For the past 10 years, the menu at Mondo has offered tours of global flavors from the middle of Lakeview. Now chef Susan Spicer is saying goodbye to the popular neighborhood spot.
Spicer confirmed Friday she had sold the restaurant. The last night of service at Mondo will be next Saturday, Aug. 17. A new operator is slated to reopen the restaurant as a different concept.
Spicer said Mondo has been a valued part of her career, but with the lease coming due, she decided the time was right to make a move.
“It was a lot of great friendships with customers, great employees we’ve built relationships with; it’s meant being part of the neighborhood where I’ve lived in for 30 years,” said Spicer, who lives in Lakeview.
Mondo, 900 Harrison Ave., was Susan Spicer's Lakeview restaurant. (Staff file photo by Dinah Rogers)
For the next week, the restaurant will continue business as usual. Spicer said she is working with her current staff to help them find new jobs with her friends and peers in the business.
A new operator plans to open a new restaurant in the space called Elle-J’s, which is intended as a family-friendly restaurant with Italian dishes, seafood and steaks. It's a safe bet that the wood-fired oven Mondo now uses to cook pizza will likely continue on at Elle-J's.
A Mondo pizza topped with mushroom, fontina, leek and pancetta at Mondo, 900 Harrison Ave., in Lakeview.
The sale includes the business, but not the property or the name.
In fact, the Mondo name and some of its dishes will live on. Spicer plans to open a different outpost of Mondo in the new terminal of the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, part of a roster of local restaurants tapped to be included in the massive project. That terminal is now slated to open sometime this fall.
Broiled lamb t-bones with fresh mint pepper jelly and goat cheese-ricotta agnolotti at Mondo in Lakeview.
Spicer is best known for her first and most ambitious restaurant Bayona, which she opened in 1990. She developed Mondo as a mid-range, comfortably casual spot where diners could find a wide-ranging menu. Thai-style shrimp and pork meatballs, melted Gorgonzola spread and smoky pork shoulder with black beans and salsa are all part of the range.
It was a place where parents could bring the kids for pizzas, deviled eggs and burgers, or meet friends at the bar for ceviche and mussels when they wanted to leave the kids at home and talk about them.
Deviled eggs are a popular menu item at Mondo on Harrison Avenue.
Spicer also operates Rosedale, a neighborhood style restaurant not far from Mondo, which she opened in 2016. She said some dishes from Mondo may return at Rosedale.
Mondo's location, in Lakeview's busy commercial strip, has long been home to restaurants, including Barataria before Hurricane Katrina and Lago in the years before Mondo opened.
900 Harrison Ave., 504-224-2633
Dinner Mon.-Sat., lunch Mon.-Fri.
Note: scheduled to close Aug. 17, 2019
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