St. Bernard Parish starts where New Orleans ends and runs downriver into the marshes that supply the city’s seafood, which means the restaurants out here sit closer to the boats than anything in the Quarter does.
1. Rocky & Carlo’s, Chalmette
Tommy Tommaseo opened this place on April 24, 1965 with his brother Rocky and his brothers-in-law Carlo, Mario, and Giuseppe Gioe. The families came out of a Sicilian immigrant community so tied to the old country that a man born in Chalmette might go back to Italy for a decade. Sixty years later the same family runs it, and the building has survived hurricanes, floods, and a serious fire in 2012.
Service runs cafeteria style. Customers walk the line and pick from a menu that mixes Italian, Cajun, and Southern cooking, with pork chops and greens, braciola, veal parmesan, stuffed peppers, muffulettas, baked chicken, fried shrimp, fried oysters, and soft-shell crab. The gumbo gets thickened with okra.
The famous item is the baked macaroni and cheese, made from scratch daily on perciatelli noodles and served plain or under red or brown gravy. Tommy arrives at 6 a.m. to boil enough pasta for dozens of pans. Portions are large enough that takeout boxes wait by the front door. The restaurant sits at 613 W. St. Bernard Hwy, open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday. Call (504) 279-8323.
2. Penny’s Cafe, Violet
Penny opened this cafe in July 1997 to cook Southern food for the parish, and it still runs as a family operation. Regulars describe getting to know the waitresses and cooks after a couple of visits.
Two ways to eat here. There is an all-you-can-eat buffet running lunch and dinner on weekdays, and a full menu available at any hour covering breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast plates come in one, two, and three egg versions, with pork chop breakfasts and omelets that fill an oval plate. Onion rings get made from scratch and stacked high.
The seafood carries the reputation. Shrimp dinners, stuffed crab dinners, and catfish dinners all appear, along with fried and boiled seafood and po-boys. Friday brings a seafood buffet with fried Louisiana shrimp. Comfort plates fill out the rest with hamburger steak, chicken fried steak, and fried chicken that reviewers single out repeatedly. The cafe sits at 5442 E. Judge Perez Dr, open Tuesday through Sunday and closed Mondays, with hours starting at 6 a.m. and running to 6 or 8 p.m. depending on the day. Call (504) 272-0262.
3. Casanova Seafood, St. Bernard
This one works as both a market and a kitchen. The counter sells fresh shrimp, oysters, crabs, soft crabs, and fish raw, and it also boils crabs, crawfish, and shrimp and makes po-boys to order.
Reviewers consistently point to the boiled crawfish and the lemon garlic seasoning, plus fried catfish and seafood po-boys built with fish and shrimp. The fish and shrimp po-boy with a boiled egg and smoked sausage gets named often. Prices run roughly half what the same seafood costs in the French Quarter, which is the argument for the drive.
The market also caters on-site seafood boils. It sits at 1928 Massicot Road, and listed hours generally run 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays with a 9 a.m. opening Friday and Saturday and a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Different listings disagree on the details, so call ahead. Weekend mornings bring the best selection.
4. Charlie’s Restaurant, Violet
Charlie’s operates at 6129 E. St. Bernard Hwy, a few minutes from Penny’s on the same downriver stretch. It rounds out a day of eating in the parish for anyone who wants a second stop without backtracking toward Chalmette.
This is the least documented of the four, so treat it as worth a phone call before driving out. Anyone building a route can pair it with the drive further down toward Shell Beach and Yscloskey, where Campo’s Marina has been family-run for more than a century and fresh oysters, shrimp, and crabs come straight off the boats.
Shell Beach itself has no restaurants, so plan the meal for Violet or Chalmette on the way out or back.
