Chef Brian Landry and hospitality executive Emery Whalen, co-founders of New Orleans-based QED Hospitality, have purchased Broussard’s Restaurant at 819 Conti Street in the French Quarter. The sale was confirmed by Creole Cuisine Restaurant Concepts, which had owned and operated the property for the past 13 years after acquiring it from its previous operators in 2013.

Broussard’s opened in 1920 inside a historic French Quarter mansion a few steps off Bourbon Street. The property includes multiple dining rooms, a lounge called the Empire Bar, and one of the French Quarter’s most celebrated courtyards, which has served as the setting for weddings and private functions across generations of New Orleans social life. Creole Cuisine had invested approximately $1 million in renovations after its 2013 acquisition.

The acquisition expands QED Hospitality’s footprint significantly beyond its current base at the Pontchartrain Hotel on St. Charles Avenue, where the company operates Jack Rose, the Bayou Bar, the Hot Tin rooftop bar, and the Silver Whistle Café. The company also manages food and beverage operations at the Thompson Nashville hotel in Tennessee and at the Jim Beam distillery. Landry and Whalen founded QED Hospitality in 2017 after working together at BRG Hospitality, where Landry served as opening chef at the downtown seafood restaurant Borgne and Whalen worked as an operations manager.

No sale price was disclosed. The restaurant’s existing staff will transfer with the property, and Broussard’s will remain open under its current format with no immediate changes announced by the new owners.

The sale transfers one of the French Quarter’s anchor dining properties from a multi-concept restaurant group to a pair of operators with a proven track record in repositioning historic New Orleans hospitality assets. Landry and Whalen are best known for transforming the Pontchartrain Hotel’s Caribbean Room into Jack Rose, which retained the property’s signature Mile High Pie while updating the menu and concept for a new generation of diners. Broussard’s joins a short list of French Quarter grande dames — including Antoine’s, Galatoire’s, and Arnaud’s — that have operated continuously for more than a century.

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