About Zasu
The name Zasu comes from the Slovak word meaning "once again" — a reference to Chef Sue Zemanick's heritage and her childhood memories of her family cooking together, the ritual of returning to something essential. It is an unusual name for a restaurant and a precise one. Zasu is the restaurant Zemanick had been waiting to open her entire career: entirely her own, in her own neighbourhood, cooking exactly what she wants to cook.
Zemanick is a James Beard Award winner — Best Chef South in 2009 — who had already built a reputation as one of New Orleans' most technically accomplished chefs before opening Zasu. The converted Mid-City cottage at 127 N Carrollton Avenue, with its warm green walls and natural wood, gives the restaurant the intimacy of a dinner party and the quality of a serious kitchen. This is not an accident; the combination of fine dining precision with genuine residential warmth is what Zemanick was designing for.
The menu is edited and focused, running to a dozen or so dishes that change seasonally. The cooking is seafood-forward — Gulf fish, local shellfish, Louisiana crab — treated with the French technique that Zemanick absorbed during her years training in New Orleans' finest kitchens. But the menu ranges beyond seafood into vegetables, game birds, and local farm produce with equal confidence. The wine list is concise and well-chosen. The service moves at the pace of a restaurant where the chef knows that rushing dinner is the quickest way to ruin it.
Michelin awarded Zasu one star in November 2025, the first Louisiana guide. The star confirmed what regular guests already knew: that this was one of the most accomplished tables in New Orleans, operating slightly under the radar because it sits in Mid-City rather than the French Quarter or the Warehouse District. The star ended the under-the-radar period. Book well in advance.
Why It Works for First Dates
A first date at Zasu works because the restaurant makes the occasion feel considered rather than performative. This is not the spectacle of the French Quarter's legendary dining rooms — it is something more personal, more specific. Booking a table at a James Beard Award-winning, Michelin-starred chef's own restaurant in Mid-City tells a date something about the person who chose it: that they research, that they know the city, that they think about what they're doing. That matters on a first date.
The cottage setting provides natural intimacy — the rooms are warm and human in scale, without the grandeur that can make conversation feel like a performance. The menu's focus on seafood and seasonal ingredients gives both parties something to engage with intellectually without requiring specialist knowledge. The service is attentive without being intrusive. The pace is right. And the quality of the cooking provides the kind of shared moment — a dish that both people will remember — that first dates need and rarely get from formulaic restaurant choices. Reserve at least two weeks in advance for weekends.
