A toast to Fabacher’s: An 1880s family-run New Orleans restaurant grew to have a national reputation

Throughout New Orleans history, you’ll always find a handful of family names that are synonymous with food and beverage of the time. Today, for example, there are the Brennans, the Baquets, the Chases, the Nguyens, the Vaucresssons.

One hundred and twenty years ago, that list would have been made of entirely different names — and at or near the top of it would have been the Fabachers.

Perhaps most familiar to New Orleanians of today is the name of Laurence Fabacher, an early investor in Jackson Bohemian Brewery — producer of Jax Beer — who became president of the iconic brewing concern in 1895, five years after its founding.

Fabacher held the post until his death in 1923, at which point his son, Lawrence Bartholomew Fabacher, took over. He ran the company until 1969 — five years before the brewery’s closure.

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Peter Fabacher — one of 11 siblings of Laurence — began operating Fabacher’s Rathskeller on Canal Street, a German-themed nightspot that served as an early jazz venue (and the subject of last week’s column) that was eventually undone by Prohibition.

Another sibling, Louis Fabacher, ran a bakery. Albert Fabacher was a grocer.

The Original Fabacher's

But before them all was the Original Fabacher’s restaurant, founded by Franz Joseph Fabacher, who immigrated from Germany to New Orleans around 1846 and who — after time as a grocer, a brewer, a saloon keeper and a real estate speculator, among other pursuits — opened his namesake restaurant in 1880 with wife Magdalena.

Their Fabacher’s Restaurant — located in a two-story brick building built at 137 Royal St. by F. Reusch & Son — started humbly enough, with what was described as a small, modest dining room. But as its reputation grew, so did its footprint, as it underwent repeated expansions and renovations.

In the process, it would grow to become a local institution, boasting a massive, lushly appointed dining room that would serve as a special-occasion destination for locals and a must-try experience for visitors to the city into the 20th century.

“The name of Fabacher long ago became a synonym for the best in the culinary art and a reference to ‘Fabacher’s’ anywhere where good cooking was discussed meant New Orleans, for the restaurant … was known all over the country and in other parts of the world,” The Times-Picayune wrote in reflecting on the restaurant’s legacy in 1923.

By 1887, Joseph and Magdalena’s place was reportedly doing “the largest business in the city.”

Swanky and modern

Fabacher’s swanky, high-ceiling dining room was on the ground floor of 137 Royal, as was a ladies' cafe, the kitchen, a storeroom and, to keep those white tablecloths as white as can be, a laundry room.

Upstairs was an equipment room for new-fangled electric lights as well as the restaurant’s ice plant — the better to keep the restaurant’s seafood at the peak of freshness.

Also upstairs were rooms of the Hotel Fabacher, a side business that appears prominently in an 1889 photograph of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ funeral procession as it made its way down Royal Street.

That was the same year the elder Fabacher, then 64, decided to slow down and step away from the business, turning it over to four of his sons: Laurence, Peter, Anthony and John.

Initially, Laurence was put in charge of the place, although — with his involvement in Jax Brewery — he would eventually step back from the restaurant, too. Anthony, who had been serving as night manager, eventually bought out his brothers and assumed the reins.

A family tradition

He continued the family tradition of expansion, establishing in 1908 what he called the Ladies Grape Arbor — a picturesque dining room adorned with wood trim and grapevines, and featuring 1,000 incandescent lights, all obscured from view to simulate a moonlight night.

It was about then that Peter Fabacher opened Fabacher’s Rathskeller on St. Charles Avenue. Presumably to avoid confusion, Anthony Fabacher rebranded the old family restaurant “The Original Fabachers.”

What few realized was that the restaurant was then in its final act.

Following a bankruptcy filing by Anthony Fabacher, the Original Fabachers would close its doors for good in 1915. The building and everything in it — from its trademark steins, emblazoned with the Fabacher name, to its ice machine — were sold at auction.

“Fabacher’s restaurant has been a landmark in New Orleans for so long that the thought of it passing out of existence struck people with something of a shock,” The Times-Picayune wrote at the time.

It was bought by a bank and would become home to a string of businesses over the years, including an illegal betting outfit (raided and closed by police in 1919), a soft drink saloon (raided and closed by Prohibition agents in 1923); the Kit Kat Restaurant; and others.

What's there now?

The old Fabacher’s building still stands, although it has been altered over the years. The gallery from which onlookers viewed Davis’ funeral procession in 1889, for example, has since been converted into a balcony. The year “1888” visible at the top of the building in that photo has also been changed to “1891,” presumably the date of a renovation.

The buildings on either side of it have also been altered to harmonize with the elaborate headers above the Fabacher building’s second-story windows and with the dentillated cornice running along its roofline.

Today, the Fabacher building houses a souvenir shop.

Across Iberville Street from it is Mr. B’s — where the Brennans, one of the more noted restaurant families of today’s New Orleans, can watch over it.

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archives; Historic New Orleans Collection’s Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carré Digital Survey; Library of Congress

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.