Blue

Crab

The Blue Crab, a beloved seafood restaurant, opened a second location in the old Harbor View Court building in Slidell, Louisiana, with the original restaurant located in the New Orleans Lakefront area off West End Boulevard. The old Harbor View Court building—a restaurant and fuel dock—was originally seen as a quick stop for locals or fishermen to grab food while headed to or from Lake Pontchartrain. CICADA was approached to reimagine the building’s potential. The owners' needs consisted of two main design principles. The first was to make the dining and kitchen more efficient for waitstaff, and the second was to create more connectivity between the interior and exterior entertainment areas.

To meet those needs, CICADA carefully identified how the Blue Crab currently operates as a restaurant and which aspects are most successful. After a series of programming studies, we determined that creating a central pickup and drop-off location for takeaway orders was critical. We reimagined the kitchen’s design, and opened what was once a space dedicated to a large-top table, introducing a banquet instead, which made way for a circulation hall to the exterior. This small design move now allows patrons to enter and exit freely without compromising eat-in dining seats, and provides connections between interior and exterior dining areas. This project is a good example of a lessee taking on a building that had an enormous ceiling of potential, but needed architectural guidance to provide the right solutions.