients sourced both locally and globally. Adamo has said he aims to showcase Louisiana as a food mecca in North America.
Upstairs, Bar DND — short for Do Not Disturb — is pitched as an escapist cocktail bar where patrons can set their phones to do not disturb while sipping elevated cocktails and ordering from an à la carte menu. The bar will also feature a separate menu inspired by food Adamo ate at restaurants in London. Bar DND is expected to open by February 2027, with Twelve following later in the spring.
A Break-In Before the Doors Even Open
The rollout hasn't been entirely smooth. Adamo signed the lease on the space around the start of October, and about two weeks later the building was broken into, with a broken deadbolt and an open back door. Nothing was reported stolen, but the restaurant's back-door lock needed repair.
Joining a Crowded Field of Tasting Menus
Twelve will enter a Magazine Street corridor and broader New Orleans dining scene that has leaned hard into the tasting-menu format in recent years. The address itself has hosted one before: Square Root took over the space in 2014 with a 12-to-15-course format and a chef's counter downstairs, charging $95 on weekdays and $150 on weekends, according to nomenu.com.
Elsewhere in the city, Dakar NOLA serves a seven-course menu inspired by West African and Senegalese dishes to the whole dining room at once, per nola.eater.com, while Saint-Germain pours a 10-course menu for $135 per person in a 12-seat dining room. Also on Magazine Street, Étoile occupies the historic Crockerton House, seating 25 diners a night for a seven-course menu priced at $150, with an optional $75 wine pairing, as reported by Axios.
Even Emeril's, where Adamo once cooked, reopened in fall 2023 with a sweeping renovation and its own shift toward a tasting-menu approach. The trend extends beyond Magazine Street, too: restaurateur Billy Blatty, who opened the Mediterranean-inspired Kira in the Warehouse District in December 2025, told New Orleans CityBusiness that more people are choosing restaurants over bars or clubs for a night out — part of why Kira has expanded service and plans its own Kira Omakase tasting experience this year.
For now, Twelve and Bar DND remain under construction at 1800 Magazine Street, with Adamo working to finish repairs and build out both spaces ahead of their planned 2027 openings.
