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Donald Link Partners With Four Seasons New Orleans for Hotel Restaurant

New Orleans chef Donald Link, who co-owns popular local restaurants Herbsaint, Cochon, and Peche, will open a restaurant in the forthcoming Four Seasons Hotel and Residences New Orleans, expected to open this spring. The restaurant is the second to be announced by the hotel, joining its “signature” restaurant and lobby bar in partnership with chef Alon Shaya’s Pomegranate Hospitality.

Link will open the restaurant with Link Restaurant Group, which he co-owns with Stephen Stryjewski. The pair most recently opened Warehouse District Italian spot Gianna, led by chef Rebecca Wilcomb. The Four Seasons restaurant is set for the hotel’s fifth floor, “adjacent to the crescent-shaped infinity pool,” featuring floor-to-ceiling views overlooking the Mississippi, and is expected to open in October 2021, six months or after the hotel debuts.

Beyond that, details are scarce. The Four Seasons hotel group first announced it was developing a New Orleans location in the former World Trade Center downtown in late 2019, sparking instant speculation over its plans for food and beverage. In October 2020, the hotel announced that Alon Shaya and his wife Emily’s restaurant group Pomegranate Hospitality would open the hotel’s first floor restaurant and oversee food and beverage for the lobby bar. That as-yet unnamed restaurant is set to open in Spring 2021, and the pair says it will celebrate the best of grand New Orleans fine dining, drawing in West African, Central American, and Vietnamese influences of Louisiana cuisine as well as inspiration from Cajun country.

Link first opened Herbsaint on his own in 2000, setting off a 20-year restaurateur career in the city. He opened pork-centric Cochon Restaurant close by in the Warehouse District in 2006 following Hurricane Katrina, winning a Best Chef: South James Beard Award the following year. He formed the Link Restaurant Group with Stryjewski in 2009, and they went on to open Cochon sister restaurant Butcher and then Pechein 2013, took over popular Uptown bakery La Boulangerie, and opened Gianna in 2019 with chef Rebecca Wilcomb at the helm. Gianna was nominated for Best New Restaurant at the 2019 James Beard Awards.

Check back with Eater for more details on Link’s restaurant in the Four Seasons, set to open in October.

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