RESTAURANT NEWS | LOUISIANA
The Crustacean Club Brings Gulf Seafood Back to a Storied New Orleans Dining Room
By Eric Barton | 4:05 p.m. ET, May 26, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
The Crustacean Club begins with a pretty convincing argument: oysters on ice, Champagne in the glass, and the Gulf doing most of the talking.
The new restaurant from husband-and-wife chefs Evan Ingram and Brenna Sanders has opened on the edge of the French Quarter, in the former Effervescence space on North Rampart Street. It’s a fitting address for a place that understands the pleasure of bubbles, oysters, and a room that seems designed for people who believe dinner can begin with Champagne and improve from there.
Brenna Sanders and Evan Ingram
The restaurant is split into two experiences. The Club Room is the more formal one, built around a five-course chefs’ tasting menu that’s built to be a tour of Gulf seafood. The Oyster Bar is the more direct route: Gulf oysters, house fries, Champagne, martinis, caviar, and a chalkboard of daily raw bar specials.
Ingram and Sanders aren’t treating Gulf seafood as a supporting character. They’re sourcing all of their fish, oysters, and shellfish come exclusively from regional waters, something that’s not easy to do when national suppliers can undercut local fishermen.
Both chefs bring fine-dining experience to the project. Ingram’s background includes Saison, Quince, Restaurant August, and Effervescence. Sanders grew up on the Alabama coast, studied at Tulane, and built her reputation in fine-dining pastry before bringing that same precision to a restaurant built around local catch.
The result is a new New Orleans restaurant with an old local argument at its center: that the Gulf already gives New Orleans everything it needs. The Crustacean Club just adds caviar, martinis, and the good sense to serve it cold.
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