Steam rises from a row of well-seasoned pots. Rich, dark gravy — the kind that takes hours and doesn’t apologize for it — fills the kitchen with something between a smell and a memory. Colette Finister works the stove. Her sister Shanel Snowton calls this setup the “soul pots”: an array of stockpots and Dutch ovens, each holding a different meat, a different depth of brown. This is Two Sisters in Treme, open since spring 2026. And if it feels less like a new restaurant than a long-overdue return, that’s because it is.
From Canal Street to Chef Menteur to Treme
More than fifty years of family recipes have finally found their most rooted home yet.
The sisters’ parents bought the original Two Sisters at 223 North Derbigny Street in 1972 — kept the name on someone’s advice that it’d bring luck. Smart call. For decades, bus drivers, Charity Hospital nurses, and City Hall workers carried takeout cartons back to coworkers who couldn’t leave their desks. That location eventually closed. The family reopened as Two Sisters ‘N Da East on Chef Menteur Highway, inside a former Pizza Hut, and ran it for roughly 16 years. That closed too. Then the Prince Hall Masons in Treme came recruiting. Spring 2026, the pots are back on.
What’s on the table at the Treme location:
- Smothered turkey wings and turkey necks — slow-cooked in gravy, the backbone of the menu
- Stewed oxtails — Sunday’s signature; Irma Thomas endorses them by name
- Smothered hen and pork neckbones with cabbage — long-braised, built for working people
- Chitterlings — a soul-food tradition that doesn’t apologize for itself
- Plates sized to feed you twice; pricing is expected to mirror the East location’s roughly $10–20 range
The soul pots aren’t a marketing term. That’s just what the sisters call the stockpots and Dutch ovens holding different meats and gravies simultaneously — down-home Southern pot cooking of Black tradition. No rotating concepts. No chef-driven pivots. The recipes are the point, and they’ve been the point since Dorothy Finister’s kitchen shaped this family’s entire culinary identity.
The Prince Hall Masonic Temple isn’t a commercial strip location. The Masons recruited Two Sisters because Treme needed it. That decision plants the restaurant inside a Black fraternal institution with deep roots in mutual aid and neighborhood identity. Service runs “sweet and speedy,” but the food earns a long sit.
“A welcome comeback from old New Orleans, now up for a new chapter right in the heart of Treme.” — WWNO’s Where Y’Eat
When the Soul Queen Vouches for Your Oxtails
Irma Thomas helped usher in the Treme opening — and her endorsement of the Sunday oxtails carries real cultural weight.
Irma Thomas — New Orleans R&B royalty, the Soul Queen — publicly endorses the Sunday oxtails and, according to NOLA.com reporting, backed proprietor Colette Finister as she relaunched in the new location. That’s not a celebrity cameo. In a city where music and food share the same bloodstream, Thomas’s name next to a dish is a verdict. It signals to locals and visitors alike: this place is the genuine article.
Two Sisters has fed cops, nurses, and bus drivers across more than five decades and three locations. The soul pots are still on. If you’re in Treme on a Sunday, Irma Thomas already told you what to order.
