As you may have heard, SoFAB is getting ready to move on to bigger and better things in 2013! Our new home will be a 30,000 square foot building at 1504 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard. Architectural renderings from the Office of Jonathan Tate are shown above of the proposed exterior and interior.
The new SoFAB will include the Culinary Innovation Center, a fully functioning commercial grade certified kitchen that will offer services and resources such as cooking classes, demonstrations, and community kitchen space and the Jenn Air Kitchen Auditorium; a Children’s Gallery; extensive exhibits on every Southern state, including different “trails” to explore; an updated and expanded SoFAB Pantry; and Purloo, a Southern restaurant and bar operated by Dell Dempsy and Chef Ryan Hughes. And of course the popular Museum of the American Cocktail and our special galleries, La Galerie d’Absinthe and the Sugar Gallery will still be on display.
This is incredibly exciting for us, and we want to keep all of our new and old followers in the loop. We’ll be sharing information about our progress on this page as well as on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.
Our official groundbreaking at 1504 O. C. Haley took place on Monday, June 25. Read about it here. Thanks for everyone who came out and supported the museum and our exciting new step.
The building we are renovating used to be the Dryades Street Market, a bustling center of commerce for food in the Uptown area that opened in 1849. Learn more about the history of Dryades Street here.
If you want to support the museum and this big next step, please consider becoming a member here, donating here, or even just letting us know your thoughts by emailing info@southernfood.org
In other exciting news, the Southern Food and Beverage (SoFab) Museum’s vast culinary literature collection will be available to the public in its very own branch of the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL). Located at 1609 O.C. Haley Blvd., the Culinary Library will contain over 9,000 volumes of cookbooks, menus, recipes, archival documents and other literature pertaining to the food and food ways of the American South, all collected by the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. The non-circulating collection is scheduled to be open in 2013. Learn more about the Library and the work we’re doing here.
Read Judy Walker’s article in the Times Picayune about the big move by following this link. Read more about the redevelopment happening already on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard in this article by Fox 8. WWLTV discusses the upcoming revitalization of the O.C. Haley corridor here. This article from the Gambit also discusses the planned revitalization of O. C. Haley Boulevard, and even talks about us!
Check out the start of Dr. Bob’s new project for the museum! These will be hanging over each state’s exhibit, filled out with Dr. Bob’s signature style. Check our Facebook Album for more photos.
The future roof garden on top of the new SoFAB building.
